Leftism

Chapter 8 From Democracy to Romantic Socialism

The concept of socialism and communism is a great deal older than St. Thomas More’s Utopia, generally considered to be the first “Communist Manifesto.” Utopia is a half serious, half humorous, profound, yet satirical effort to visualize a state and a society based purely on the four natural virtues—prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice. Faith, hope, and charity, the three theological virtues, naturally do not figure in this imaginary non-Christian part of the world. Platonic notions play a certain part in this highly rational polity which has far-reaching equality among its citizens (women must also serve in the army) for instance. There is no private property. The scholars, however, enjoy privileges, and there are monasteries.

Utopia also has an ironic aspect. It tries to show a perfect pagan society and indirectly reminds the reader that the Christian nations, in spite of being favored by God, often fall below pagan levels. Freedom, though not totally lacking, is rather limited in Utopia and state controls are ubiquitous and severe.

The basic ideas of the Communist order—lack of private property, equality, a nonhereditary government, common work, and common social life—can be found not only in Western civilization but also in the most diverse parts of the world. We find it concretely expressed in monasticism. This way of life, however, presupposes a vocation, the sacrifice of innate rights, and a voluntary act of surrender. Although it must be admitted that monastic life normally provides for certain non-spiritual advantages, such as regulated work, free medical care, and material security, it represents basically a sacrificial form of existence—even if outsiders, at the sight of the thick walls of some monastery, might sigh enviously: “It’s easy for them!” (But they don’t join.)

The purpose of the monastery is spiritual. Nobody is going to measure the success of a monastic order by its economic record (which, more often than not, is modest to say the least). Yet historically certain purely external features of the monastery are precursors of more or less modern institutions: the prison, the barracks and, above all, the factory, all practicing a more or less far-reaching separation of the sexes. Naturally this does not mean that these collective institutions have been consciously patterned after the monastery. But practical circumstances enforced the analogy.

The monastic spirit in the West seems to have made its first appearance in the Holy Land in the Essene communities. The earliest Christian monks were—as their name indicates—monachoi, men living singly, anchorites, hermits. Only somewhat later the monachoi began to live together in groups as coenobites. At a still later period St. Benedict established an order with formal vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, the three “councils of perfection.” The Middle Ages were the great period of monasticism and we must not forget that for centuries the monasteries and convents were the fortresses of religious life, learning, the arts, and the higher crafts. Many of the intellectual treasures of antiquity were saved by the monks who copied and recopied ancient texts.

With the decline of the Middle Ages, in the fifteenth century, the monasteries too began to decline and the orders founded after the Reformation lack the monastic character. Jesuits, Redemptorists, and Salesians are not monks. They are not cloistered. The Oratorians (founded by St. Philip Neri) are not even an order but simply a congregation of priests. And with the twentieth century we get the “secular institutes” and finally “associations of the faithful” as, for instance, the Opus Dei.

In these parts the community, the congregation, the group dominated religious life to a large extent. The monarchical-patriarchal idea was badly shaken in the Calvinist world where republican ideas were soon on the march. It is no accident that strongly egalitarian and communistic notions made themselves felt in England during the time of the Commonwealth (Levelers, Diggers) and, later on, in the northern part of the American Colonies. Puritanism, after all, is a half-religious, half-secular kind of monasticism.

At the same time it remains true that the monastery served (very much against its own intentions) as a prefiguration of the big communities behind real or symbolic walls, not only of the seminary but also of the boarding school, the barracks, the hospital, the jail, or the factory—communities consisting usually (or predominantly) of one sex only. And what do we find in monasteries? The habit (uniform), mental and physical discipline, order, conformity, regulated work, community spirit, common meals, equality in hierarchy, cells (as in jails) or dormitories (as in barracks), self-control, subordination, mental concentration, an ascetic way of life, simplicity, and sobriety, altogether an autonomous but collective existence. There is no place in the monastery for sloth and individualism.

What would be the very opposite of the monastery? The bohemian family of a wild but prosperous artist in an isolated home where everybody dressed, acted, created, loafed, came and went according to his whims and inclinations. Now we do not insinuate that this is necessarily an ideal form of existence. The monastery has a positive value because, as we said, it rests on voluntary sacrifice which immediately would become odious if it assumed a coercive character, as is more or less the case with barracks, jails, boarding schools, hospitals, or factories. (This is equally true of their “hybrids”: the military hospital, the reformatory, etc.).

We have, however, oversimplified the issue because the monastery is not always pure sacrifice. Athough weakly developed, there is a monastic instinct in most of us. Don’t we sometimes envy the monks and nuns their settled, their “secure” life? The curious dilemma in this complexity of feelings is illustrated by the well-known question: “Who is sure of all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything?” The answer might be “the monks,” but the standard answer is: “the jailbirds.” And inevitably this makes us think of the citizens of the provider state, having material protection from “the womb to the tomb.” But here again, to sacrifice an eye for a dear friend is one thing; to be blinded by an executioner is quite another.

To marry a woman one pities is one thing; a shotgun wedding is quite another.

Yet the monastic yearning, as we have said, is also in us and therefore some of us will readily respond to the appeal of a false monasticism. The security element most certainly motivates this fascination. On the other hand, the person with the genuine monastic vocation will desire such security in his heroic struggle merely in order not to be detracted by material problems and to be able to lead a life of complete spiritual devotion. (All of which does not eliminate the fact that in bygone ages there have been men and women attracted to the monastic life by purely material considerations. In our oversexed, overeroticized and highly materialistic age such a “temptation” hardly exists.)

The situation is quite different in the “world,” where we find millions who crave security, who dread responsibility, who long for the gregarious life, who find happiness not in external but even in internal conformity. Oddly enough, the two historic epochs which in the secular domain were most inclined towards monasticism, were the Reformation and the French Revolution, two periods in which monasteries and convents were confiscated and dissolved by the thousands. (In Russia the same thing happened after 1917.) The smaller the number of monasteries, the stronger is perverted secular monasticism. The most extreme form of secular monasticism, however, is communism, and the communist movement’s strength in a given area often can be measured by the number of empty or ruined monasteries. This is also true of countries outside Western Europe and North America: It is true not only of Russia, but also of China, Southeast Asia, and Mexico.

The eccentric or ex-monk often is an ardent advocate of secular monasticism in one form or another. A typical representative of this type of mind and outlook was Tomaso Campanella, a rather odd Dominican who lived between 1568 and 1639. He is an even better example than Joachim de Floris (1145-1202), a radical Cistercian. Both were of noble birth and both came from Oalabria. The ideas of Joachim later profoundly affected the “spiritual” wing of the Franciscans and created grave theological and monastic disturbances. His vistas, considered quite orthodox during his lifetime, had an apocalyptic and eschatological character. Like Fourier and other visionary socialists he quite arbitrarily divided history into “ages” of the past and the future. In Joachim’s case they were: the Age of the Father, characterized by obedience; the Age of the Son (the “present time”), guided by reading; and the coming Age of the Spirit, devoted to prayer and song. The last and final age was supposed to be entirely monastic in character: Humanity will consist only of monks and nuns in preparation for the Day of Judgment. These quite “gnostic” Joachimite ideas were widely spread; they also influenced Wyclif and Roger Bacon and had a certain bearing on the Reformation.

Enjoying the protection of Frederick II, the stupor mundi, Joachim de Floris had as little trouble in his lifetime as Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, who unknowingly stated the Jansenist heresy. Tomaso Campanella, on the other hand, had grave political difficulties and spent many years in jail because he opposed Spanish rule in Naples. He wrote several philosophical treatises but owed his fame to his Civitas Solis, the “Sun State” published in 1602. This interesting and intellectually contradictory man was also one of the first “one-worlders,” but F. Meinecke, the great German historian, has called his outlook “one of the greatest psychological riddles in the new history of ideas.” Civitas Solis may or may not represent a mere intellectual exercise such as Thomas More’s Utopia. It was published as a part of his Realis Philosophiae Partes Quattuor.

In this essay Campanella envisaged an idealist state which has no Christian characteristics nor a political-social aura reminiscent of Catholic concepts. (This dichotomy, however, is typical of all Campanella’s intellectual efforts: His philosophy does not tally with his theology, nor his theology with his political theory, nor his basic political views with his practical notions.) In his “Sun State,” with a monarchical head there is intellectual-elitarian leadership, no private property and no lasting marriage. Sterile women automatically become public harlots. Pregnant women can have sexual intercourse with everyone. Yet women who use makeup, wear high heels, or long skirts to conceal their feet will be condemned to death as “liars.” Incest, except between mothers and sons, is encouraged. Have we here a forerunner of de Sade?

Nevertheless, it was obvious that religious monasticism had to shed its Christian roots in order to evolve perversely into secular socialism. True, this was not always the case, as witness the monastic bent in the younger William Morris, who later developed socialistic tendencies. A man quite divorced from the traditional values, however, was Morelly, of whom we know very little. Even his first name is a matter of conjecture, and it is not certain that he did hail from Vitry-le-Francois as some suppose. He is the author of several dull epics but also of a very important utopian socialistic treatise, the Code de la Nature, published 1755 in Amsterdam. It has been reprinted a few times, last by a Communist publishing house in Paris, and its influence on later socialist thinking cannot be underestimated. (Alexis de Tocqueville dealt with it very seriously in his L’Ancien Régime et La Révolution.) At first Diderot was thought to be its author, but this theory was exploded in the 1820s. In 1846 a German translation was published in Berlin. V. P. Volgin, a Soviet “politologist” who wrote the preface for the Paris edition in 1953, called Morelly “the purest interpreter of Socialism” (p. 8).

Gracchus Babeuf knew the nightmarish works of Morelly, a precursor of Orwell, and so in all probability, did Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, the first nineteenth-century socialist in Europe and another French Leftist aristocrat.

In vain, and quite naively, he appealed to Louis XVIII for support. The public reaction to his work, however, was weak. A few idealistic young men admired him, but he despaired of the success of his ideas. The butler who had supported him died and he had to live practically from alms. In a fit of depression he tried to commit suicide (1823) but only managed to hurt one of his eyes. He lived two more years, just long enough to see the publication of his Nouveau Christianisme. In his last work he proposed the creation of a social-sentimental religion with a global hierarchic organization based on brotherly love.

It is this particular book which influenced the “Saint-Simonists” most strongly, above all a man called Barthélémy Prosper Enfantin who, on the basis of the ideas of Saint-Simon, founded together with Amand Bazard, an organization of modified Saint-Simonists which published Le Producteur and later controlled Le Globe. Now the rather odd ideas of Saint-Simon developed in the direction of real madness. The crazy radicalism which characterized the French Revolution, beginning with Roussellian nature worship and ending in a utopianism totally alien to nature, now demonstrated its full dynamism. Whoever wanted to establish utopia had to change, to reform, to rebuild, to smash existing forms.

Barthélémy Enfantin did not intend to prescribe total equality of wealth. His goal was the destruction of the family and therefore he wanted to do away with inheritance. Only the state should inherit. The Steering Committee of the Neo-Saint-Simonists which met in Paris and published l’ Organisateur did not divulge the entire program of the New Theocracy, which was to be administrated by a brand new type of priest. These priests were to run a control agency which would turn over the means of production to those most capable of handling them. Christianity was accused of having retarded humanity by its dualism of flesh and spirit. The new “theology” pushed by Enfantin preached the “Emancipation of the Flesh.”

The revolution of 1830 gave new impetus to these weird teachings and Enfantin’s Economie Politique created a minor sensation among the more literate representatives of the working class. Le Globe was now published under the title Journal de la doctrine de Saint-Simon, and since the organization was represented in most leading cities of France, Enfantin now had himself declared Le Pére, “The Father,” head of the Saint-Simonist Church of Tomorrow. He now openly preached total promiscuity (his version of the “Emancipation of the Flesh”), but Bazard disagreed with him and a schism was the result. In the summer of 1832 Enfantin established some sort of monastery at Menilmontant with forty-odd members who donned weird-looking habits and worked collectively in the fields of the estate. The police, however, intervened. Enfantin was brought to court and the “family” dissolved. The provincial centers were also liquidated. Thus the first phase of ideological-practical French socialism had come to an end.

It is true that Gabriel Bonnot de Mably was a priest merely for the sake of convenience (as was his more famous younger brother), but Spengler is more right than wrong with his remark about the frequency of priests in leftist movements. It is not monasticism only which “suggests” socialism but also, to a more naive mind, Christianity itself. Let us agree that socialism and Communism (the fulfillment of socialism) take their initial inspiration from basic Christian tenets. Universal brotherhood, altruism, mutual aid, social justice, all-pervading charity, humility-in-equality—all these notions have Christian roots, a Christian background. But, remember, Corruptio optimi pessima! Due to this common source and to the ensuing confusions, we also have a “left Catholicism” and a “left Protestantism,” fanatical isms whose errors, deviations, and transgressions must be understood in the light of this Christian root.

In the Socialist-Communist vision, with its accent on the salvation of the world through the proletariat, not only is Christian imagery important but also the gross misinterpretation of Christ and early Christianity. Unfortunately the Christian churches are not entirely innocent in this respect. In Christian folklore the Savior appears as the Son of the humble carpenter, the poor Boy from a lowly family, born in the stable and venerated by the Magi as He lies among domestic animals. He is the simple Man who talked to uneducated fishermen and associated primarily with the indigent. Early Christianity, furthermore, is presented as a movement of the outcasts of the Roman Empire, of slaves, paupers and illiterates, a proletarian movement which—according to Communist doctrine—has been taken over eventually by the high and mighty. These exploited and lulled the masses into subservience by offering them salvation in the hereafter. Hence the formula of Marx that “Religion is the opium of the people.”

It is amazing how often the romantic notions about Christ and early Christianity are repeated by well-meaning Christians of all denominations. This, unfortunately, only proves that the New Testament is rarely read intelligently, that knowledge of Jewish history and sociology is nil even among the better educated Christians, that our schools teach almost nothing about the Church in antiquity.

Yet it has a powerful effect as a myth. There are good Christians who believe that the rich man is bound to be bad, whereas his real problem is not to become enslaved by his wealth, to be “poor in spirit,” ptochos to pneumati. Rarely pondered is the possibility that a wealthy man might not serve Mammon while a man less endowed with material goods may struggle and toil desperately to achieve them, thereby neglecting his spiritual life. Nobody will deny that the rich man who gives away his possessions liberally in a spirit of charity is acting virtuously. But is poverty in itself sanctifying? Is laziness with resulting poverty more admirable than the industriousness and thrift that produce material wellbeing? This is hardly the case. However, in the Christian world of today, replete with romanticism among Catholics as well as among Evangelical Christians, there is not only a perfectly wholesome readiness to live a life of poverty, but also a tendency to worship the poor: the agrarian pauper and above all the “proletarian.” Curiously enough the pro-Socialist and Socialist sentiment in Christendom is nourished by this weird romantic enthusiasm—an oddity, because socialism and communism hate poverty. Socialism is opposed to it. It copies from monasticism the idea of collective work, of a regulated life, of obedience and sobriety, of “mutualism” and equality. It hopes, however, to eliminate poverty, to achieve general material wellbeing. (It will probably never achieve this goal, at least not as speedily and effectively as the free world whose economics is based on a far more realistic evaluation of the average man’s character; but here this is not the point.)

In our ecumenical age the tendency prevails to build bridges not only between the Christian faiths but in every direction, to open up dialogues with every imaginable body of thought, to show a readiness to learn from everybody and to compromise wherever and whenever compromise is possible—or impossible. (So far nobody has offered to start a fruitful dialogue with the Nazis and other advocates of genocide—yet let us be patient!)

If there is a strong trend in our age to use Christian tenets, knowingly or unknowingly, to justify a reconciliation with leftism, why should we be surprised to encounter the same tendency in bygone centuries? We mentioned Saint-Simon and his Nouveau Christianisme. Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism, who dreamed of a completely secular Catholic Church was, after all, Saint-Simon’s secretary for many years.

A distinctly non-Christian competitor of Saint-Simon in the ancestral gallery of early Socialist thought was another Frenchman, Francois Charles Marie Fourier. Born in 1772, son of a small manufacturer, he survived Saint-Simon by twelve years. Fourier surprised the public with his first work in 1808, his Théorie des quatres mouvements. His vision was rather different from Saint-Simon’s. The blueprint he proposes for a Socialist society is based on his monomaniacal notion of harmony, in which he sees a crucial human drive. Numbers and geometric notions play a decisive part in his utopia where the arbitrary is curiously mingled with the prophetic, and odd rationalizations alternate with dreams of utter unreality—tendencies and propensities which increased in him as he got older.

The study of Fourier’s writings is interesting because we encounter here a truly sick mind, much further from sanity than Saint-Simon’s. Fourier’s utopianism worked both ways: “constructively” in planning for the future, retrospectively in explaining and expounding a totally unreal past. His descriptions of the earth’s past are entirely imaginary. For instance, he assumes that the earth had another satellite named Phoebe which in the dim past fell on our globe. The ensuing general destruction and confusion helped to bring 150 new species of snakes and forty-three new races of bedbugs into existence. His views of life on the planets were equally interesting. He insisted that the inhabitants of the planets and the solariens who existed on or around the sun had a physical organ which the terriens, the inhabitants of the earth, did not have. This member had the following properties: protection in falling, powerful defense, splendid ornament, gigantic strength, remarkable dexterity, and cooperation and support in all bodily movements. From his description this sounded like a sort of trunk or tail, and his enemies used his own words to lampoon the solariens in delightful cartoons.

As to our history, he divided it in the following way:

A. Periods anterior to history

1. Bastards, no human beings

2. Primitive, called Paradise

3. Savagery or inertia

B. Divided Industry: repulsive

1. Patriarchalism with small industry

2. Barbarism with middle-sized industry

3. Civilization with big industry

C. United industry: attractive

1. Guaranteeism: half-association

2. Sociantism: simple association

3. Harmonism: full association

The true social unit is the phalanster, in which the most intensive social life takes place. People sleep from ten P.M. to three A.M. From three to four in the morning they wash and dress to make the assembly at four. There the chronicle of the night is read so that everybody can satisfy his or her curiosity as to who shared the bed with whom. Half an hour later the “délite,” the first meal is eaten, followed by the “industrial parade.” A shooting and hunting party is organized for five A.M. At seven fishing begins. From eight to nine is breakfast, at nine the newspapers are distributed and read and at ten there is divine service. Then comes a break when people watch the pheasants until eleven, which is library time. Dinner is at one P.M., after which people repair to the hothouses, then to the exotic plants, then to the fish ponds and at six P.M. they enjoy a champagne party, followed by a visit to the merino sheep. At eight the phalansterians march to the stock exchange, supper is at nine. Music and dancing follows till bedtime at ten P.M.

This sort of daily timetable tells a story in itself. We see the unrealism of a man who believes that five hours of sleep is a good average and that work—as fun!—could be done in between. Two hours a day, wedged in here and there, seemed to him sufficient. Religion is not eliminated: Fourier believed in God who had endowed man with passions but not with reason, which is a purely human and ungodly inclination. In spite of his socialism, he was not an egalitarian. He would not even have objected to titles in his phalanstères as long as they were not a handicap to brotherliness and human harmony resting on free interplay of the passions which should not be resisted, merely “harnessed.”(The influence of Saint-Simon is not certain but that of Rousseau is obvious.)

Of course there was to be a uniform type of school with an identical basic education for everybody, avoiding at the same time any overeducation of those children who preferred to develop their bodies. (And, obviously, instincts and passions are better guides than idle ratiocinations.) On the other hand, children also like to band together and this penchant should be fostered assiduously. Fourier proposed the establishment of delightful organizations such as the petites bandes (consisting of two-thirds little girls and one-third boys) and the petites hordes with an inverse ratio of the sexes. The predominantly masculine petites hordes were to be dressed in Tartar costumes, all of different colors so that from a distance they would look like a “well-mixed field of tulips.”

For the petites bandes our great visionary reserved the task of controlling the language. People with bad accents and bad grammar were to be persecuted by this largely female horde. If anybody fell below the standard set for the universal language, he was to receive from the chancellery of the petites bandes a list of the errors he committed and was to be exhorted not to repeat them.

Smaller children would be trained as scavengers (because of their natural inclination to play with dirt), and this would keep the phalanstère in perfect order. Adolescents, according to their sexual activity, were to be divided into vestels and vestales, leading a continent life, and damoiseaux and damoiselles opting for a more tantalizing way of sexual behavior.

These visions—most of them quite detailed—fill hundreds of pages. The reader might ask whether the musings of a certainly not well-balanced man are of any interest except to the psychologist or the psychiatrist. The fact is that they are of considerable importance. Fourierism is a crucial stage not only in the gradually unfolding history of socialism and communism, but also in the development of leftist thought in the United States. The chasm between the Utopian Socialists and the scientific Socialists of a later period is not so great as the latter would like us to believe. The psychological foundations are practically the same; only the intellectual “superstructure” is different.