Social Revolution as Transcendence?

[Adrestia]

Perhaps this isn’t the right place to put this, but it seems to me to be the most apt.
What is your response to those that posit that any kind of mass scale societal revolution can only be created through some kind of spiritual/religious dimension? After all, materialist revolutions have changed what it means to be a human fad less than societal upheavals that were spurred by the widespread adoption of a new faith, whether it is Christianity in the Roman Empire or Islam in the Arabian peninsula and its spread into North Africa and the rest of the Middle East.
In addition, do you feel that the social revolutionary’s belief in the prospect of revolution is in some way commensurate with the devout person of faith’s abiding conviction of salvation? Though many social revolutions- most specifically those of Marxist inclination- adamantly rejected religious belief, do you believe that the belief of the revolutionary and the conviction of the faithful are necessarily opposed?

As for myself, just to qualify, I am an atheist, but as a supporter of some kind of socialistic revolution, I cannot help but wonder if the addition of a transcendental component i necessary for the kinds of widespread transformations of how humans think and conceived of themselves that workers control of society would entrail. Then again, such a component could well become a source of authoritarian dogmatic hierarchy, which I am of course diametrically in opposition to.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Aren’t some of the spiritual movements you describe really spiritual ways people conceived social change?

Wouldn’t workers attaining class and revolutionary outlooks on a mass scale seem kind of like a social version of a spiritual awakening?

If past mass movements or class upheavals took a spiritual nature a lot of that comes out of the use of gods and religion to explain the social order. If a European catholic or if an Indian Hindu wanted to upturn the social order, upturning the religion was necessary. But I think the changing conditions of life create “new people” who in turn can come to an understanding that the old explanations no longer fit with the “new people” and seek a “re-awakening”. So I don’t agree that spiritual awakenings drove change in the past, just that this was how these changes were galvanized among people in past movements.

For the most part, modern regimes claim authority through laws and politics, not because god made the social order, so I think most future revolutions will use this civic language to some extent. I also think that political language alone would probably be inadequate to describe the depth of social change in consciousness required for a mass socialist revolution. It would likely sound like a political movement but feel like a great spiritual awakening.

[ckaihatsu]

[D]o you feel that the social revolutionary’s belief in the prospect of revolution is in some way commensurate with the devout person of faith’s abiding conviction of salvation?


A revolutionary's being-a-revolutionary *isn't* -- and, I would argue, *shouldn't* -- be a matter of 'belief'.

All that one really has to *agree with* -- as a matter of objectively understanding the empirical world -- is that capitalism is *detrimental* to the fulfillment of human need, and so should be gotten-rid-of, in favor of allowing the actual *workers* (producers) to collectively self-organize society's productivity *themselves* / ourselves.

Trying to 'religify' something that's plainly *objective* in the world is misleading and inappropriate because religions are inherently culturally-subjective and they reflect mass-subjective, extra-empirical, often-personal *beliefs*. Such is not-required, and *superfluous*, to an objective appraisal of the social world, such-as-it-is.

[perardua]

Assuming an orthodox Marxist point of view - which in this case I think makes sense - these different worldviews and ensuing modes of action are fundamentally human beings relating to their environment. So instead of saying "these people over here want to overturn society because of their religious convictions, while these other people are following a political program", we are asking: What is the religious movement really trying to express?

Marx's idea was that religious aspirations are at heart worldly aspirations, that get shunted into a realm beyond reach, precisely because to the people holding these aspirations they feel out of reach. The people lack faith in their own ability to change their world, either due to living under oppression or due to being overwhelmed by the complexity of a world that just seems impossible to understand. Lacking power of their own, they have to put their trust in almighty God.

The idea of Paradise arises because some humans recognize their situation as less than ideal, and believe that it could, should, be different. I really don't think it is any more mysterious than that. There is no surprise then that revolutionary socialist movements should have similarities with religious movements.

The main difference is, going back to Marx, that a Communist movement is a conscious movement. It doesn't make up dreams about the future society, it takes it for a real possibility, and then goes on to ask "How do we move from here to there?" Followed by analysis of the actual nature of society and mechanisms of change etc etc.

As I understand this, as Communists we don't need to ask the question: "What comes first - revolutionary consciousness or revolutionary activity?" Revolutionary consciousness comes through revolutionary activity, and if there is revolutionary activity that means that the active one has already attained some form of revolutionary consciousness - at least enough to no longer consign themself to the inevitability of the present order.

Revolutionary activity is transcendence, since it operates outside of, and expands, the boundaries of the "normal", the "permitted", and the "possible". Likewise in all collective action the will of the individual is no longer their own, it is fused with other wills into a collective will. They are no longer expressing merely their individual interest, but a class interest - perhaps even a "will of the people".

[CommunistOrganon]

What I think is mostly in line with perardua's materialist explanation. But there are (I think) two arguments that could be made in the defense of 'social revolution as transcendence'.

1. The question is whether something is only subversive, or revolutionary as well. My favourite phenomenon is the issue of serfdom and peasantry. Land labourers and landless peasants never really formulated themselves as a politically conscious and programmatic class, but nevertheless they were still engaged in some kind of class struggle, often with serious religious tones. Here I am thinking of potentially (and sometimes actually) subversive religious movements, from the earliest Christians (like the donatists or the circumcellions) through medieval 'heretic' movements (like Fra Dolcino's movement) and eventually the German Peasants' War and figures like Florian Geyer and Thomas Müntzer. Religion and spiritual faith can be the vessel of uprisings that have their material basis, but need a metaphysical justification as well. But, the most important is that while these movements had general subversive potential, and were directly attacking the late-feudal status quo, they never had revolutionary potential, because there was no organized class behind them.

2. The other argument lies within the texts of Marx and Engels themselves. Marx's own journey could be (although I know this is grossly simplifying) described as 'from Hegel to materialism and back'. The very early Marx was still epistemologically humanist, or at least more humanist than later. Putting an end to alienation and actualizing humankind's Gattungswesen, 'species-being', or 'essence [of humanity]' is a clearly a legacy of German Idealism. So in Marx there is a general want to transcend the present state of things. The implicitly stated future of communism (only implicitly because of strict materialist considerations) is very close to eschatological thinking. And we eventually arrive at the conclusion that this kind of implicit eschatology comes from the strong Hegelian roots. In Taubes' Occidental Eschatology, he argues that there are 'hidden' roots of Jewish apocalypticism in Hegel's works, and this is something worth consideration. Of all posthegelian philosophers, it was Marx who got farthest from Hegel (with the critique of Feuerbach and pioneering 'non-philosophy' with the theory that interpretation of the world is not enough, because the new historical task is revolution) but simultaneously the closest to Hegel, especially because of the dialectical method and a particular 'occidental' eschatology. Now if we accept that, it's not hard to recognize that within the sole concept of a communist movements that exists as negation and as an agent of revolutionary change, there lies transcendence. And of course (speculating from Marx's theory of Gattungswesen) this liberation is not only material, but because it is material, it becomes a 'spiritual' liberation as well.