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On Baseless Suspicion: Christianity and the Crisis of Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

John Milbank
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In the western world, at least, socialism is in crisis as a political force. But it is also in crisis as an intellectual creed, and it is this crisis that concerns the present article. Nevertheless, the practical and the theoretical crises are very closely allied; the real political problem for contemporary socialism may be that, increasingly, people no longer know, or have forgotten, why one should be a socialist.

One might want to re-express this as ‘people no longer see any reasons to be a socialist’. And the practical response might be to urge us, once again, to convince people that socialism is the truly reasonable path. And yet, I am going to argue that in certain crucial senses there simply are no ‘reasons’ for being socialist in the way that we have tended to imagine in the past. If, I shall suggest, we can overcome the lingering suggestion that socialism is a matter of science, of historical diagnosis, or of universally valid reason, then we shall actually be able to recover the most authentic core of the socialist tradition, and the Christian socialist tradition in particular. In the course of this argument I shall first of all establish a contrast between old-style Christian socialism and new-style Christian Marxism, and then go on to show that Christian socialism is in certain ways more in tune with a ‘post Marxist’ or ‘post modernist’ radicalism. Finally, I shall suggest how Christian socialism nonetheless moves beyond the ambiguity of the post-modern critique of capitalist society.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 69 , Issue 812 , January 1988 , pp. 4 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 I am indebted here to Stanley Hauerwas, whose trenchant article ‘Some Theological Reflections on Gutierrez's use of “Liberation” as a Theological Concept’ (Modern Theology 3:1, 1986, 67–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar) first suggested to me the importance of this contrast. My thanks are due also to Rowan Williams, Adrian Cunningham, David Nicholls, Kenneth Surin, Timothy Radcliffe and John Orme Mills, who commented on earlier drafts of this paper. It must be stressed that, despite my invocation of Ruskin, for the sake of his critique of political economy, I am more sympathetic to the most radical Christian socialists—one could mention such diverse names as (the young) Coleridge, Péguy, Headlam, Noel, Mounier, Tawney.

2 Ruskin, John, ‘Unto this Last’, Essay II, ‘The Veins of Wealth’ in Sesame and Lilies; Unto This Last; The Political Economy of Art (Cassell, London, 1907), p. 162Google Scholar.

3 Marx, Karl and Engels, Freidrich, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin, London, 1967), p. 108Google Scholar.

4 See Vincent, K. Steven, Pierre Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism (OUP, 1984), pp. 33–78Google Scholar, 127–165.

5 Ruskin, Essay III, ‘Qui Judicatis Terram’, p. 150.

6 Godwin, William, Enquiry concerning political justice and its influence on Morals and Happiness, ed. Priestley, F.P.L. (Toronto, 1946), I, 86, II, 520, 527–29Google Scholar.

7 Charles Peguy, ‘Clio I’ in Temporal and Eternal, trans. Dru, Alexander (London, The Harvill Press, 1958), pp. 101–108Google Scholar.

8 I have deliberately presented both Christian socialism and Christian Marxism as ‘ideal types’ for the sake of making my point in a brief space. However, my critique of Christian Marxism applies especially to the writings of J.B. Metz, Gustavo Gutierrez, and J.L. Segundo, and a fortiori to those of Alfredo Fierro. See, in particular, Metz, J.B., Theology of the World, trans. Glen‐Doepel, William (Burns and Oates, London 1969)Google Scholar; Gutierrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation (SCM, London, 1983)Google Scholar; LuisSegundo, Juan, The Liberation of Theology (Orbis, Maryknoll, 1975)Google Scholar, Fierro, Alfredo, The Militant Gospel (S.C.M. London, 1977)Google Scholar. J‐B. Metz's more recent work, Faith in History and Society; Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (Burns and Oates, London, 1980)Google Scholar, does perhaps go some way towards the outlook I am advocating. However, an assessment of this work would require separate treatment, and it is left out of consideration here.

9 Eagleton, Terry, ‘Marxists and Christians: Answers for Brian Wicker’, New Blackfriars, vol 56, no 665 (Oct 1975), 465–470CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things; An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Tavistock, London, 1970), pp. 312–318Google Scholar.

11 See Macintyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Duckworth, London, 1983)Google Scholar.

12 See Eagleton, ‘Marxists and Christians’.

13 Deleuze, Gilles, Différence et Répétition (P.U.F. Paris, 1968)Google Scholar. And see Foucault, Michel, Theatrum Philosophicum’ in Language, Counter‐Memory, Practice (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1983), pp. 164–196Google Scholar.

14 Frazer, Elizabeth ed. Selected Writings of Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon (Macmillan, London, 1969), pp. 188–189Google Scholar.

15 While Christian socialism is committed to positive freedom of participation in the pursuit of commonly‐accepted goals rather than negative freedom of choice, it also opposes unnecessary attacks on self‐sufficiency which produce a coerced dependence. Areas of relative ‘independence’ for individuals and groups are vital precisely for the creative re‐imagining of the public telos; this and not‘pluralism of values’ is their real justification.

16 Frazer, pp. 223–235. See also Lubac, Henri de, The Un‐Marxian Socialist, trans. Scantlebury, R.E. (London, Sheed and Ward, 1948), pp. 151–165Google Scholar.

17 Baum, Gregory, Religion and Alienation; A Theological Reading of Sociology (Paulist Press, New York, 1975), pp. 193–227Google Scholar.

18 See Ruskin, Essay II, ‘The Veins of Wealth’, p. 141.

19 If ‘priority of practice’ means simply that theology begins as a reflection on a given discourse (a socio‐linguistic complex of thought and action), then one could assent to it. But, too often, it seems to mean also either one or all of the following: (a) that a ‘pure’ decision of commitment precedes any theological articulation, (b) that the commitment is in terms of ‘a material base’ and implies a diagnosis of ‘underlying’ and inescapable historical processes which are ‘prior’ to thought, (c) that all theologies are subject to an instrumentally pragmatic test concerning their effect on this basic level.

20 Castoriadis, Cornelius, L'Institution Imaginaire de la Sociétè (Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1975Google Scholar).

21 Essay I, ‘The Roots of Honour’, p. 112.

22 Essay IV, ‘Ad Valorem’, p. 178.

23 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (Scientia Verlag Aalan, 1964)Google Scholar, Bk III, Pt II, Vol II p. 252 ff. Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Augustus M. Kelley, New York, 1966), p. 116 ffGoogle Scholar.

24 See Pocock, J.G.A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton U.P., New Jersey, 1975), pp. 462–506Google Scholar and Hirschman, Albert O. The Passions and the Interests (Princeton U.P. New Jersey, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Essay IV, ‘Ad Valorem’, p. 175.

26 Essay I ‘The Roots of Honour’ p. 125: ‘The Merchant‐What is his‘due occasion of death?’

27 Essay IV, ‘Ad Valorem’ p. 171.

28 Baudrillard, Jean, The Mirror of Production, trans. Foster, Mark (Telos, St Louis, 1975)Google Scholar.

29 See Thompson, John B. Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Polity, Cambridge, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 73–148 and Turner, Bryan S., Religion and Social Theory (Hutchinson, London, 1982)Google Scholar. But Turner is wrong to reject the theory of fetishisation and the primary location of ideas in power‐relations themselves.

30 See my article, ‘The Body by Love Possessed: Christianity and Late Capitalism in Britain’, in Modern Theology, 3:1 (1986), 35–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although the present article stresses the limitations of Marxism, and the falsity of a hybrid ‘Christian Marxism’, I still stand behind most of what is said in the earlier piece about the importance of Marxist ecomomics, and the Marxist analysis of the capitalist mode of production, especially in Capital, Chapter One. It should also be noted that the outlook I am advocating does not deny the validity of class struggle (however complex a matter that may be in practice). Indeed, social and ideological struggle of all kinds becomes more important once one abandons the notion that capitalist processes themselves will tend, in the long term, towards socialism.

31 See ‘The Body by Love Possessed’, pp. 56–61.

32 See Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, Anti‐Oedipus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Hurley, Robert et al. (Athlone, London, 1984)Google Scholar.

33 Lyotard, Jean‐François and Thébaud, Jean‐Loup, Just Gaming, trans. Godzich, Wlad (Manchester U.P. 1985)Google Scholar.

34 See Samuel Weber, ‘Afterward: Literature—just making it’, in Lyotard and Thébaud, pp. 101–123.

35 See my article, ‘An Essay Against Secular Order’, Journal of Religious Ethics, Autumn, 1987.