The below-quoted text is an excerpt from the book Bolshevism: Theory and Practice (1932) by Waldemar Gurian, translated by E.I. Watkin. I could not find the full book avaliable online; there’s a version on the Internet Archive, but it requires an account to read. However, I did find a print copy of the book at my local university’s library. So I chose to transcribe the relevant excerpt onto my blog.
Waldemar Gurian (b. 1902 – d. 1954) was a Russian-born American-German political theorist and Roman Catholic philosopher. He converted to Catholicism from an Armenian-Jewish family. He also studied under the German political philosopher Carl Schmitt. Gurian wote Bolshevism: Theory and Practice as an analysis of Bolshevik communism, and in the excerpt quoted here he gave a critique of the Marxist Bolshevik system from a Catholic perspective.
I found a part of this book quoted in Chapter XIX of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019) by Tom Holland – specifically, he quoted the part near the end that calls Bolshevism an “anti-church” – and I wanted to find the context to that passage.
For the convenience of the reader, I chose to include page numbers in bold and square brackets – like this: [p. 1] – to mark where a page in the print book starts and ends. Everything below a page marker until the next page marker is on the page numbered above it.
[p. 255]
THE CHURCH BETWEEN BOLSHEVISM AND THE BOURGEOIS SOCIETY
The Christian’s attitude to Bolshevism is not altogether simple, since the attraction of its Utopia depends on the existence of a social order which is anything but Christian. Nevertheless, however mistaken it would be to see no difference between the opposition of Christianity to Bolshevism and the opposition of bourgeois society, the fact remains that the Bolshevik movement represents a very serious danger to the former. In the bourgeois society the Church can still carry on her work, although in practice increasingly losing her influence over public life and at best recognized only as a moral force within the community. Nevertheless, she can be active and preach her doctrines. This is even true of a state with such extremely anti-clerical laws as France. In the bourgeois society and its state the Church can make her voice heard. Even the anti-clerical state does not venture to promote atheism by the use of violence and the annexation of publicity in the hope of this killing religion. However anti-clerical its professions, it dare not carry them out consistently. The bourgeois society and its state are too strongly anchored to a traditional culture moulded by Christianity. After a period during which the attempt is made to drive Christianity from public life and expel it from the privileged position held hitherto, religious neutrality must lead to a toleration of Christian activities and ecclesiastical propaganda. This tolerance and regard for tradition are alien to Bolshevism. It possesses a very definite philosophy of history, to whose fulfilment its state and economic experiments must minister. This philosophy finds the goal of humanity in the self-sufficient society. Bolshevism is thus essentially and wholeheartedly intolerant
[p. 256]
of Christianity and the Church. It cannot therefore allow the Church to work freely within its society and state; in this respect its attitude is far more logical than that of the bourgeois state. It aims at the complete identification of public life and private belief. It is social atheism. Therefore every activity of the Church, all religious propaganda, is regarded as a sign of backwardness, a proof that its goal had not yet been reached.
Since Bolshevism is thus bound up with attempts to drive the Churches from public life, and since it increasingly restricts the possibilities of action—such as temporary toleration as is granted being merely an admission that the social order is still very imperfect, and therefore due to considerations of expediency—it is easy to understand why the Church prefers the bourgeois social order and the bourgeois state. For there she can still be active, can still attempt to influence public life in a Christian sense, and there the social fabric still rests largely on traditional Christian foundations. However threatened by economic development and weakened by legislation permitting divorce, monogamy still enjoys special legal protection and securities. This means that bourgeois society, whatever its shortcomings, respects those human rights which Bolshevism refuses to recognise. The state is not the servant of a particular social creed, which is incompatible not only with Christianity but with every form of religion. These are the facts that have ranged the Church on the side of the bourgeois society in the struggle against Bolshevism.
Besides the fundamental incompatibility between the Bolshevik Utopia—the self-sufficient society—and Christian doctrine, the political and social methods of Bolshevism are radically opposed to the teaching of the Church. As a result of its mechanical conception of society, which regards social reorganization and transferences of power
[p. 257]
from one group to another as a means by which human nature can be changed, Bolshevism favours the use of force and such external methods as laws and decrees to overthrow the entire established order. It has no feeling for tradition, no regard for the results of the past. Whatever will not conform to the development it regards as necessary is fought by every means considered politically opportune, and the struggle is a war of extermination waged against particular social groups, against the classes denounced as exploiters. This is the justification of the political and social terrorism. There are social classes which in the interest of humanity—that is, of the future social society—must cease to exist.
This denial of that justice to which all citizens and members of society have a right by the Bolshevik state, which is deliberately organized as a party state of the proletarian class, contradicts the fundamental purpose of all political and social life. The general good has been rejected for the present, the period of transition, and has become an abstract ideal of the future. Moreover, for Bolshevism the general good is identified with the Socialist society, so that the injustice and cruelty of the present class war and the dictatorship of the proletariat promote the welfare of mankind as a whole. That is to say, an abstract conception of humanity justifies every violence and ruthless oppression in the present. Not only does such an attitude by its content, the self-sufficient Socialist society, contradict the Church’s sense of reality; it is in conflict with her teaching by the very fact that it outlaws an entire class of human beings and treats them like noxious beasts to be destroyed by every available weapon. Considerations of humanity, disapproval of the Bolshevik terrorism founded on their faith in a future Utopia, determine the Church’s opposition to Bolshevik rule. In this attitude she approves herself
[p. 258]
the guardian of reality against the attempt to trample upon it in the name of alleged laws of evolution. It is therefore not Bolshevism but the Church which is fighting for humanity.
Bolshevism possesses distinctive sociological conceptions which it wishes to impose on all. For the Bolshevik it is obvious that technical progress is more important than respect for tradition and that the industrial proletariat is the class which must determine future development. It is obvious that large-scale industry must be the fundamental unit of the future society, and must therefore determine its foundations in contrast to the old order in which the family occupied this position. This belief, it is true, can appeal in its favour to many actual phenomena of life at the present day, which do in fact constitute a bond between Bolshevism and bourgeois society. But are these tendencies to be approved and fostered? The social revolution effected by Bolshevism is moving in a direction that will not remove the evils that endanger and threaten the previous order. The appeal to actual tendencies of the bourgeois society, and a logical execution of the principles by which that society is governed, may give the champions of Bolshevism an advantage over those who for purely selfish reasons, from inertia or habit, refuse to carry those principles to their logical conclusion. But they can give them no advantage over those who accept the Catholic position. For the Church rejects capitalism with its division of society into a private sphere, subject only to purely natural laws, and a private sphere in which the spirit and religious beliefs may still be supreme, as decidedly as she rejects the attempt to overcome the cleavage by treating public life and society as absolute, an end in itself.
The struggle of the Church against Bolshevism—to sum up the principles on which it rests—must in no sense be
[p. 259]
regarded, as the Bolsheviks affect to regard it, as waged in defence of the capitalism of bourgeois society. The Church’s sole concern in combating Bolshevism is to secure for man the possibility of developing in accordance with his true nature. In the bourgeois society the Church can attempt to influence public life by making private life the base of her operations. Where Bolshevism bears sway this is no longer possible. For the whole of public life has been systematically monopolized by Bolshevism. Under Bolshevism the Church cannot permanently exist and work as a social group, but is increasingly suppressed. Bolshevism is an anti-church bent on destroying the Church of Christ. Its aim is to render the latter completely superfluous and establish itself in her place.
Gurian, pp. 255-259.
Works Cited:
Gurian, Waldemar. “VI. Criticism of Bolshevism.” Bolshevism: Theory and Practice. Translated by E.I. Watkin. London: Stanhope Press, 1932.
Nikaea 325 