235 - The Urgency of Marxist-Christian Dialogue

The Urgency of Marxist-Christian Dialogue
By Herbert Aptheker
New York, Harper and Row, 1970. 196 pp. $6.95.

The key to this densely detailed little volume by the chief theoretician of the American Communist Party and director of the American Institute of Marxist Studies may well be found in his dedication "to the new Joshua with love and hope." What binds Aptheker to some expressions of the Christian tradition and gives urgency to the dialogue in his eyes is a common militancy on behalf of the emancipation of man and against the evils of oppression, exploitation, and injustice. His catalog of Christian heroes includes all of those in whom he senses this militant spirit, from Jesus himself through the radicals of the Reformation period to the leaders of the social gospel in the twentieth century, down to Martin Luther King, A. J. Muste, and Father James Groppi. He believes that we are all children of the liberal enlightenment and that we should work together "to overcome the forces of evil and fulfill the promise of man."

This does not mean, however, that a leading Marxist thinker is suggesting that Marxism should undergo any fundamental revision or reformation. It remains a scientific movement which, as the science of social change, is profoundly moral as well. It is the science of the control of society and nature for the welfare of man. It is, therefore, anti-religious. Religion, in Aptheker's Marxist understanding, is basically mysticism, symbolized by the ways of a transcendent God. Religious feeling is to be respected in those who have it but arises out of a sense of helplessness before the great forces of nature and the forces of oppression in society. Religion is "supra-rational and, indeed, anti-reason and anti-science." Marxism, as scientific, believes in man and man's capacity to emancipate and develop himself.

A large part of the book, therefore, is taken up with answers to critical analyses and comments which Christian writers have made regarding Marx, Lenin, and Marxism. Wherever these writers find a problem or a tension internal to Marxism, he is there with his defense. To Paul Lehmann, Jürgen Moltmann, and Harvey Cox, who find a difficulty for Marxists in the fact that the Socialist revolution has not brought liberation to the whole man, he replies that although there is a new humanity in the Socialist stage, its authoritarianism and even its inequality is a necessary condition of further development of man toward a higher stage. It is, he says, "Simply absurd to write that Communists while laboring to transform capitalism create an organization denying goals to be achieved only after the transition from Socialism to Communism." Against Thomas Ogletree on Marx, and Bohdan Bociurkiw on Lenin, in their

236 - The Urgency of Marxist-Christian Dialogue

opposition to religion, Aptheker tries to point out that for all Marx-Leninism, religion is not a direct object of attack except insofar as it is embodied in religious institutions which obstruct revolutionary progress, that Lenin sometimes exaggerated but this was understandable because the Orthodox Church was so reactionary, and that there is no difference between Marxs views on religion and those of Marxists engaged in the Christian-Marxist dialogue today.

One could go on with such illustrations. The spirit of them is, however, already clear. For Aptheker, Marxism is not so much a human drama as a science of society built on a liberal humanist view of man. He has made his own careful study of American history, and illustrations from his favorite rebels-Nat Turner and John Brown, for instance-constantly recur and are blended with his allegiance to Marx and Lenin. He does not fail to point out that both Turner and Brown were Christians, motivated profoundly by their faith, but throughout the book none of the profound experience of re-thinking the Marxist tradition, which has been at the basis of the Christian-Marxist dialogue in Europe in recent years, is to be found. Aptheker will not admit Marxism needs any completion, any correction of any sort, even though he admits that many Marxists have been unfaithful and some have even been criminal. He takes Roger Garaudy to task for saying in a dialogue in Europe that Marxists come empty-handed to a discussion of the problem of death. He never mentions the profound problems of the ambiguity of human nature and of social evil in a socialist society which were raised by the actions of Stalin and which drove Marxist thinkers in Europe into soul-searching friendships with Christians and existentialists in Europe. This book is something of a debater's manual from which an important mention of the Christian-Marxist dialogue in other places is missing.

Nevertheless, it is important, and for two reasons. First, Aptheker reminds Christians and others that they cannot dismiss Marx, Lenin, and the Marxist tradition by explaining them away. Marxists are present and listening. One must confront them as persons to test out one's understanding. The rule learned at such great cost in the Christian mission to men of other faiths applies here as well. One cannot learn about other faiths only from a book. In the United States, it has been too easy for too long to treat Marxism as an academic exercise in debate with an abstraction. Aptheker has reminded us here that real Marxists have a right to be present.

Second, Aptheker has identified the basic issue between Marxists and Christians, the question of the capacities of man. He is quite clear that for Marxists any limitation on belief in the power of man to emancipate himself from social oppression, to organize nature and society to achieve his boundless self-development, is intolerable. Man is his own creator and savior. Christians do not believe this.

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Their understanding of man justified by grace alone and receiving his life as a gift to be fulfilled in relation with his neighbor and with God is inconsistent with both Marxist and liberal humanism. There must be no compromise on this point. Romantic syncretists who think that the Marxist-Christian dialogue has been swallowed up in common action would do well to refresh their understanding in this volume. Our basic difference here can only be bridged by conversion one way or the other. This both limits and gives added zest to the dialogue which will continue.

Charles C. West
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey