The Socialist Phenomenon 1.3

Part 3: Chiliastic Socialism; the Socialism of the Heresies Continued

The following is part of a series looking at The Socialist Phenomenon by Igor Shafarevich (1923-2017), first published in 1975 under the title Sotsializm kak iavlenie mirovoi istorii by YMCA Press. My intention is to offer summaries only - I cannot hope to provide robust commentary - Shafarevich provides a masterful historical analysis of socialism in a rare systematic and scientific manner. He was a mathematician of some significance in Russia and applied a similar disciplined and objective approach in his study of socialism. He, like Solzhenitsyn, believed that socialism was ultimately nihilistic and motivated by a death drive that destroys individualism.

For those interested you can find the full English translation here http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html

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The first part of the Socialism of the Heresies is here…

The Socialist Phenomenon 1.2

In this second part of analysing socialist phenomena in the religious sects of the Middle Ages, Shafarevich attempts to firm up the idea of socialism (from what he is calling chiliastic socialism, or a religious utopian vision) from the diversity of the heresies in question. Is there a core socialist ideal that can be distilled from the different heretical doctrines?

I’ll be very brief in this summary (although Shafarevich isn’t) as I’m keen to move on to state socialism and especially the analysis of socialism. I think the primary tenet here is rather simple - socialism has religious utopian roots.

Shafarevich offers 3 main divisions of Middle Age heretical movements which have their roots in the gnostic and Manichean ideas of the 2nd century:

1) "Manichean" heresies (Cathars, Albigenses, Petrobrusians, 11-14th centuries)

(2) "Pantheistic" heresies (Amalricians, Ortliebarians, Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, Adamites, the Apostolic Brethren and the related groups of Beghards and Beguines, 13-15th centuries).

(3) Heresies close to Protestantism (Waldensians, Anabaptists, Moravian Brethren, 12-17th centuries).

Shafarevich teases out various links and evolutions of heretical doctrines among these groups, and many offshoots, enough to make one’s head spin. You come away with the impression that the entire Middle Ages was a melting pot of crazy religious doctrines all at odds with each other. Maybe it was! Nevertheless, when standing back and observing the sects of the Middle Ages a set of religious ideas runs through them, uniting them with a common ideological foundation. They were unified in their hostility toward secular authority (the ‘world’) and especially the Catholic Church - and the ideas of chiliastic socialism can be seen common to them all. At times the hostility ran hot with the taking up of arms (as with the Hussite movement after His was burned at the stake in 1415) and at times things were subdued with seemingly no revolutionary ambitions at all when even touching a weapon was considered sin. Such swings could happen rapidly as Shafarevich outlines here:

At times, in fact, a sect switched from one extreme to the other overnight. Thus we learn that the Cathars, whose doctrine forbade any violence, in 1174 attempted a coup in Florence. Merely touching a weapon, even for self-defense, was considered a sin, yet at the same time there were groups among the Cathars who permitted plunder and expropriation of churches. Historians explain events foreshadowing the Albigensian wars in terms of this sort of abrupt reversal, as more peaceful groups come under the influence of more aggressive ones: the Cathars, who had been forbidden even to kill an animal, suddenly erupted in a militant spirit that swept them into a war lasting more than thirty years. At certain periods, the Waldenses, considered the most peaceful group, burned the houses of priests who preached against their doctrine. They also killed individuals who left the ranks, or they placed prices on their heads. A similar abrupt shift can be seen in the Apostolic Brethren. Among the teachings ascribed to them is a prohibition against violence; killing a man Was considered a mortal sin. This principle was soon transformed so that persecution of the sect was the capital sin, while any kind of action against the foes of the true faith was permitted. And a call for the destruction of the godless was raised as well. (9: II: p. 397) The same abrupt shift occurred with the Anabaptists in Switzerland and in southern Germany at the beginning of the Reformation. Apparently it was possible for a sect to exist in two states, "militant" and "peaceful," and the transition from one state to the other could happen suddenly, and for all practical purposes instantaneously. (Shafarevich, pp. 73-74)

The heretical world view was the antithesis of medieval Catholicism, yet both strived to reform human society and the world into a higher state. Both sides clashing in bloody and destructive encounters in their attempts to reform humanity, the most notorious acts being those executed by the institution the Inquisition. However, the use of violence to uphold a doctrine is hardly a proof of socialist ideology among the heretical groups of the Middle Ages. So Shafarevich outlines again, from the previous section, the fundamental ideas of rejecting the material world (which was seen as the creation of an evil God), denial of property, family, state and moral norms. All of this can be reduced to one aim (according to Shafarevich) of overcoming the conjunction of God and the world, God and Man, which had been accomplished through Christ’s incarnation (the fundamental principle of Christianity, at least in its traditional interpretation). This was achieved by either denial of the world or denial of God - deny the world because it is the creation of an evil God, or deny God by becoming gods. Either way was revolutionary in thought and action.

"Each heretical doctrine that appeared in the Middle Ages bore, in open or concealed form, a revolutionary character; in other words, had it come to power, it would have been obliged to destroy the existing state structure and implement a political and social revolution. The gnostic sects, Cathars and Albigenses, who provoked the severe and implacable medieval laws against heresies by their activities, and with whom a bloody struggle was carried on, were socialist and communist. They attacked marriage, the family and property. Had they been victorious, the result would have been a traumatic social dislocation and a relapse into barbarism. It is obvious to anyone familiar with the period that the Waldenses with their doctrinal denial of oaths and criminal law could also not have found a place for themselves in the European society of the day." (Shafarevich, quoting Döllinger, p. 77)

The Middle Ages saw the emergence of communality of property and wives, liberation from oppression, revolutionary action, and the destruction of the old world and the ushering in of the new. All under a “narrow circle of leaders who are initiated into all aspects of the doctrine and a wide circle of sympathisers who are acquainted only with some of it aspects” (Shafarevich, pp. 78-79). None unique on their own, but together paint a compelling picture of the socialist phenomenon in the Middle Ages.

What strikes Shafarevich, and myself, is the close ties socialist ideals have with Christian values in terms of equality, communality, the sinfulness of the world. The monastery with its abolition of private property, marriage, and separation from the world, is a case in point. Yet as much as socialism reflects these ideals, in practice it manifests a total opposition to Christianity - Christians often the first and most brutally persecuted under Communism.

Next time we will look at the socialism of the philosophers and their grand utopian visions.