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POBEDONOSTSEV ON DEMOCRACY
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43. POBEDONOSTSEV ON DEMOCRACY
Although a belief in democracy was almost universal by now in the West, in some countries it was not obviously a success. Thus in France and Italy governments succeeded each other with bewildering rapidity. In his article "The New Democracy", K.P. Pobedonostsev, the Over-Procurator of the Russian Holy Synod and tutor of Tsar Nicholas II, expounded the view that modern democracy differed essentially from ancient democracy.
In the ancient city-states, the suffrage was far from universal, and the de facto rulers were those who were best suited to govern the State. In modern democracy, by contrast, the new aristocracy of the nouveaux riches buys power by bribing and manipulating the masses. "In broadening its foundation, the newest democracy places universal suffrage as the goal closest to its heart. This is a fatal error, one of the most striking in the history of mankind. The political power which democracy tries to attain so passionately is splintered in this form into a multitude of particles, and each citizen acquires an infinitely small part of this right."470
"History witnesses that the most essential and fruitful and stable measures and transformations for the people have proceeded from the central will of statesmen or from a minority enlightened by a great idea and deep knowledge. By contrast, with the broadening of the suffrage a lowering of State thought and a vulgarisation of opinion in the mass of the electors has taken place. This broadening in large States has either been introduced with the secret aim of concentrating power, or has itself led to dictatorship. In France universal suffrage was removed at the end of the last century with the cessation of the terror; but afterwards it was restored twice in order confirm the absolute rule in it of the two Napoleons. In Germany the introduction of universal suffrage was undoubtedly aimed at confirming the central power of the famous ruler [Bismarck] who acquired great popularity by the huge successes of his politics. What will happen after him, God only knows.
"The game of collecting votes under the banner of democracy has become a common phenomenon in our time in almost all the European States, and it would seem that its lie has been displayed before all. However, nobody dares to rise up openly against this lie. The unfortunate people bears the burden, while the newspapers - the heralds of what is supposed to be public opinion - drown the cries of the people with their own shouts: 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians!' But for the unprejudiced mind it is clear that the whole of this game is nothing other than a struggle and fight of parties and a juggling with numbers and names. The votes - in themselves negligible quantities - receive a price in the hands of skilful agents. Their value is realised by various means and first of all by bribery in the various forms - from small cash and material payments to the handing out of profitable posts in excise and financial administration and in the civil service. Little by little a whole contingent of voters is formed, voters that are accustomed to sell their votes or their agents. It reaches the point, for example in France, where serious citizens, right-thinking and hard-working, turn away in huge numbers from the elections, feeling the complete impossibility of struggling with the gang of political agents. Besides bribery, violence and threats are put into play, and electoral terror is organised, by means of which the gang puts forward its candidate by force: we know the stormy pictures of electoral meetings at which weapons are taken up and killed and wounded remain on the field of battle."471
In the new democracy, "the great lie of our age", reasoned argumentation is not needed to convince a mainly uneducated electorate. More important is the slick slogan. "The art of making generalizations serves for them [political activists pushing for power] as a most handy weapon. Every generalisation comes about through a process of abstraction: out of a multitude of facts, some that do not serve the purpose are put aside completely, while others that do are grouped together and out of them a general formula is extracted. It is evident that the whole worthiness, that is, truthfulness and reliability, of this formula depends on the degree to which the facts from which it is drawn are of decisive importance, and the degree to which the facts which have been set aside as unsuitable are unimportant. The speed and facility with which general conclusions are drawn in our time are explained by the extremely cavalier way in which suitable facts are selected and generalised in this process. Hence the huge success of political orators and the striking influence of the general phrases on the masses into which they are cast. The crowd is quickly diverted by platitudes dressed up in loud phrases; it does not think to check them, for it is not able to do that: in this way unanimity in opinions is formed, a seeming, spectral unanimity. Nevertheless, it produces a striking result. This is called the voice of the people, with the addition - the voice of God. A sad and pitiful error! The facility with which [the people] is diverted by platitudes leads everywhere to the extreme demoralisation of social thought, and to the weakening of the political nous of the whole nation. Present-day France presents a vivid example of this weakening. But even England is infected with the same illness.472
"The basic principle of democracy is the equality of the citizens. But this word alone explains nothing. It is good if this equality is an equality of the right to serve one's country: each man is obliged to carry out this service according to his abilities and means, and participates to the degree that he is needed in administrative activity. That is how this concept was understood in the ancient democracies, especially in small States in which people could know each other, and public matters were discussed in the square. For the sake of self-preservation amidst the endless wars with neighbours, it was necessary to summon the best people to the government, and the best people were the most capable. Rome, which from the very beginning became a conquering republic, had to follow this same path, and its Senate became a gathering of the best people, who held in their hands the destinies of the State.
"But in modern democracies equality means the right of each and everyone to rule the affairs of his country - the right of a whole population of a large country to take part in the administration. On this is based the existing system of elections according to universal suffrage: in big States this leads to the preponderance of the masses, who belong to the least educated class and do not have a clear idea of State affairs, or of the people who are capable of administering them. It is evident that under this order the worthiness and ability of the elected person loses its significance: this is the essential difference between the new democracy and the old, and it is this that threatens destruction for the former. At the same time one should bear in mind that this mechanism of democracy is called to function in an epoch of an exceptional and unheard-of increase in the complexity of human affairs and relationships. Even one hundred years ago people did not dream of the present development of trade, industry and mechanisation, or of the present development of literature and the press with its huge significance, or of the present speed of communications, news and rumours of every kind. One can imagine how complicated all the functions of governmental and financial power, and the conditions in which they have to work, have become, and the innumerable quantity of facts and new ideas which the legislative power now has to reckon with.
"In this condition of society democracy has a frightening task which it cannot cope with. On taking up the supreme power, it must take upon itself the affairs of the supreme power, and the most important of these is the choosing of men for posts and responsibilities. Everything depends on this; if it fails in this, every law, whatever it may be, loses its significance, and the fundamental order of the whole State institution is deprived of trust and wavers. For the people the government is an abstract idea insofar as it is not incarnated in agents of power who are in direct contact with the people and its justified needs: if these agents are chosen haphazardly or for wrong reasons, then the whole of their activity becomes a burning subject of rumours that disturb the opinion of the people, and a weapon in the hands of all opponents of firm authority, whatever it may be.
"And so we see that from the time that the historical idea of people being called to State service in accordance with their estate and social position has lost all significance in democracy, service appointments have become a weapon in the hands of political parties which strengthen themselves by handing out posts. At the same time the number of posts increases exponentially, and this does not benefit, but burdens the people, since they serve not so much the general good as their own interests. But amidst general dissatisfaction, a passionate striving grows among the people to get well-paid and profitable posts. Everybody can see a picture of this fall in the new democracies in France, in Italy and in the United States. This fall is particularly evident in the higher and in the elective posts that have a political significance, sometimes even governors and members of legislative assemblies. Elective posts have a representative significance; administrative posts, by contrast, must in their essence be foreign to any such significance. But from the time of the French revolution the idea of this distinction has been completely muddied in the new democracy, and the contrary idea has become popular that administrative posts serve as a reward for people who have served this or that powerful party or who have this or that variety of opinions. Moreover, people do not ask whether the person is capable or not capable of carrying out the particular duties of his post. In the past everyone thought and believed that the ruler must be better than those whom he rules, and the experience of history has confirmed that all the achievements of civilisation have been attained by the desires of the most capable people in spite of the opposition of the environment in which they had to work. But in the new democracy, in spite of this undoubted truth, the opinion has become entrenched that even a large State can be successfully administered by anyone, even someone unworthy. All this leads to demoralisation, thanks to which the private interests of a party or company of people acquires a preponderant significance in society at the cost of the public interest.
"A natural consequence of all this is the complete collapse of legislative assemblies or democratic parliaments [in contemporary France and Italy, for example]. According to the democratic theory the elected representative of the people is called to vote, not for what he recognises to be useful for the people or reasonable and just, but for what the people of the party which has elected and sent him considers to be best and needed, even if this does not agree with his personal opinion. Thus the election of representative is turned into a game of parties, which is just as passionate as any competitive game - a game governed by intrigue, false promises and bribery. Thus even the legislature falls into the hands of unenlightened, undiscriminating, and often avaricious people, or people who are indifferent to everything that is not bound up with the interests of the party.473 Little by little all the people of straight thinking, honourable spirit and higher culture withdraw from participating in this game, especially when each of them has in his hands the work of his own special calling. Parliament is turned into a machine pushing out of itself a mass of laws that have not been thought through or worked out, which contradict each other and are completely unnecessary, which do not protect freedom, but constrict it in the interests of one part or one company.
"Everybody to a greater or lesser degree feels and recognises that the present democratic system of legislation is completely incoherent and based on a lie; and when a lie lies at the base of this institution, what is society to expect if not destruction? Democracy itself, we can say, has lost faith in its parliament, but is forced to be reconciled with it, because it has nothing to replace it with, and because everything that stood before has been destroyed, while democracy rejects in principle every idea of dictatorship. It is obvious to all that the falsely constructed building is wavering, is already shaking. But when and how it will fall, and what will arise on its ruins - that is the task of the sphinx that stands on the threshold of the twentieth century."474
44. THE WELFARE STATE, SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY
The nation-state, according to Philip Bobbitt, necessarily brings with it the welfare state. For if the state serves the nation, rather than the other way round, it must deliver a minimum of material prosperity for all the people. "Far from being the paradoxical fact it is sometimes presented as, Bismarck's championing of the first state welfare systems in modern Europe, including the first social security program, was crucial to the perception of the State as deliverer of the people's welfare. If the wars of the state-nations were wars of the State that were made into wars of the peoples, then the wars of the nation-states were national wars, fought on behalf of popular ideals. The legitimation of the nation-state thus depends upon its success at maintaining modern life; a severe economic depression will undermine its legitimacy in a way that far more severe financial crises scarcely shoot earlier regimes."475
The welfare state in turn brings with it a high degree of democratization, egalitarianism and homogenization. For from the point of view of the State each recipient of benefits is to be considered as more or less like every other recipient, having roughly the same needs and desires. "True," wrote Constantine Leontiev, "the division of Germany [before 1871] sometimes hindered the unity of order, but it also hindered the unity of anarchy."47672 "The unity of anarchy", in Leontiev's meaning, was the seemingly unstoppable tendency throughout Europe towards a democratic, egalitarian, atheist society: "everything in that assimilationist direction from which nothing in the 19th century, neither war nor peace, neither friendship nor enmity, neither liberation nor the conquest of countries and nations can save. And they will not save until the point of satiety with equality and homogeneity is reached."477
Democracy was indeed, as E.P. Thompson writes, "advancing everywhere in Europe, and by 1914 it was lapping the frontiers of Asia. The symbol was the right of the individual citizen to vote - a right increasingly buttressed from the 1880s onwards by secrecy of the ballot. The vote was often endowed, by enthusiastic radicals and frightened conservatives alike, with a magic power. Too many radicals expected universal suffrage to bring the millennium - to sweep away before it the last relics of feudalism, of aristocratic and plutocratic privilege, of popular squalor and ignorance. Many conservatives and moderate liberals took the radicals at their word, and feared that democracy would demolish monarchy, church, religion, public order, and all that they cherished. Therefore the struggles for extensions of the franchise and secrecy of the ballot were often long and bitter."478
Together with an extended franchise went an enlarged state - although there were many, more direct causes of this enlargement. Among the most important was the growth of population. "The immense increase of population in earlier decades was now producing the most momentous of all modern European phenomena - 'the age of the masses'. This, even more than the spread of democratic ideas, compelled every state to overhaul its machinery of government and administration... Every European government now had to administer and serve the interests of larger and denser agglomerations of people than ever before in the history of mankind. When the First World War began, the United Kingdom was still, as she had been since 1815, the most highly urbanized country in Europe, whereas France clung stubbornly to her rural character. But after her political unification Germany swung over sharply from a population almost as rural as the French to a position in which three out of every five Germans lived in towns. This 'flight to the towns' had begun before 1871, but it now took place in Germany at a speed unrivalled by any other nation.
"These changes in greater or lesser degree affected all European countries. In terms of politics and administration they meant that all governments were confronted with problems that British governments had been obliged to tackle earlier in the century. These were problems of how to govern densely populated industrial towns; how to ensure adequate provision for public health and sanitation, public order, and police; how to protect industrial workers against bad conditions of working and living. Perplexing social problems were forced upon every government by the course of events; and the parallel growth of democratic ideas and of wider electorates ensured for these problems a high priority of attention...
"... Nearly every state in Europe, by 1914, had a code of legislation governing the building of houses and the making of streets; ensuring minimum standards of sanitation, safety, and conditions of labour in factories, mines and mills; regulating the entry of ships into ports and enforcing standards of purity and cleanliness in food and drink. In Britain the first landmarks were Disraeli's Public Health Act of 1875 and a series of housing acts from 1875 onward. With the rapid growth of large towns and of mechanized industry, a larger proportion of every electorate was an industrial, wage-earning class dwelling in or near large towns and making its living in conditions that demanded greater social discipline, a higher degree of organization, and more sustained administrative activity on the part of governments. Every state, in this minimum sense, was becoming a welfare state even before 1914."479
Money was needed for all this. And so taxation, both direct and indirect, had to go up sharply. "In Britain the greatest constitutional crisis of the period, involving a long conflict between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, arose over this very issue. In his budget of 1909 the Liberal chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George, included the whole gamut of new fiscal devices which had been evolving for some years: heavy duties on tobacco and liquor; heavier death duties on personal estates, which had first been introduced by Sir William Harcourt in 1894; graded and heavier income tax; and additional 'supertax' on incomes above a fairly high level; a duty of twenty per cent on the unearned increment of land values, to be paid whenever land changed hands; and a charge on the capital value of undeveloped land and minerals. The Conservative majority in the House of Lords broke convention by rejecting this budget until it could be referred to the electorate for approval, and so initiated a two-year battle, which was ended only by the surrender of the Lords and the passing of the Parliament Act of 1911. This important Act permanently removed the Lords' control over money bills and reduced their power over other bills to a mere capacity to delay them for two years. The merit of death duties, income tax, and supertax in the eyes of radicals and socialists - and their infamy in the eyes of conservatives and more moderate liberals - was that once accepted in principle they were capable of yielding an ever greater return by a simple tightening of the screw. The screw was, in fact, repeatedly tightened throughout the following half century.
"During the 1890s, pari passu with the growth of governmental expenditures on social services and on armaments, Germany and her component states, as well as Italy, Austria, Norway, and Spain, all introduced or steepened systems of income tax. France repeatedly shied away from it, though in 1901 she resorted to progressive death duties; it was 1917 before she at last introduced a not very satisfactory system of income tax. With the drift back to protectionism in commercial policy in the last quarter of the century, indirect taxes generally yielded a higher share of revenue than before. Every state had clung to considerable sources of indirect taxation, and as late as 1900 the bulk of the revenue of most governments came from these sources. Progressive taxation, weighing heavier on the more wealthy, was accepted by liberals as in accord with the principle of equality of sacrifice. To radicals and socialists it was welcome in itself as an instrument for achieving greater equality by systematically redistributing wealth. The modern state was to assume more and more the role of Robin Hood, robbing the rich to feed the poor."480
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Was welfarism socialism? And was socialism, whether defined as welfarism or something more, compatible with traditional Christianity?
To answer these questions, we shall make use of the distinction between minimum (welfare) and maximum (revolutionary) socialism used by E. P. Thompson. After reviewing the proliferation of socialist parties before 1914, Thompson suggests "two general conclusions that have great importance for the later history of Europe. One is that within socialism there was a recurrent and inescapable cleavage: between those parties which, from an early stage in their growth, came to terms with the institutions of parliamentary democracy, with trade unionism and the cooperative movements; and those which held to more absolutist revolutionary doctrines, whether of Marxism or anarchism, and so dedicated themselves to the task of fighting and overthrowing all other parties and institutions. The best examples of the former are the British and Scandinavian Labour parties and the parliamentary socialist groups of France and Italy; of the latter, the supreme example is the Russian Social Democratic party after 1903. It had not yet become customary to distinguish between them by labelling the former Socialists, the latter Communists. That convention arose only after 1918. But here was the origin of the mid twentieth-century cleavage between western parliamentary socialism and eastern revolutionary communism. All the essentials of that conflict are already present in 1914, save that neither socialism nor communism had by then won power in any country.
"The second conclusion is that parliamentary socialism, like other working-class movements and organizations, grew and flourished most where the traditions and institutions of liberal democracy had already become most fully established. It was in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and France that reformist socialism took shape most quickly and won its earliest triumphs. Wherever universal suffrage remained for a long time impeded, as in Italy and Austria-Hungary, or wherever its operation was severely limited by strong central authority, as in Germany, socialists went on using the language and preaching the ideas of revolutionary doctrinaire Marxism when their practice and their achievements were more moderate. Where parliamentary institutions could strike no roots and was replaced by extreme revolutionary communism. The pattern of socialism is, so to speak, a pattern superimposed on the territorial distribution of liberalism and democracy, and matches the extent of the new electorate.
"These conclusions are clinched by a comparison of the minimum and maximum programmes of policy which the different parties drew up and endorsed at various times. In western countries the parliamentary socialist parties, committed to seeking votes in order to gain political representation, normally drew up minimum programmes of those reforms best calculated to win broad electoral support. Inevitably these were mostly concerned with widening of the franchise, social welfare legislation, an eight-hour day, and improvement of conditions of work. Such was the minimum programme which the Italian Socialist party drew up in 1895. Their more abstract ideological aims were relegated to ultimate or maximum programmes, which appealed more to the intellectuals and preserved something of the party's doctrinal character. Thus, when the French socialist groups combined in 1905, they drew up a common programme which included a statement of ultimate collectivism, of the party's resolve to socialize the means of production and of exchange, and a protestation that it was 'not a party of reform but a party of class struggle and revolution': but it also included an assurance that 'in parliament, the socialist group must dedicate itself to the defence and extension of political liberties and the rights of workers, to the promotion and realization of reforms which will ameliorate the conditions of life and of the class struggle of the working classes'. The difference of emphasis between French and German socialism emerges if this statement is compared with the German Social Democrats' Erfurt Programme, which they adopted in 1891. It was a more thoroughgoing Marxist statement than its predecessor, the Gotha programme of 1875. It propounded orthodox Marxist philosophy as its very foundation, and gave this theoretical basis more prominence.
“But it added, as its immediate and practical aims, demands closely similar to those of Gotha, or of the Italian and French minimum programmes: including universal direct suffrage for men and women over twenty, freedom of expression and meeting, secular education, an eight-hour day, social welfare legislation, and progressive income tax.
"The more fundamental difference between all western socialism and Russian communism becomes clear if these programmes are compared with the Russian Social Democratic programme adopted in 1903. It too, in accordance with precedent, was divided into maximum and minimum aims. But it was not exposed to the Italian or French or German danger of exalting the minimum at the expense of the maximum, in order to gain electoral votes. In western countries since 1871 (and even since 1848) the whole notion of a minimum programme depended on its being attainable within the existing framework of capitalist society without revolution.; the whole point of the maximum programme was to keep before men's eyes the doctrines and the ultimate aims of socialism, but to relegate them to a distinct category of aims unattainable without revolution. In Russia both minimum and maximum programmes were of necessity revolutionary. The minimum political demands of 1903 began with the revolutionary overthrow of the tsarist regime and its replacement by a democratic republic. The minimum economic demands were those normally included in the minimum demands of western socialists: an eight-hour day and six-day week; effective factory inspection; state insurance against sickness and old age; the confiscation of church lands. But these, too, in Russia before 1914, were revolutionary demands, and there was no essential difference between this minimum programme and the maximum programme of the proletarian socialist revolution. Indeed the most important decision taken in 1903... was not about programmes at all, but about the actual organization of the party as a militant force, tempered for the struggle against the whole existing order...
"These differences of programmes and of organization involve a still wider contrast. It was not merely an issue of whether socialism should be economic or political in its scope, whether it should concentrate on capturing or on destroying existing states. To enter into competition with other parliamentary parties for winning votes, and to win from government concessions of value to the working classes, enmeshed every social democratic party, however vocal its protestations of ultimate proletarian purposes, in more nationalistic ways of thinking and behaviour. In universal suffrage what counts is the vote of the individual elector, whatever his class; and in restricted electorates majorities lie with the non-proletarian electors. The leaders of a parliamentary socialist party instinctively think in terms not of classes but of individual voters and of majorities. They find themselves thinking in general, national terms, rather than in narrow terms of class war. Their working-class supporters, benefiting increasingly from legislation in their interests passed and enforced by the national state, likewise think more and more in national and non-revolutionary terms, since they become aware that they have more to lose than their chains. The growth of social democracy and parliamentary labour parties brought about a nationalizing of socialism. This changing outlook was at variance with the older traditions of universal humanitarian socialism which were inherently internationalist in outlook, just as it was in conflict with the resolutely internationalist tenets of orthodox Marxism. The conflicts between socialist movements that had been domesticated or 'nationalized', and revolutionary movements that still thought exclusively in terms of class war and proletarian action, were fought out before 1914. They repeatedly arose in the many congresses of the First and Second Internationals, until in 1914 the supreme issue seemed to be socialism versus nationalism.”481
According to this analysis, the "domestication" of socialism in western countries, its yoking to nationalist feeling, was a product of their progress towards universal suffrage, whereas the internationalist, revolutionary character of socialism in the East was a product of its failure to democratize. So the causal nexus was as follows: in the west: democracy => socialism => national socialism; in the east: autocracy `> democracy Q revolution => international socialism. This would suggest that the triumph of national socialism in Germany in the 1930s was a natural consequence of German historical development, and could well have happened elsewhere in the West, whereas the triumph of international socialism in Russia was an unnatural consequence of - in fact a break in - her natural development.
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This conclusion runs directly counter to western historians' usual claim that German fascism was a freakish departure from the normal western democratic development, whereas Soviet communism was a natural development of Tsarist "despotism". Such an important conclusion, however, needs more supporting evidence before we can accept its validity.
Evidence is provided by the fact that the major forms of Christianity in Eastern and Western Europe - that is, the "souls" of the eastern and western peoples - reacted quite differently to the progress of democracy and socialism. In the East, the Orthodox Church rejected democracy, and upheld autocracy, on principled, scriptural grounds: that the source of authority in both Church and State is the will of God, not the will of the people (Romans 13.1), and that the task of political authority is to incarnate the will of God in the life of the people - the ruler is permitted to carry out the people's will only to the extent that it is compatible with the will of God. The West, however, had become reconciled to the logical contradiction between "by the grace of God" and "by the will of the people" a long time since - in England by 1688, in France by 1789 and more solidly by 1848, and in Italy and Germany by 1870. Western Christianity - Roman Catholicism more than Protestantism, since the latter, in itself a revolutionary teaching, was almost always on the side of the revolution - offered resistance to the march of democracy and socialism. But it was half-hearted and ineffective. By the end of the nineteenth century even the pope had become reconciled with democracy, and by the end of the twentieth, in accordance with Dostoyevsky's prophecy in The Devils, with socialism, too - as long as it was "with a human face".
The introduction of the welfare state was an important milestone on the path to the dechristianization of Europe. Until the nineteenth century, in both East and West, the poor had been looked after by individual wealthy Christians and by the Church. Undoubtedly, there were abuses of this "system", and it remained true, as the Lord said, that "the poor you always have with you". But it had the priceless advantage of providing the possibility of true Christian virtue in rich and poor alike - the rich could conquer avarice through compassionate giving in the name of Christ, while the poor could pray for their benefactors while patiently enduring their want - again, in the name of Christ. In this way, as the Holy Fathers explained, social inequality could serve for the salvation of all. However, after the French revolution, the Christian approach to poverty and inequality was increasingly discarded. Poverty was a "scandal", whose solution lay not in voluntary charity by the rich to the poor, but in compulsory taxation of the rich and handouts to the poor administered by "expert" intellectuals. (Of course, State intervention on behalf of the poor had taken place in earlier ages, but on a smaller scale and always in cooperation with the Church rather than as a rival to her.) The problem was: the State was still too weak to take on the burdens that the Church had taken on before, while the poor, as a result of the industrial revolution and the increasing hardheartedness of capitalist morals, multiplied alarmingly.
In the country where this problem was most acute, England, welfare legislation may be said to have begun with Disraeli's Public Health Act of 1875 and Housing Acts of the late 1870s. However, there was opposition to massive State intervention, not for Christian reasons, but because it contradicted the doctrines of limited government, free trade and manly self-help of which the Victorians were so enamoured. Even as late as 1886, the minister responsible for the Poor Law, Joseph Chamberlain, said: "The spirit of independence which leads so many of the working classes to make great personal sacrifices rather than incur the stigma of pauperism, is one which deserves the greatest sympathy and respect... It is not desirable that the working classes should be familiarised with poor relief."482
As for the United States, her "spirit of independence" led her to reject all welfarism until well into the twentieth century - until the Great Depression of the early 1930s, to be precise... However, it was a somewhat different situation on the European continent, where pauperism was not such a stigma, free trade was not a dogma, and the socialist movement was much more powerful... The modern form of "the nanny state" was first introduced, not in England, but in Germany. According to Arnold Toynbee, the German model of the welfare state showed "how to raise a whole population to a standard of unprecedented social efficiency by a system of compulsory education and of unprecedented social security, by a system of compulsory health and unemployment insurance."483
The rest of Europe was quick to follow where Germany led. "Everywhere the state shouldered new kinds of responsibility for the safety and well-being of its citizens, and the principle of contributory insurance helped to reconcile laissez-faire individualism with this spectacular growth of state activity.”484Paradoxically, however, in Germany, as in England, welfarism was introduced, not by socialist governments, but by conservative politicians, who were compelled in this direction both because they were necessary and because if they had not, then the liberals or socialists would have triumphed at the ballot box.
Thus in 1884 Bismarck said: "Give the working man a right to work as long as he is healthy, assure him care when he is sick, assure him maintenance when he is old. If you do that and do not fear the sacrifice, or cry out at state socialism - if the state will show a little more Christian solicitude for the working man, then I believe that the gentlemen of the social-democratic programme will sound their bird-call in vain."485
In other words, in Bismarck's view, state socialism - the welfare state - was necessitated by a decline in Christian love; if Christians loved their neighbour more, the ground would be cut from under the feet of the socialists. This was genuine insight. For although, as we have seen in the last section, there were many political, economic and social reasons for the rise of socialism in Europe, these reasons were not fundamental. The most fundamental reason was the decline of Christianity: socialism filled the gap caused by the decline in Christian faith and morality with its own faith and morality. Socialism provided a kind of faith and morality that appeared to the superficial Christian to be Christian, although in fact it was the antithesis of Christianity.
As such, socialism could not fail to be antichristian; and historically, the founders of socialism were certainly antichristian. Not only Marx and Engels, but before them Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, were all antichristian theorists. This is not to say that minimal socialism, i.e. welfarism, was incompatible with Christianity or Christian governance. On the contrary: it is difficult to see how any modern country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could have survived without a vast increase of the state budget and state activity to protect the masses from the consequences of modern urban civilization. Orthodox Russia, as we shall see, was no exception to this rule. In practice, however, - and we see this in even the more moderate socialist parties, - it has proved impossible to "insulate" minimal socialism completely from the antichristian theories of maximal socialism (which we shall simply call "socialism" from now on).
To many, welfarism appeared to be a "Christian" product of socialism, a proof that Christianity and socialism were compatible. But this was to ignore both the nature of Christianity and the nature of socialism in its original and "purer" forms. Socialism was much, much more than welfarism. It was and is a whole world-view based on atheism and materialism and directly opposed to Christianity. It stood for an omnipotent State that squeezed religion as far as possible out of the public arena.
Richard Pipes writes: "Socialism is commonly thought of as a theory which aims at a fairer distribution of wealth for the ultimate purpose of creating a free and just society. Indisputably this is the stated program of socialists. But behind this program lurks an even more ambitious goal, which is creating a new type of human being. The underlying premise is the idea of Helvétius that by establishing an environment which makes social behaviour a natural instinct, socialism will enable man to realize his potential to the fullest. This, in turn, will make it possible, ultimately, to dispense with the state and the compulsion which is said to be its principal attribute. All socialist doctrines, from the most moderate to the most extreme, assume that human beings are infinitely malleable because their personality is the product of the economic environment: a change in that environment must, therefore, alter them as well as their behaviour.
"Marx pursued philosophical studies mainly in his youth. When, as a twenty-six-year-old émigré in Paris, he immersed himself in philosophy, he at once grasped the political implications of the ideas of Helvétius and his French contemporaries. In The Holy Family (1844-45), the book which marked his and Engels's break with idealistic radicalism, he took his philosophical and psychological premises directly from Locke and Helvétius: 'The whole development of man...,' he wrote, 'depends on education and environment.' 'If man draws all his knowledge, sensations, etc., from the world of the senses and the experience gained from it, the empirical world must be arranged so that in it man experiences and gets used to what is really human... If man is shaped by his surroundings, his surroundings must be made human.'
"This, the locus classicus of Marxist philosophy, justifies a total change in the way society is organized - that is, revolution. According to this way of thinking, which indeed inexorably flows from the philosophical premises of Locake and Helvétius, man and society do not come into existence by a natural process but are 'made'. This 'radical behaviorism', as it has been called, inspired Marx in 1845 to coin what is probably his most celebrated aphorism: 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways: the point, however, is to change it.' Of course, the moment a thinker begins to conceive his mission to be not 'only' observing the world and adapting to it, but changing it, he ceases to be a philosopher and turns into a politician with his own political agenda and interests.
"Now, the world can conceivably be 'changed' gradually, by means of education and legislation. And such a gradual change is, indeed, what all intellectuals would advocate if their exclusive concern were with improving the human condition, since evolution allows for trial and error, the only proven road to progress. But many of those who want to change the world regard human discontent as something not to be remedied but exploited. Exploitation of resentment, not its satisfaction, has been at the center of socialist politics since the 1840s: it is what distinguished the self-styled 'scientific' socialists from their 'utopian' forerunners. This attitude has led to the emergence of what Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu called in 1902, in a remarkably prescient book, the 'politics of hatred'. Socialism, he noted, elevates 'hatred to the heights of principle', sharing with its mortal enemies, nationalism and anti-Semitism, the need "chirurgically" to isolate and destroy the alleged enemy.' Committed radicals fear reform because it deprives them of leverage and establishes the ruling elite more solidly in power: they prefer the most savage repression. The slogan of Russian revolutionaries - 'chem khuzhe, tem luchshe' ('the worse, the better') spelled out this kind of thinking."486
And this kind of thinking is clearly antichristian. But it is not only in the deliberate whipping up of hatred that the antichristianity of socialism reveals itself. Still more fundamental are its dogmas of materialism and atheism.
This was explained by the Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky), who in 1929 won the crown of martyrdom for his opposition to the socialist atheist state: "One of the more prominent misunderstandings which have arisen in this area is the misunderstanding about socialism. On the one hand, they aver that Christ was a socialist; and on the other, that socialism is entirely in agreement with Christianity... In light publicistic literature one may constantly encounter attempts to reconcile pagan socialism and Christianity...
"V.A. Kozhevnikov [who "knows socialism from its very sources, much far better than the majority of our woeful socialists"] states that, as far as the relationship of socialism to Christianity goes, there is no, even partial truth: 'Here everything is in content contrary to Christian truths, and is in form offensive to Christian sensibilities.'
"In vain do some think that socialism is merely a theory of economics. No, socialism replaces everything with itself; it is founding its own religion. In the resolutions of the various socialist assemblies and the discourses of socialist leaders one finds clearly and definitely expressed the demand for a revolution in all human thought. 'Socialism is not and cannot be a mere economic science, a question concerning the stomach only... In the final analysis, socialists are striving to bring about revolution throughout the entire juridical, moral, philosophical, and religious superstructure' (Vandervelde). 'Is socialism merely an economic theory?' we read in the socialistic catechism of Bax and Kvelch; 'In no way! Socialism envelops all the relations of human life.' According to Bax, in religion socialism is expressed as atheistic humanism.
"If socialism looks upon itself as a world-view, what, then, is this world-view? It is, first of all, a consistent materialism. A materialistic understanding of history, as acknowledged by the socialists themselves, comprises the essence of the entire theory of their teaching, its cornerstone, according to the expression of Bernstein. 'One must seek the basic reasons of all social changes and revolutions not in the heads of men and not in their views on eternal righteousness and justice, but in changes in the means of production and distribution' (Engels). If socialism is so closely bound up with materialism, how can it bear any relationship to religion? Crudely distorting the moral and educational significance of religion, the materialistic criticism of Marx and Engels sees religion as the mere 'handiwork of
man', the product of ignorant imagination or profit motives; and God Himself as a reflection of economic relations. Even in the Christian God they dare to see an 'anthropological idealization of a capitalism which thirsts for power and satisfaction.' Religion is called forth, in the words of Engels, 'by the dark, primordial ideas of man concerning his personal nature and that which surrounds him,' and is defined in its permutations 'by class, and consequently economic, relations'. Religion seemed to Marx to be a superstition which has outlived its time, 'a dead question for the intelligentsia, but an opium for the people.' According to this, Marx considered 'freedom of conscience from the charms of religion' to be 'the assistance of the people toward real happiness'.
"True, there are thinkers who maintain that socialism is not inescapably bound up with materialism, but they are not real socialists. Such thinkers try to impart to socialism a philosophical and ethical, even a Christian, coloration. Schtaudinger tries to convince his 'brother socialists' that 'the basic ideas of Christ are the same as ours; His idea of unity is our God. His idea of the existence of this unity is our Christ. And although we deny all dogmas, in principle our ethics are Christian.'
"Dyed-in-the-wool socialists staunchly refuse to accept the recommended 'deepening' of the bases of socialism, which, in their opinion, is entirely unsuitable. Bebel rains down mockery upon the invitation that 'everyone study, and philosophize, and work on oneself'. Conrad Schmidt distances himself from Kantian humanism, because in it there is no agitational power, there are only old metaphysical ideas, monastic asceticism, and morals more appropriate to angels. In the experiments at 'deepening' socialism, Plekhanov sees 'an opium to lull the proletariat to sleep'. Mering sees it as 'turbid waters in which to catch an unclean fish'. Menger does not understand the reason for loud speeches about unneeded lofty philosophical principles, when we are facing 'our own ethics, which overturn every religious foundation and are a guarantee even against the rebirth of religious consciousness'. Dietzgen long ago proposed 'to jettison all that is majestic in morality', because 'the special logic of the proletariat delivers us from all philosophical and religious mysticism'. Similar thoughts are expressed by Kautsky, Lenin and Axelrod. We are fed up, says Axelrod, with the boring and monotonous pestering of the critics, teachers, the various perfecters of socialism; it is time for them to cease! To take their path would mean to fall into a dreadful muddle and a demoralization of mind, to take from socialism its living, revolutionary aspect, in other words, its essence, and to replace it again with the reactionary, religious character of the whole philosophical mentality.
"I think that everyone can now see that socialism, as a distinct world-view, is in essence the adversary of all idealism, of all the immutable principles of morality, and the enemy of all religion. Reducing everything in the world to matter, the socialist world-view leaves no place for the divine Principle.
"Such is the theoretical relationship of socialism to religion. In practice, socialists often resort to compromise to gain tactical advantage, which in the language of morality one must call a betrayal of what is true and right... One must of necessity direct serious attention to religion, as Engels puts it, 'that greatest of conservative powers'. 'We will never succeed in earning trust if we begin to demand that the government take violent measures against the Church,' admits Kautsky. What to do? 'In order to overcome the mistrust of the workers and infiltrate them more quickly, in our own ranks there is arising the aspiration to suppress our fundamental views and, in the name of temporary success, to sacrifice clarity of thought and the sensibilities of our own comrades'. This Anton Pannekoek openly and cynically admits. And so we see how socialists 'adapt'. According to the Erfurt program, religion is a personal matter. According to the 'workers' catechism', social-democracy demands neither atheism nor theism. Schtampfer maintains that 'the theses of socialism are concerned neither with God nor the afterlife; it is slander to say that it is the sworn enemy of our Church'. One can be both a Christian and a social-democrat (Kautsky). In all these and similar statements, there is absolutely no sincerity. The Erfurt program does not satisfy the more consistent socialists; they demand that an inimical relationship with the Church be stressed more emphatically. In actual fact, the socialists are waging war against religion, but, in accordance with their tactical ploys, they take refuge behind a personal struggle against 'clericalists', and this struggle is justified by the fact that the 'clericalists' (1) have pretensions to political power, (2) are fanatics, (3) foster ignorance, and (4) support the capitalist class. Yet all of this is, of course, a mere sham; the socialists are in reality inimical to all religion, are against God.
"But is not such hypocrisy, such falsehood, immoral, scandalously immoral? To this the socialists answer us thus: 'Mere moral means have nothing to recommend them to us. You will not get far in politics with them' (Bebel). 'In each party perfidious tricks are unavoidable, and the laws of traditional morality here recede completely into the background' (Menger). What can you do with party tactics? But these tactics are such as would move Jesuits to ecstasy. The more direct and (if one can speak of honesty among them) honest socialists, however, let the cat out of the bag and openly state their enmity towards religion. On August 22nd, 1901, the French Social-Revolutionary Party resolved: 'Citizens, the members of the Party vow that under no circumstances will they carry out any religious acts whatever in conjunction with representatives of any denomination' (freedom of conscience!!!). On December 31st, 1878, Bebel, in the presence of the entire Reichstag, declared: 'In the area of religion, we aspire to atheism'; and on September 16th, 1878, he expressed 'a firm trust that socialist will lead to atheism'. This same blasphemer Bebel calls himself the enemy of all religion, 'of which people of high quality have no need'. At the Gall Assembly, Liebknecht expressed the hope that 'the basic principles of socialism will overcome religious forms of popular ignorance'. According to Todt, 'He who is himself not an atheist and does not commit himself with all zeal to the dissemination of atheism is not fit to be called a socialist'. Lafarge is indignant 'that religious principles are still not utterly extirpated from the minds of the learned', but is comforted by the hope that in the future socialism would completely erase faith in God from men's souls....
"It is understood that in the socialist world-view there will also be no place for belief in the immortality of the soul. The denial of immortality is one of the main conditions for the success of socialism, 'because with the weakening of belief in heaven, socialist demands for heaven on earth will be strengthened' (Bebel). Dietzgen advises that one prefer 'a comfortable world here' to the other world. On February 3rd, 1893, a certain Catholic deputy asked the social-democrats of the German Reichstag the question as to whether they believed in the afterlife. They answered unanimously in the negative. One socialist newspaper, Neue Zeit, suggested that 'the threats of hell be mocked, and that pointing to heaven be disdained'.
"The perfection of the 'modern socialist movement' is not in Christian life on earth, nor in eternal blessedness in heaven. Both the former and the latter are relegated to the archives. 'Our ideal is not poverty, nor abstinence, but wealth, and wealth immeasurable, unheard of. This wealth is the good of all humanity, its holy object, its Holy of holies, toward the possession of which all our hopes are directed' (Dietzgen).
"But enough! Enough of these mindless words! I hope my readers will forgive me for setting down these blasphemies of the socialists and offending their Christian sensibilities with them. I have only wanted to show what moral ugliness socialism is, what an abyss of falsehood lies within it, and, therefore, how mistaken is any attempt to reconcile socialism and the divine Christian Faith.”487
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