The Socialist Phenomenon 3.1

Part 10 - The Contours of Socialism

Firstly, forgive me for a lengthy absence - I’d a new venture to bring into the world and it’s taken a good deal of my energy to do so. But alas! I’m back¹, and ready to pick up the threads we’d been on - the first of these, getting through The Socialist Phenomenon.

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

Previously…

The Contours of Socialism

In previous instalments of this series we see Shafarevich building a historical account of socialist phenomena through the ages and in various civilisations. Now we turn to his ‘analysis’ and bring together the common attributes so far discussed to determine if these constitute a manifestation of socialism as a unified phenomenon through history.

There are 4 basic principles that lay at the core of all the examples we have touched on previously. Here’s Shafarevich in his own words…

1. The Abolition of Private Property

The fundamental nature of this principle is emphasized, for instance, by Marx and Engels: "The theory of Communism may be summed up in a single sentence: 'Abolition of private property,'" (Communist Manifesto).

This proposition, in its negative form, is inherent in all socialist doctrines without exception and is the basic feature of all socialist states. But in its positive form, as an assertion about the actual nature of property in a socialist society, it is less universal and appears in two distinct variants: the overwhelming majority of socialist doctrines proclaim the communality of property (implemented in more or less radical fashion), while socialist states (and some doctrines) are based on state property.

2. The Abolition of the Family

The majority of socialist doctrines proclaim the abolition of the family. In other doctrines, as well as in certain socialist states, this proposition is not proclaimed in such radical form, but the principle appears as a de-emphasis of the role of the family, the weakening of family ties, the abolition of certain functions of the family. Again, the negative form of the principle is more common. As a positive statement about specific relationships between the sexes or between parents and children, it appears in several variants as the total obliteration of the family, communality of wives and the destruction of all ties between parent and child to the point where they may not even know each other; as an impairment and a weakening of family ties; or as the transformation of the family into a unit of the bureaucratic state subjected to its goals and control.

3. The Abolition of Religion

It is especially easy for us to observe socialism's hostility to religion, for this is inherent, with few exceptions, in all contemporary socialist states and doctrines. Only rarely is the abolition of religion legislated, as it was in Albania. But the actions of other socialist states leave no doubt that they are all governed by this very principle and that only external difficulties have prevented its complete implementation. This same principle has been repeatedly proclaimed in socialist doctrines, beginning with the end of the seventeenth century. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century doctrines are imbued with cold skeptical and ironic attitudes toward religion. If not consciously, then "objectively," they prepared humanity for the convergence of socialist ideology and militant atheism that took place at the end of the seventeenth century and during the course of the eighteenth. The heretical movements of the Middle Ages were religious in character, but those in which socialist tendencies were especially pronounced were the ones that were irrevocably opposed to the actual religion professed by the majority at the time. Calls to assassinate the Pope and to annihilate all monks and priests run like a red thread through the history of these movements. Their hatred for the basic symbols of Christianity--the cross and the church--is very striking. We encounter the burning of crosses and the profanation of churches from the first centuries of Christianity right up to the present day.

Finally, in Plato's socialist system, religion is conceived as an element in the state's ideology. Its role amounts to education, the shaping of citizens' opinions into the forms necessary to the state. To this end, new religious observances and myths were invented and the old ones abolished. It seems that in many of the states of the ancient Orient, official religion played an analogous role, its central function being the deification of the king, who was the personification of the all-powerful state.

4. Communality or Equality

This demand is encountered in almost all socialist doctrines. Its negative form is seen in the striving to destroy the hierarchy of the surrounding society and in calls "to humble the proud, the rich and the powerful," to abolish privilege. This tendency frequently gives rise to hostility toward culture as a factor contributing to spiritual and intellectual inequality and, as a result, leads to a call for the destruction of culture itself. The first formulation of this view can be found in Plato, the most recent in contemporary leftist movements in the West which consider culture "individualistic," "repressive," "suffocating," and call for "ideological guerrilla warfare against culture."

Each period of history and culture that manifested the socialist phenomenon had its own form, emphasis, and characteristics that were contemporary for their time. Nevertheless, the undercurrent in these movements, be it a mystical religious one or a scientific doctrine, was fundamentally the same. In other words, underpinned by the above 4 key elements. Especially so if you ignore the somewhat abstract ideological rhetoric and just look at the manifestation - a tree is known by its fruit!

Shafarevich argues that “the occurrence of socialism can hardly be linked to any definite time or civilisation.” Indeed, it does seem that the manifestations of socialism are a continually arising in human history, and dare I say, in very real terms today in the West. With this in mind we cannot accept that socialism is some new or evolved development in human society, some better way that has not been tried before! We can’t accept the Marxian view that socialism is a phase in the historical development of mankind. It astonishes me that even now, with the full and ugly history of the 20th Century communism in our rear-view mirror, that some claim the philosophy is our only hope but has not yet been properly realised. Damn folly! It’s like saying lobotomy is the only hope for mental illness, we just haven’t refined the lobotomising of people in a way that fully realises it’s healing properties!

I will leave it there today with the 4 key principles. No doubt you can identify these in today’s politics and social movements in the West, albeit wrapped up in a benign sounding language, or positively sounding changes to law and cultural norms.

Beware, something evil this way comes. Indeed, is already here!

Good to be back :-)

Winston

1. But may not have as much time on comments as I had previously. So again, please forgive me if comments go unnoticed for a bit or you don’t get the depth of reply you were looking for. It’s not you - it’s me. I just am more pressured for time than maybe some of my full-time-stacker colleagues who can devote way more time to this platform. More power to them.