Gone the Prodigal Son: Marx and St. Augustine, the Spoiling Mother (3 of 5)
Posted on | December 10, 2009 | No Comments
St. Augustine, the Spoiling Mother
St. Augustine helped forge the primary Christian model as one of foregoing earthly pursuits in better interest of God. I believe his conception had a peculiar impact on the beginnings of Communism and public sentiment during the Bolshevik revolution. According to Pontuso, the Orthodox Church before the revolution “had given a justification for the social order and had provided a spiritual basis on which the inequalities within Russian society could be accepted” (55).
As public confidence in the church waned, along went faith in the tsarist government of the time. The Augustinian construct that led men to be “more concerned with the salvation of their souls than with the satisfaction of their bodies” (Pontuso 55) would become the perfect model for self-devaluation in communist society . It is in this way that Marx brings Augustine’s God down to earth and paints him red. By removing religion from practicing society, there remains an implication—voids are meant to be filled. Due to the unique circumstances during the Bolshevik revolution that combined an “utterly decrepit and demoralized” (Pontuso 55) Church with the opportunity to be a part of something else still greater than them, people became more willing to forsake religion in favor of a spirited rebellion. If a man once sought his spiritual renewal from God, he could now find it in the Party. In contrast to tsarist rule, men who didn’t “profess themselves to be wise [but instead sought] reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, that God may be all in all” (Augustine 105) would under Communist rule seek their reward in the collective good. Once faith was brought down and collectives could be worshipped, it made it even easier for men to transfer that worship to them later on.
Immediately after Stalin came into power, he made this potential for secular faith in one man embarrassingly palpable. His “cult of personality” was one of self-deification, and Solzhenitsyn suggests, “[he] wants to cure humanity of its maladies; a feat he can accomplish only by making everyone follow a single lead” (Pontuso 44). Stalin’s need for glorification, and his understanding that deeds alone would give him honor in history, led to the massive tragedies of humanity through his aims toward hyper-industrialization (Pontuso 46). It is in part the ambiguity of Marx’s teachings, held then as the new Scripture, which gave Stalin his perceived right. Marx commits a “sin of omission [with doctrine that] makes no provision for governing, institutes no checks against tyranny, and lays down no limitations on the exercise of power” (Pontuso 84). The dangers of a vehemently secular revolution in a religious culture is that it expects people will abandon their basic understanding of the world without any further consequence:
Marx’s disregard for the importance of politics led him to misunderstand one of the most elemental of human desires. When one ruling class is overthrown, the leaders of the revolution are bound to take its place. (Pontuso 85)
Augustine makes it clear in The City of God that in order to gain acceptance into the City of God, one must also respect the laws of the City of Man (106). He probably finds reason for this in the Scripture, wherein “[the] authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted” (New International Version Bible, Rom. 13.7). If faulty reason leads one to replace God with Marxism, why would they not be expected then to attribute to Marx some of the features they’ve until now associated with God? The problem with trying to superimpose an entirely new perspective onto a world that’s just not there yet is that it forces a distortion on previous beliefs.
For it leaks like acid through the gaps of the Manifesto and distorts everything touched by the philosophies on top of which it has been set.
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