DR.MOHAMMAD MAROOF SHAH
It is asserted by some Marxist critics of religion that Marxism and Mysticism should not be compared. Mysticism is ahistorical and it is concerned only with the individual salvation and it ignores injustice and oppression in the world. All these assertions don’t bear close scrutiny. To have a historical sense implies to be concerned with the present reality, to be concerned with transforming it, to be aware of material or temporal factors affecting our present reality. Mysticism has deep historical sense in all these senses. Prophets have originated civilizations and mystics have embellished it, beautified it, developed it. All great thinkers, with few exceptions, in all traditional civilizations have been either mystics or influenced significantly by mysticism. Most of great revolutionaries in history have mystical training or orientation. Great traditional art and architecture has been moulded by mystical impulse. Great literature in traditional civilizations is essentially mystical. Hardly any great epic is not mystical. Great literature, even great tragedy, can’t be written except under the inspiration of mysticism. Nothing in traditional civilizations makes sense except in light of tradition to the making of which religion/mysticism fundamentally contribute. It is religion/mysticism which until the rise of Marxism made people aware of injustice and exploitation at the earthly plane. Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad were all critics of the establishment and spoke for the oppressed. Without resort to violence religious impulse has been able to feed countless people, to arrange their shelter and even work towards the freedom of the slaves. Islam has prohibited begging because its economy ensures that no one needs to beg. Even today most donors give in the name of God. It is another matter how the wealth to be donated has been acquired.
Sources of Marxism are mystical and its ends ape the end of mysticism. Hegel is an idealist and mystical philosopher. The prophetic revolutionary spirit of Marxism is an appropriation of Judaic inheritance. It is parasitic on mysticism for its appeal to the oppressed and it has won converts in the name of mysticism.
If Marxism wishes to be a humanism it must appropriate mysticism positively. Humanism affirms the value of man, his dignity and freedom. It speaks in the name of the values that Plato identified with God– though impoverishing all of them by severing ties with transcendence. Mysticism gives Marxism warmth and human touch otherwise it has no room, in its materialism and economic determinism, for anything that can accommodate love, compassion, goodness, beauty, justice, truth and nobility. The Darwinian-Hobessian-Nietzschean-Freudian worldview that is compatible with Marxism but not mysticism and that has been so influential in the modern world has little room for anything that makes life truly human as all truly human values are realizable only by love which is transcendence of the individual, the ego on which the former worldview is erected.
Marxism is utopian in thinking that the evil in man can be finally overcome by ameliorating economic discrepancy. It is also wishful thinking on the part of Marxism that classless state will make all people happy and that man does not need anything else than satisfaction of his biological needs (though it recognizes psychological and spiritual needs and thinks that it amply provides for them). Man has psychological needs which can’t be fulfilled in any system that vetoes transcendence as the painful tone of modern literature shows. Nihilism is a huge problem for any worldview that seeks all answers on purely rational and human plane. Absurdism is unavoidable and one is really defenceless against the argument of why not opt for suicide in all purely rational and human centred worldviews as Camus has argued (rather shown how arguments asserting the contrary are so unconvincing). Man has spiritual needs – the most important component of his needs – and for millinia these needs have been fulfilled by religions as channels of transcendence. Now either we have to deny that these needs are real or assert that we can provide substitutes for transcendence. Both the options have been tried and have failed. That man will be a casualty in any worldview that puts ends above the means, that believes its metaphysics to be not only true but exclusively so and bans other views, that asserts that mankind has been mostly, throughout history, cherishing illusions is not difficult to see. Marxism asserts that mankind’s great thinkers have been duped by ruling class, that prophets too have been naïve in important matters. It asserts that almost all the people all the time throughout history have been fools or badly mistaken regarding an important matter of life and that all the institutions that civilizations have maintained have been primarily forms of exploitation. It writes off history of civilization as an effect of brutal struggle for power. It is also disputable to it that art has anything to do with truth, truth of a higher kind. It says that art, religion, philosophy are wholly understandable with reference to material conditions of the time. It denies real creativity and freedom to think. Even self reflection is ultimately not possible as consciousness can’t really detach itself from its determining conditions. Mystics have not found anything worthwhile. Poets are basically dreamers. Scriptures are neither holy nor true nor beneficial. Perhaps they are better burnt to ashes. Countless monuments of art and architecture have been built not by visions but by alienated unhappy men. Now all these positions that follow from a materialist metaphysics and absolute determinism based on material forces of production (granting relative autonomy of superstructures doesn’t mean much as ultimate determining force of the base is not denied) are difficult to accept for anyone who wishes to account for countless facets of history of civilization and culture. Marxism provides invaluable insight into the structures of society. It makes us aware that we are being exploited and it rightly identifies the key culprit. But it unfortunately too is a product of history, conceived by fallible men. It is wedded to a metaphysics and set of ideas that have a stamp of human thinking and therefore questionable or fallible thinking. Marxism besides being a science in political economy is also a speculation which can go wild and an exercise of imagination that may know no bounds. On purely scientific terms it made many erroneous assertions as has been amply demonstrated. It attempted to conceive of science in strictly Marxist terms and made big mistakes. Its attempt at Marxization of whole knowledge is an enterprise that doesn’t fulfill, at many points, strictly scientific criteria. It puts ideology before truth as it declares all ideas as unscientific which don’t corroborate the doctrines of dialectical materialism. Some Marxist thinkers have already shown flexibility in modifying the received dogma, in reconstructing Marxism and opening it up to many contemporary thought currents. I think the time has come that Marxism revaluate its reading of religion and be prepared to have a dialogue with spiritual traditions of the world. Hitherto it has been throwing the baby of mysticism with the bathwater of what is ordinarily identified with religion. Marxism has had phenomenal success, at least at theoretical plane, because it presented itself as religion or alternative to religion. Religions degenerate and exclude necessarily. So does Marxism. (One important authority on religion has written a book on world religions discussing all of them under the same headings or concepts and includes Marxism also in his account.) Russell called Marxism the religion of the twentieth century. Marxism will never die because it has elements of permanent value. So, will not religion?? The rise of religion and proliferation of spiritual cults has proved all those critics wrong who were confidant that religion will die very soon. Marxists have misread religion on almost all important points. They have rightly noted that religion is vulnerable to be appropriated by the exploiter. Religion as understood by the greatest prophets and sages in all traditions is neither consolation, nor a system of ideas, nor an attempt at representation of our relationship to reality nor a talk about this world or the otherworld. It is not a picture of the world. It is not a metanarrative. It is not a perspective or a view that could possibly be refuted. It is too existential an affair to be discredited. Science can, in no way, show it exit. Religion is four noble truths (not ideas or views) that Buddha who had a better sense of empirical reality than even Hume or positivists. It is not an idea, a concept, a view. The four noble truths can be put in the following way:
There is suffering in the world. The suffering constituted by alienation, unfulfilled intention, bereavements, death, lack of knowledge, pain, misery etc. There is a malady of alienation, an alienation much deeper than that which separates a labourer from his work. The alienation of a labourer is an aspect of this alienation.
Desire is the root of it. Craving to see things from the viewpoint of a self or ego, to construct a world according to our heart’s liking, to wish for inexistent or impossible things, to wish objective reality bend in the one’s service, to dictate terms to reality, to laws of nature, to be spared encounter with the other that humbles oneself or demands sacrifice, to grab other’s wealth, a wish to be consoled or fulfilled or exalted or praised or in other’s shoe, to possess this or that thing or object of love, to live long and to be spared encounter with death, with the other that seems to be hill, to wish to opt for suicide and so on.
There is an end to suffering. If there is no end then all those ideologies which claim to redress the wrong and bring justice are false. Those who believe that philosophy must also change the world believe that the problem has a solution. There is an end to suffering.
There is a way to end the suffering. Right view, right effort and right action are needed for that. All salvific schemes, this worldly and otherworldly prescribe paths to end the suffering. All religions prescribe essentially similar path. More precisely they don’t prescribe a path but describe a path which has resulted in ending suffering. One can try one’s own path but one may not reach the other end of the road. One is free to experiment at the cost of possibility of error.
For mysticism and many religions, theology is dispensable. Metaphysics that reason constructs is dispensable. Theories about truth or reality are not necessarily relevant. Existential problems that knock too strongly to be ignored by anyone demand resolution or response and resolution. It is not the question of spiritual needs but pressing problems that we encounter all the time with which religion concerns itself. Religion is a human concern – nay the ultimate concern. Whatever constitutes our ultimate concern constitutes our religion. Sex, power, possessions, better foods are not our ultimate concerns. If they become they destroy us as they are self defeating.
Reductionism no longer works. Demythologization has exhausted itself and must squarely face the phenomenon called religion and the Mystery that eludes all conceptualization and rationalization. Science has learnt to be humbler and acknowledged that it misses much and can’t but miss it because of its methodology and limited concern. The question is: don’t we need peace, contentment, equilibrium, harmony, beauty, knowledge? If Marxism can provide all these to everybody’s satisfaction and establish a State where individuals no longer have any appetite for intangible things, for transcendence all religions will find their fulfillment. If Marxism can’t provide, hasn’t provided and doesn’t promise to provide all these things to the superlative degree to which man demands and religions acknowledge it can’t substitute religion.
Religion is the most misunderstood thing in history. It is neither moralism nor a system of ideas or doctrines. It is neither otherworldly nor ascetic. It is neither ahistorical nor ignorant of social treality. It talks of man and not of the God of exoteric theology. It is no argument against religion that it has been misused and misappropriated. More people have been killed in the name of Marxism than in 50 years than in the history of religion in 1000years but that is no argument against Marx either. Religion is not what religion does. Neither is Marxism what Marxism does or is done in its name. Religion has, in the deepest sense, nothing to do with doing. Lao Tzu puts it so well. Nonaction accomplishes all actions and is the hardest “action” as Taoism says. Modernity is all action and that is why much sound and fury. Religion in its esoteric view concerns with being rather than doing. Religion is quality and Marxism is all quantity. Marxism is collectivism and religion neither individualistic like Capitalism nor collectivist but supraindividual. History is ample witness that both individualism and collelectivism have been dangerous.
Religion answers a different problem than to which Marxism and collectivism could be extremely dangerous though Marxism thinks that it dissolves the problem which religion seeks to address. Man is a complex creature with a complex set of needs. Man doesn’t live by bread alone and surely not for bread. He earns bread for something else and it is to that something to which religion concerns itself. Marxism concerns with man’s social self while as the individual to the individual self. Marxism limits itself to the temporal and the contingent though it thinks that there is nothing that transcends them but religion has its eye on the eternal and even grants that people know better about the worldly matters and should resolve them by collective effort. The spirit in man transcends history but Marxism refuses to look beyond history and asserts that what is not manifested in history is for all purposes unreal.
We need not defend mysticism against Marxism or pit them against each other. They cater to different domains of life and if we subtract the purely speculative or doctrinal material from Marxism, it nicely complements the mystical side of our life. Marx is a mystic, albeit a secular one and not fortunate enough to have been vouchsafed the vision that makes man love life and bless it and conquer all the hardships besides purely material ones. Without bitterness of heart or resentment. A mystic is pure compassion while as Marx stops at concern for the other only. Marx makes it possible to feed and clothe millions – if it were not for Marx, capitalism would not have accepted such compromises as welfare state and state regulations to certain extent in certain matters. Marx compelled the world to increase wages and take other measures for the welfare of labourers. Most of us need to be thankful to Marx for challenging capitalism so forcefully that proletariat have won some part of the looted booty back. Marxism has made a great difference to the labourer even in noncommunist countries. History has few benefactors greater than Marx. But lest we forgot the contribution of mystics and prophets. Most sciences, arts, crafts and much poetry cultivated in traditional cultures owe their origin and even development to mystical impulse. Coomaraswamy’s account of history of art and Guenon’s account of history of sciences which attributes all that is great and noble and enduring to the discoveries of intellectual intuition can’t be dismissed even if one accepts much of Marxist explanation.
….to be continued
Dr. Mohammad Maroof Shah is an author and Columnist, interested in the the interface of philos¬ophy, literature, religion and mysticism
