The Basic Conflict Between Christianity and Marxism
The understanding of the Communist code of conduct is essential to the understanding of communism and the nature of the threat which faces civilization. As Congressman Dies said long ago: “It is impossible to understand the tactics and the statements of Communists and their fellow travelers unless their very special code of ethics be kept constantly in mind.” 1 To this also agrees a liberal, Alexander Miller, when he wrote: “It is very important to see that this view of things produces its own heroism and its own heroes. But what is so difficult for non-Marxists to grasp is that the code of Marxist behaviour is utterly different from that in which Europeans have been traditionally reared. It knows no law except the necessities of the class-war, no obligations except to serve the revolution. From this starting-point things normally forbidden become not only permissible but obligatory. It is pointless to indict Marxism because it tolerates or even encourages ruthlessness, lying and the weapon of terror, or because we find among the Communists the kind of laxity in personal behaviour which conventional morality condemns. To that kind of attack the Marxist is invulnerable, unless it can be shown that the kind of conduct in question is defeating the purpose of revolution. His form of morality means sitting lightly by conventional obligations. To trample on compassion, to put aside personal ties and obligations, to accept the label of an unscrupulous and undependable person, for the sake of the Party and the Cause, may be a real kind of heroism.” 2 This hero, of course, is a hero of communism but not of civilization. For, as a former top Communist in the United States said: “Getting the American communists to reject the ethical concepts of civilization constituted the central point in the campaign for the bolshevization of the American communists.” 3
Understanding their moral code we understand why, in the words of the then Vice-President Nixon, that “it is a very dangerous and unrealistic attitude to attempt to determine the Communists’ motives by our standards.” 4 In favor of a future society to which they say that they owe everything, communism completely rejects the present with its values and institutions. They combine “the total glorification of the former with the total rejection of the latter.” 5 The Party which guides the masses into this future society must be the supreme authority in the life of those who work for that society. For the Communist to respond to any moral appeal, which is based on the moral concepts of non-Communist societies, would be treason to their highest duty, the duty of obeying the Party in order to create the new society. Thus for anyone to expect the Communist to respond to moral considerations, based on our moral values, is a deceptive and disastrous illusion. One is leaning heavily on a sharp instrument which will pierce him through. For a Communist to act with good will and integrity toward the class enemy would be treason to communism and a violation of his Communist conscience.
On the basis of the Communist view of morality, we see the truth in the words of Pope Pius XI, which words, although the author is not a Catholic, he commends to Catholics and non-Catholics. “Venerable Brethren, see that the faithful are put on guard against these deceitful methods. Communism is intrinsically evil, and therefore no one who desires to save Christian civilization from extinction should render it assistance in any enterprise whatever.” 6
Jay Lovestone, a former top Communist in the United States, put it this way: “Stalin and the present Khrushchev leadership which he created and trained are certainly criminal desperadoes. But the Communist system which breeds and rears such criminal types as the rulers and leaders of its society is even more horribly criminal.” 7
Communism furnishes us with an outstanding and conclusive demonstration of the moral bankruptcy of materialism and moral relativism. Individuals in our own society, who are materialists and moral relativists, may not always live down to their denials. They may be much better than their creed, and by their moral lives recommend as morally safe a creed in which morality cannot find root or nourishment. They live by the moral heritage of a faith which they deny. The Communists, however, have made a serious and sustained effort to live down to materialism and moral relativism. The deterioration of character and the destruction of civilization which follow constitute the fruits of the bitter tree of materialism. Those who find the fruits bitter should not nourish the roots and the tree which bore the fruits. Those who deny the reality of the moral law have no grounds on which to make a moral complaint, or to raise a moral objection, when someone takes seriously their denial and treats them as if he is not under any moral obligation to be concerned about others.
The affirmation of morality cannot be based on the denials inherent in materialism. Materialism cannot furnish a foundation for morality. If all that exists is matter in motion, “good” could not be definable in moral terms for the moral realm would not exist. “Good” would mean only something like sweet or bitter, blue or green, but it would have no bearing on morality. Who has a moral obligation to be blue or green in color? or sweet or bitter to the taste? 8
One cannot logically accept the premise of materialism and the conclusions of morality. The atheistic affirmation has no room, when consistently expounded, for the theistic conclusion. The philosophy of materialism cannot provide for a spiritual and moral code for it has no room for man as a person. And yet, almost inevitably when materialists by their own logic are pushed to the brink, they draw back. Why? What is there about man which repudiates the conclusions of materialism when applied to morality, as well as to rationality? Men cannot live by matter alone, or just by the laws which regulate matter. These are sufficient proofs that man is not just matter.
Man is conscious of himself as a person. He is aware that he has the power of rational reflection. He is not a blind, mechanical reactor simply and solely reacting to motions of matter. He is not a being without freedom. He is an individual who recognizes that he has duty and thus responsibility. He is confronted with the fact of conscience. Since these things are as real to us as is the existence of the material world, one is only being logical when he affirms that materialism is not only disastrous but also irrational as an explanation of reality. For there are aspects of reality for which materialism has no room, and yet which exist. It is irrational to take an atom as the total key, and to deny that man with his intellectual power of discerning the atom, and of his consciousness of moral responsibility, does not also furnish a key to reality. He who denies the existence of the moral and spiritual realm above that of the material is refusing to discern realms of existence, realms which are as real as the material. In fact, without the realm of the rational, conscious man we would not be aware of the existence of the material world nor would we make any explanation of it. And without the reality of the realm of the moral, man would not experience the call of duty and the reality of conscience. Do not these non-material facts of human experience make it reasonable to believe that the cause of man is not matter, even matter spelled with capital letters, but God, the ultimate moral and spiritual Being?
Notes:
1 Congressman Martin Dies, The Trojan Horse in America, p. 240.
2 Alexander Miller, The Christian Significance of Karl Marx, p. 41.
3 Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives, p. 31. Compare Louis Budenz, This is My Story, New York: Whittlesey House, 1947, p. 115.
4 Richard Nixon answers questions about International Communism. pg. 8.
5 Karl A. Wittfogel, “The Operational Ideas of the Communist Doctrine,” September-October, 1961, p. 31.
6 Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Divini Redemptoria, in Acta Apostolicas Sedis, 31st March 1937, p. 96. English version in Church and State Through the Centuries, Editors Ehler and Morrall, London, 1954, p. 570. Quoted by Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958, p. 561.
7 AFL-CIO American Federationist, August 1956, p. 11.
8 Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol II, pp. 295-2