Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism/Book 2/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
Socialist solutions.
The socialist schools are greatly superior to the liberal school, both as to the nature of the problems which they propose to solve and in their mode of presenting and explaining them. Their masters evince a familiarity, up to a certain point, with those bold speculations which refer to God and his nature, man and his constitution, society and its institutions, the universe and its laws. This propensity to generalize everything, to consider things in their ensemble, and to observe general dissonances and harmonies, gives them a greater aptitude to enter and to escape from the intricate labyrinth of the rationalistic logic without losing themselves. If, in the great contest which holds the world as it were in suspense, there were no other disputants than the socialists and liberalists, the battle would not last long, nor would the victory be doubtful.
All the socialist schools are, in a philosophical point of view, rationalistic; under a political aspect, republican; and under a religious aspect, atheistical. They resemble the liberal school in their elements of rationalism, and differ from this school in so far as they are atheistical and republican. The question, then, consists in investigating whether rationalism logically ends where the liberal school does, or proceeds as far as the socialist school. We shall defer the examination of this question in its political aspect, and shall at present consider it especially under its religious aspect.
Considered in this aspect, it is clear that the system which concedes to reason a universal ability to solve of itself, and unaided by God, all questions respecting the political, religious, social, and human order, supposes reason to possess a complete sovereignty and an absolute independence. This system simultaneously involves three negations—namely, the negation of revelation, the negation of grace, and the negation of providence. It implies that of revelation, because revelation contradicts the universal adequacy of human reason; that of grace, because grace denies its absolute independence; that of providence, because providence likewise denies its independent sovereignty. But these three negations, attentively considered, form but one—the negation of every tie which binds God and man—because if man is not united to God by revelation, by providence, and by grace, he is not united to Him in any way whatever.
Now, to affirm this absolute separation between God and man, is to deny God. To dogmatically affirm the existence of God, after having dogmatically despoiled him of all his attributes, is an inconsistency reserved for the liberal school, which is the most contradictory of all the rationalistic schools. This inconsistency, however, far from being accidental, is essential in that school, which, in whatever light we regard it, is an extravagant assemblage of evident contradictions. Its contradictions in regard to God in the religious order, are also exhibited in the political order, in reference to the people and their rulers. The office of this school is to proclaim the existences which it annuls, and to annul the existences which it proclaims. Each one of its principles is associated with another contradictory to it, which destroys it. Thus, for example, it proclaims a monarchy, and at the same time a ministerial responsibility; and, as a consequence, the omnipotence of the minister, who is made responsible, which is the negation of the monarchy. It proclaims ministerial omnipotence, and at the same time a supreme right of intervention on the part of deliberative assemblies in the affairs of government, which is incompatible with the omnipotence of the ministry. It proclaims that political assemblies have the right of supreme intervention in affairs of state, and at the same time it accords to electoral colleges the right of deciding matters, which is in contradiction with the supreme intervention of political assemblies. It invests the electors with a supreme right of arbitration, and at the same time it recognizes, more or less explicitly, the supreme right of revolution, which is subversive of that pacific and supreme right of arbitration. It asserts the right of revolution as belonging to the people, by which it affirms their sovereign omnipotence; and at the same. time it asserts the law of the electoral census, which is virtually to ostracize the sovereignty of the people. And with all these principles, and their counter-principles, it has only one object in view, and that is to produce and maintain, by industry and artifice, an equilibrium which it never can attain, because this is opposed to the nature of society and the nature of man.
There is only one power against which the liberal school has not sought a counterpoise, and this is the power of corruption. Corruption is the god of this school, and like God, is everywhere at the same time. To such a degree is it the controlling element in the liberal school that, wherever this school prevails, all must forcibly be either corrupters or corrupted; because, where every man can aspire to become Cesar, or by his vote to create Cesar, or by his approval to confirm the power of Cesar, there all men must either be Cesars or pretors. Therefore, every society which falls under the domination of this school dies the same death―they all die of gangrene. Kings corrupt their ministers, promising them a permanence of power; and the ministers corrupt the kings, promising to augment their prerogatives; and they also pervert the representatives of the people, by placing at their disposal all the state preferments, to gain which the assemblies give their votes to the ministers. The elected traffic with their power, the electors with their influence. All combine to bribe the people with their promises, and the people, in turn, intimidate every one by their clamors and threats.
To resume the thread of this argument—when the socialist schools deny the existence of God, which the liberal school affirms, they are more logical and consistent than the liberal school; yet they are far from being as consistent within their limits as the Catholic school is with itself. The Catholic school affirms the existence of God, and all his attributes, with a dogmatical and supreme affirmation. The socialists, on the contrary, although in reality they deny God, do not deny him in the same way, or for the same reasons, nor do they deny him boldly. The reason is this, that the most intrepid man is seized with terror when he seeks to affirm positively that there is no God. It would seem as if man feared that, if he made such an assertion, he would be deprived of the power ever to utter another word, and that such a blasphemy would cause the heavens to fall upon and crush the blasphemer. Thus we hear some deny God by saying, all that exists is God, and God is all that exists; while others affirm that God and humanity are identical. Among these, some maintain that there is in humanity a dualism of contrary forces and energies, and that man is the representative of this dualism. Those who entertain this opinion distinguish in man the reflective forces and the spontaneous energies. According to them, true humanity resides in the first, and true divinity in the second. By this system, God is neither all that exists nor humanity; he is but the half of man. Others think differently, and deny that God is man or a part of man, that he is humanity, or that he is the universe; but they are disposed to believe that he is a being who is manifested in various and successive incarnations, and wherever there is a great influence or a magnificent domination, there God is incarnated. God was incarnated in Cesar, and in Charles the Great, and in Napoleon. He was successively incarnated in the great Asiatic empires, and also in the Macedonian and Roman. At first he was the Orient, and afterward he was the Occident. The world experienced a change in each of these divine incarnations, and advanced a step in the path of progress each time that it changed, in consequence of a new incarnation.
All these antagonistic and absurd systems are embodied in a man who has appeared in the world, in these latter days, as the personification of all the inconsistencies of rationalism. This man is Mr. Proudhon, whom we have already noticed, and to whom we shall frequently allude in the course of this work. Mr. Proudhon is esteemed the most learned and consistent of the modern socialists; and as regards erudition, he is certainly superior to almost all contemporary rationalists. As to his consistency, the reader will be enabled to form some 1dea of it from the passages which we are about to quote from his writings, in which he treats of the subjects discussed in this book.
In the Confessions of a Revolutionist, Mr. Proudhon thus defines God: “God is the universal force, and is penetrated with intelligence, which produces, through an infinite knowledge of itself, the beings of all kingdoms, from the imponderable fluid up to man, and which only in man acquires a knowledge of self, and says—I am. God, far from being our master, is the object of our study. How can the thaumaturgists have had the audacity to convert him into a personal being, who is at times an absolute king, like the God of the Jews and Christians; and at other times a constitutional sovereign, like the God of the deists, whose incomprehensible providence over us appears to be perpetually and solely exercised, both by his precepts and acts, in confounding our reason?’ Here Mr. Proudhon has affirmed three things: first, the assertion of a universal, intelligent, and divine force, which is pantheism; second, a higher incarnation of God in humanity, which is humanitarianism; third, the negation of a personal God, and of his providence, which results in deism.
In the work, which is entitled The System of Economic Contradictions, Ch. viii., Mr. Proudhon says: “I shall set aside the pantheistic hypothesis, which has always appeared to me either hypocritical or cowardly. God is personal, or he does not exist.” Here he affirms all that he denies and denies all that he affirms in the preceding sentences. These affirm a pantheistical and impersonal God; while here are denied, as equally absurd, both the impersonality of God and pantheism.
Further on in this chapter, he adds: "The true remedy against fanaticism is not, it appears to me, in identifying humanity with the Divinity, which is nothing else than affirming communism in political economy, and mysticism and the statu quo in philosophy. The true remedy is to prove to humanity that God, if he exists, is its enemy." We here see that, after having denied pantheism and an impersonal God, Mr. Proudhon also denies humanism, as contained in his definition. On the other hand, his theory of a rivalry between God and man, which we have already noticed in a former chapter of this book, begins here to assume a concrete form.
He asserts this theory, and also the condemnation of humanitarianism, still more clearly in the ninth chapter of the same book, where he says: "For my part, and I regret to confess it, for I feel that such a declaration separates me from the most intelligent among the socialists, the more I reflect upon it the more I find it impossible to believe in this deification of our species, which, attentively considered, is nothing else, among the atheists of our day, than the expiring echo of religious terrors, which, re-establishing and consecrating mysticism under the name of humanism, replaces the sciences under the sway of prejudice, subjects the moral world to the authority of custom, and the social economy to the rule of communism, or, what is the same thing, atony and misery; and finally, it even subjects logic to the domination of the absurd and the absolute; and, as I find myself compelled to repudiate ... this new religion, together with those which have preceded it, I must also receive as plausible the hypothesis of an infinite being ... against which I must struggle even unto death; for this is my destiny, even as it is that of Israel to contend against Jehovah."
Nothing here remains of the previously given definition of God, except the negation of providence, and even this negation disappears with this contradictory affirmation: "We are thus conducted by chance, when guided by Providence, which never warns save when it strikes us."[1]
In the foregoing paragraphs, we perceive that Mr. Proudhon goes through all the gradations of rationalistic contradictions, and is successively pantheist, humanist, and manicheist. He professes to believe in an impersonal God and then declares as monstrous and absurd the idea of a God, unless the God conceived is personal; and finally, he affirms and denies Providence at the same time. Nor is this all. We have seen, in one of the preceding chapters, in what manner the Manichean theory of a rivalry between God and man makes man, according to the system of Proudhon, the representative of good, and God the representative of evil. We shall now see in what way, according to Mr. Proudhon, this same system falls to the ground.
In the second chapter of the work already cited, he makes use of the following language: "Either nature or the Deity has mistrusted our hearts and has doubted the love of man for his fellow-creatures. All the discoveries of science respecting the designs of Providence in social progress, and I say it with shame for the human conscience, (but our hypocrisy must know it,) prove the profound hatred of God for mankind. God does not aid us through kindness, but because order constitutes his essence. If he seeks the welfare of mankind, it is not because he deems them worthy of benefits, but because he is compelled to do so by the religion of his supreme wisdom. While the vulgar give him the tender appellation of Father, neither the historian nor the political economist can discover any reason to believe in the possibility of our being the objects either of his esteem or of his love.”
These words are a refutation of the manicheism of Proudhon. Man is not the rival, but the despised slave of God; he is neither good nor evil, but a creature governed by those gross and servile instincts which in slaves engender servitude. God is an indescribable combination of severe, inflexible, and mathematical laws. He does good without being good, and his misanthropy shows that he would be evil if his nature permitted it. The Proudhonian God in this bears an evident resemblance to the Fatum of the ancients. Fatalism is still more clearly manifested in the following words:—
“Having arrived at the second station of our Calvary, instead of occupying ourselves with sterile contemplations, it is best for us to attend more closely to the teachings of fate. The pledge of our liberty is altogether in the progress of our punishment.”
After fatalism comes atheism. “What is God? Where is he? How many Gods are there? What does God desire? What is the extent of his power? What promises does he make us? If we undertake to investigate all these things by the light of analysis, all the divinities of earth, heaven, and hell are immediately reduced to I know not what; that is, incorporeal, sible, immovable, incomprehensible, indefinable; in a word, to a negation of all the attributes of existence. In fact, whether man invests every object with a special mind or spirit, or conceives the universe as governed by one only power, he simply asserts by either of these propositions an unconditional-that is to say, an impossible entity, in order to give an explanation more or less satisfactory of phenomena which he deems to be otherwise, incomprehensible. What a high and profound mystery! The believer, in order to make the object of his idolatry more rational, successively deprives it of every attribute which could constitute its reality; and then, after prodigious efforts of logic and talent, finally discovers that the attributes of the Supreme Being are identified with those of nothing. This result is inevitable: atheism is at the foundation of all theodicy."[2]
The atheist, having once arrived at this extreme conclusion, and plunged into this dark abyss, seems as if possessed by furies. His heart is filled with blasphemies which oppress his utterance and burn upon his lips; and when he would impiously pile up these blasphemies like a pyramid, raising them one upon the other, even to the throne of God, he sees with terror that, overcome by their own specific weight, instead of soaring to heavenly heights, they fall flatly and heavily into the abyss which is their center. Every word and expression then become replete with sarcasm and contempt, with vulgarity and frenzied wrath. His style is at once forcible and heavy, eloquent, although cynically coarse. He exclaims: "Why adore this phantom of a Deity? And what does he require of us by that band of enthusiasts who, on all sides, persecute us with their sermons?"[3] And further on he makes these cynical remarks: "God! I do not acknowledge any God. God is, moreover, nothing but pure mysticism. If you wish us to listen to you, commence by banishing this word from your discourse; because the experience of three thousand years teaches me that he who speaks to me of God would rob me of my liberty or my purse. How much do you owe me? How much do I owe you? This is my religion and my God."[4] Then, in a paroxysm of rage, he breaks forth into these words: "This I say: the first duty of an intelligent and free man is immediately to discard the idea of God both from his soul and his conscience; because God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature, and we are in nothing dependent upon him. ... By what right, moreover, could God say to me, be thou holy even as I am holy? Lying spirit! I would say to him in reply, imbecile God, thy sovereignty is already at an end; seek other victims among the brute creation. I know that I am not, neither can I ever become holy; and how canst thou be so if thou and I resemble each other? Eternal Father, Jupiter or Jehovah, whatever thou wishest me to call thee, learn from me that we know thee. Thou art, thou wast, and thou wilt ever be the rival of Adam, the tyrant of Prometheus."[5] And further on, in the same chapter, he apostrophizes the divinity that he denies, and says to him: "Thou dost triumph, and none dared contradict thee, when, after tormenting the just Job in soul and body, who was the type of our humanity, thou didst insult his sincere piety and his discreet and respectful ignorance. We were all as nothing in presence of thy invisible majesty, to whom we gave the heavens as a canopy and the earth as a footstool. The times are now changed, and we behold thee weakened and dethroned. Thy name, once the sum and substance of all wisdom, the only sanction of the judge, the sole authority of the priest, the hope of the poor, the refuge of the repenting sinner,—this incommunicable name has now become an object of execration and contempt, and will be henceforth despised by all men. For God is but folly and timidity; God is but hypocrisy and deceit; God is but tyranny and misery; God is evil. So long as humanity lies prostrate before an altar the slave of kings and priests, it will continue condemned. While one man receives, in the name of God, the homage of other men, society will continue to be founded on perjury, and peace and love will be banished from the earth. Withdraw from me, O Jehovah; for henceforth, freed from the fear of God, and having attained true wisdom, I swear, with uplifted hand to heaven, that thou art only the tormentor of my reason and the specter of my conscience."
It is he who has said it: God is the specter of his conscience. No one can deny God without condemning himself; no one can fly from God without flying from himself. This unhappy being, although yet on earth, is already in hell; those violent and impotent muscular contractions, that morose frenzy, that insensate wrath, that furious and tempestuous rage, are in truth the contractions, the frenzy, the wrath, and the rage of the reprobate. Without charity and without faith, he has lost even that last good of man—hope. And yet, when he speaks of Catholicism, he sometimes feels in his soul, without knowing it, its serene and sanctifying influence. Then his martyrdom ceases, as if by enchantment; a gentle and refreshing breeze, sent from heaven, cools his fevered brow and calms the accesses of his epileptic convulsions. Then he blandly utters these words: “Ah, how much wiser has Catholicism showed itself, and what an advantage has it gained over all—over St. Simonians, republicans, universitarians, and economists—in the knowledge of society and of man! The priest knows that our life is only a pilgrimage, and that entire perfection is denied us in this world; and because he knows this he is satisfied to commence an education on earth which can be completed only in heaven. The man who has been trained by religion, satisfied with knowing, doing, and obtaining what is sufficient for this life, will never prove an obstacle to the powers of the earth; he would rather be a martyr. Oh, beloved religion, by what inconceivable caprice of reason does it happen, that those who need thee most are precisely those who most obstinately reject thee?”
We have already cursorily alluded to the reputation of Mr. Proudhon for consistency. It now seems not only proper, but likewise necessary, to say something further on this subject, which is of much greater consequence than would at first sight appear. The fact of his reputation is public and notorious, and for this very reason unquestionable. It is nevertheless altogether inexplicable, if we consider that Mr. Proudhon has successively adopted every system relating to the Divinity, and that there is no one among the socialists so given to contradictions as he is. We must admit, therefore, that his reputation for consistency is entirely unfounded. By what subterraneous paths, by what concatenation of subtile and labored deductions has the world, in the face of the glaring inconsistency of Mr. Proudhon, agreed to call his contradictions by a term which is their very opposite, consistency? Here is a great problem to be solved and a great mystery to be unraveled.
The explanation of this problem, and the solving of this mystery, are found in the fact that the theories of Mr. Proudhon imply at the same time contradiction and consistency; the first being apparent and the second real. If we examine in succession the fragments that we have just quoted from his works, and consider them in themselves, and without taking a more general view, each one of them is the contradiction of that which precedes and follows it, and all are in opposition to each other. But if we consider the rationalist theory, from which all have their origin, it will be seen that rationalism is the sin that most resembles original sin, being, like it, an actual error, and the productive cause of all error. Consequently it embraces and comprehends in its vast unity all errors; and contradictions form no impediment to this union, for even these antagonisms are susceptible of a certain kind of harmony and union, where there exists a supreme contradiction which involves them all. In the case in question, rationalism is this contradiction, which comprises all the others in its supreme unity. In fact, rationalism is at once deism, pantheism, humanism, manicheism, fatalism, skepticism, and atheism; and, among the rationalists, he who is at the same time deist, pantheist, humanist, manicheist, fatalist, skeptic, and atheist, is regarded as the most consistent.
These considerations serve to explain the facts which we have noticed in this chapter, and which are apparently incongruous. They likewise satisfactorily explain. why, in place of investigating, one by one, the various systems of the socialist doctors respecting the Divinity, we have preferred to consider them all as set forth in the writings of Mr. Proudhon, where we find them both in their diversity and in their connection.
We have seen what the socialists think of God; we shall now examine what they think of man, and in what manner they interpret the fearful problem of good and evil, considered in general, which forms the subject of this book.