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Quote of the Day: Reinhold Niebuhr on Marxism
The insights into human nature which Marxism has fortunately added to modern culture belong to the forgotten insights of prophetic religion. They must be reappropriated with gratitude for their rediscovery. But since prophetic religion must deal with the total human situation it cannot accept them merely as weapons in one particular social conflict. To do so would mean to make them the basis of new spiritual pretensions. The pathos of Marxian spirituality is that it sees the qualified and determined character of all types of spirituality except its own. Thus the recognition of human finitenness becomes the basis of a new type of pretention that finitenness has been transcended.
From An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. Click here to see the quote in the book itself. I’m trying to get some working competence with the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (not to be confused with his brother Richard Niebuhr) because I’m teaching this course again next year.
I have a long way to go. And, arguably, I’m not even in the right book! This is just some early Niebuhr that he later critiqued himself! (Speaking of Niebuhr, I also recently noticed that I’d been spelling it incorrectly–NiebHur instead of NiebuHr.)
But back to the quote–it probably won’t make it into my teaching notes, but it sure seems relevant to the political situation in North America. There are three things to observe in this quote.
The first thing to observe is the claim that Marxism is at least partially correct to criticize certain sins, and that insofar as it is it’s just borrowing (or plagiarizing) from Old Testament prophets.
I’m familiar with this idea from some Christian philosophy that borrows from modern (or postmodern) critics of religion. Merold Westphal has good books on that, especially Suspicion and Faith.
The second thing to observe is Niebuhr’s idea that a biblical religion is not supposed to join a movement like Marxism in some particular social conflict. That just replaces one sinful pretension with another.
Exactly what sort of spiritual pretension? I don’t understand Niebuhr well enough to answer very confidently, but I think what he means is, roughly, the sin of thinking we can build heaven on earth through our own efforts. (This would be the sort of sin committed by liberal heretics. Niebuhr also criticizes orthodox Christianity for hardly even trying to fix the world–leaving it all to G-d and deferring all expectations of a better world to heaven!)
The third thing to observe is what Niebuhr says about how a movement like this is blind to itself. Marxism cleverly calls out the conditions that influence the thinking of other people. But it tends to not notice that it is also influenced by conditions!
And here’s why I wanted to talk about this:
What if we tried thinking Niebuhr’s way about Critical Race Theory?
Yeah, I know–this is Ricochet, dang it! You don’t even like CRT! You don’t want to give it the time of day!
That’s fine. I don’t like it either. I’m totally fine with not giving CRT the time of day. Who even has the time to do that anyway?
But there are still two reasons to ask a question like this. One is simple: For anyone who actually does have the time to look into CRT in the same way someone like Niebuhr or Westphal looks into Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, this seems like a promising way to do it! (Just don’t be expecting me to do all that work. Not that I can make any promises. Maybe I’ll give it a try someday.)
And the other reason to ask a question like this is: Niebuhr would no doubt have some good advice for people who love CRT. There’s our religious friends who feel a strong need to join CRT in its critique of America, and are in danger of abandoning biblical religion by doing so. And he’d make a heckuva critique of those who only care about CRT as a political cudgel for pushing things further and further left, for winning elections, etc.
But since those guys will probably never read Niebuhr, here’s a meme that asks the right sort of question:
Perhaps you’re wondering, “Who is Reinhold Neibuhr, and why should I care?”
Those are good questions. Here are some answers that might be good enough.
Who is he?
He’s an American theologian from the 1900s. He criticizes theological liberalism, but he also criticizes orthodox Christianity, and he probably wouldn’t be caught dead admitting that the Bible is the infallible Word of G-d. So the usual way to classify him is as a “neo-Orthodox” theologian. Talked about the biblical commandment to “Love your neighbor.” Talked about sin. Influenced by Karl Barth. Brother of Richard Neibuhr, author of the famous book Christ and Culture. Intros on Theopedia or Wikipedia are suggested for further reading.
Why should you care?
He’s a great mind like John Dewey, William James, or Epicurus is a great mind–if somewhat less great than Plato, Shakespeare, Confucius, or C. S. Lewis. Everyone should know some great minds, and every great mind should be known by some people. But you really don’t have to care about him specifically. Don’t abandon the Bible, Plato, Shakespeare, or Confucius to study Reinhold Neibuhr. But if you have time and motivation to study this particular great mind, it’ll probably be worth it.
And here’s another.
Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then. Just because your theory is correct on a handful of points doesn’t make your theory correct or even necessarily useful.
I’ve never looked into Niebuhr’s work in any detail, having the general impression that he was one of the squishy-Leftist types who claimed to be Christian, and who might or might not actually be Christian.
The Wikipedia link that you provided states that Niebuhr began as a socialist and a Social Gospel guy, and later led a movement called Christian realism. The Wikipedia article states:
So if I apply by their fruits ye shall know them, I’m not inclined to have a favorable opinion of Niebuhr.
He does appear to have opposed Communism after WWII, at least according to Wikipedia. Also, according to Wikipedia, he changed his mind about the propriety of attempting to persuade Jews to convert to Christianity, first supporting such efforts, but later rejecting them. I tend to have a negative view of supposed Christians who think that there’s a Jewish exception to the Great Commission.
Same stuff that kept me away from him for a long time! I have a lot to learn, but, provisionally, it looks like there may have been some merit there I never knew of.
If this has never been the QOTD, it should have!
And when it does happen (to mix it up a bit) we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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Because the parties switched in the 1960s. I don’t fully follow them. Did the parties completely switch? But the Dems still claim FDR. Did just the racists switch? Either way, every racist thing you listed belongs to the Dems. Doesn’t seem to affect them though.
Shapiro just did a nice debunking of that.
I read a good debunking a couple years ago but don’t know if I bookmarked it. Was this on his show or in writing?
In podcast form, it’s a short episode that comes out over the weekend. I think for Daily Wire subscribers there’s a nice video version. No idea if there’s a written form.
He knew what he was getting in to when he signed up for that last name.
Thanks. I’ll look for it.
This post brings to mind Raymond Aron’s response to Marx’s comment that religion is the opiate of the masses, with his book critiquing mid 20th Century French Intellectuals: The Opiate of the Intellectuals.
And since William James was mentioned, a quote from his The Varieties of Religious Experience:
“I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, I know not. But the over-belief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist. The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have meaning for our life also: and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in. By being faithful in my poor measure to this over-belief, I seem to keep more sane and true. I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist’s attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word “bosh!” Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow “scientific” bounds. Assuredly, the real world is of a different temperament, –more intricately built than physical science allows. So my objective and my subjective conscience both hold me to the over-belief which I express. Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs may not actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks.”