Faust Complex: Young Hegelians and the Theology of Atheism
Body of ideas brought forth in the early to mid 19th Century Germany by the group of radicals summed up under the moniker “young (or:’left’) Hegelians” enacted an enormous influence on both 20th Century and our current time, in the guise of totalitarian political ideas and practices. What is somewhat neglected by interprets is the fact that Young Hegelians first and foremost were a movement inspired and even led by radical theologians; whereas contemporary public opinion on Marxism, anarchism and even Nazism tends to comprehend these movements to be as far removed from theology and metaphysics, i.e. as a political reaction to historical reality, they are originally anything but. They, in effect, stem from an attempt to liberate humanity from religion in general and Christianity in particular, based on certain peculiar ideas that are religious in themselves.
In this podcast we’ll point out precisely the religious inspiration of modern radical politics, giving a survey of Young Hegelian’s ideas with special stress on Bruno Bauer’s attack on Christianity and enormous influence he, in this respect, had on Karl Marx.
(If for some reason the Mixcloud presents you with problems, the podcasts are available on Kali Tribune’s Youtube channel. Podcasts can be downloaded via this link )
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Branko Malić
Hi Branko,
When it comes to private property, historically speaking its initial implementation in England during the enclosure period was quite brutal and devastating. The social upheaval and disruption to the traditional life in England, created by the implementation of private property plagues similar economies who make the shift, or more often than not, are forced to make the shift by an oligarchic elite, to this day. Perhaps Bauer and Marx, as well as Karl Polanyi much later, have point to their critique of private property? We can dislike the young Hegelians and Marx for their inverted atheistic notions of being, as well as their violent and demonic yearning for destruction, while acknowledging they may have been right about the historically destructive implementation of private property, can’t we? As we say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. This was a very good podcast and I look forward to listening to your podcast about what you hinted at concerning Bauer, Marx , and antisemitism.
Thanks,
Kyle
Do you think there was no private property in England or elsewhere prior to industrial revolution? Because when they say “private property”, they mean exactly that.
I mean to say that private property as a fundamental organizing force for an industrialized economy, is something that emerged out of the English enclosure period. I apologize for not being more specific.
I had an opportunity to see how land enclosure works in sustainable development conditions, i.e. in Ireland. The sentiment you get right of the bat is the one of being a rat in the maze: throughout the counties of Dublin, Kildare & Wicklow you are almost completely unable to set foot on the Irish soil; you are confined to the road and villages/towns observing the postcard of Ireland while being in Ireland itself. The sense of confinement and consequent lack of elementary freedom is uncanny, while, if you only observed the scenery from the picture, you would never guess that anyone can be imprisoned in such beautiful scenery. I would say that its a kind of prison for Teletubies and indeed one Polish guy came up with precisely such definition.
Now, sustainable development is ostensibly Leftist politics in the sense that it also presupposes a sort of welfare state with strong socialist moment regarding Government support and control of society – what they call safety net, with the strong stress on “safety” and never on the “net” part. My point is that apparently diametrically opposed systems as “capitalism” and “socialism” – in themselves extremely vague and seldom defined terms – produces at least the identical psychological effect: people get isolated from the land and themselves. In sustainable development, your right is your capital, because, as I believe, the capital is primarily a legal term of the right of ownership. So, if you are, for example, owner of the right to clean drinking water, than you are also responsible for water as a commodity and regulation of how you exercise your ownership is in the hands of institutions. In layman terms, making drinking water a human right is turning it into a legally defined commodity whose legality is not defined by owners but by competent authorities. Before it was a human right, it was an intrinsic part of nature that is necessary for life and did not need to be defined as a human right or being regulated in its primary use, save from being used in industrial processes, building and maintenance of public water supply infrastructure, etc. Irony of Ireland, for example, is that they got tap water to be free of charge, but socialized everything else in model sustainable development application, whereas the main reason why tap water should be charged comes from the need to construct and maintain the infrastructure for its use, something that by all means should cost users at least something.
This approach of allotting rights for every conceivable thing one can imagine is in my eyes nothing but making every aspect of life liable for control by institutions that serve as regulatory social systems – every right that is codified is a legal right and as such it has legal boundaries that are not, neither can be, defined democratically but only centrally by the technocrats.
Is this capitalism or socialism? Both and neither, I would say.
But Marx would love it, because it is aimed to fulfill two functions, from what I can see: it is in fact expropriating the private property through controlling its use to such an extent that only the responsibility of the owner remains private, while his freedom to apply his property is strictly regulated and it is making the family obsolete at least as primary economic unit, by social welfare.
As Ante said, when Marx says private property must be abolished, this means erasing the very notion of “having” something apart of what others have and when he says that family should be dissolved, this means literary complete destruction of family or rather its dissolution through process of people waking up to the fact that they never needed it (with a gentle nudge from the vanguard of proletariat, of course. He left those details to his successors). In both cases what Marx considers abolished is in fact alienation, i.e. any kind of buffer between individual and the society; both family and private property circumscribe the elementary difference between people – I am closer to my brother than I am close to you or some passerby in the street, etc. I value what I have much more than what you have and any step you make into the sphere of my ownership puts you under my primary ethical – not legal, which is secondary – scrutiny: in a word, we understand each other as objectively different.
This elementary difference is what Marx wanted eradicated. And that makes him a radical lunatic whom postmodern Lefists with their SJWs, tranny saints, gay marriages, etc. have a hard time to live up to, because the circumstances pushed them into “long march through institutions” rather than the revolution proper as he saw it. Those “traditional Leftists” that occasionally attack postmodern Left are therefore just old fashioned commies sighing for the old days of the purity of faith.
I like the direction the latest updates are heading. It is far more interesting for me to listen to the philosophical groundings of the traditional Christian world view, than to hear you take apart some obscure and quite frankly inconsequential figure.
I recommend opening a section on this site which quite clearly demonstrates this basis. Subjects such what is thinking, what is the mind, how it relates to eternity and infinity and why certain questions can only be approached from a foundation that underscores their origin, will be outlined there, preferably with a transcript of the audio lectures. Many people disavow traditional Christian thought precisely for the reason that they view it as primitive and archaic, superceded by more advanced (nominalist and empirical) forms of thought. It is telling how so few have heard of Bauer or Feuerbach and yet their opinions underscore the world view of the intellectual segment of the population.
But be careful. The Jewish issue needs to be handled with exceptional care. One needs to step back and look at it from a general perspective. Be prepared to address an extremely hostile and suspicious audience and not sound very convincing to them.
The outcry against Jewry is the natural reaction against the nominalism of our time and the ubiquitous nature of American capitalist culture it inspired. It is an outcry of against the vapid promise offered by modernity, unrestricted comfort in return for personal oblivion. No previous age could permit technological comfort to supersede natural necessity. For there is indeed nothing that the modern man lacks materially, that would induce him to hate that particular group for depriving him. And yet the “struggle against Jewry” finds its outlet in the most pure expression of such a radicalism.
But IT needs to be pointed out, no matter how perilous it may be for one who does so, that this opposition to the essence of modernity can’t be taken to a certain extent without essentially endangering that which it is ostensibly pitted against. Hearing people blithely repeat that the nature of their existential disaffection is due to “Abrahamic desert faiths” is a prime example of this, but it’s incomparably worse to hear something like the Mysterium Fasces podcast for instance, say that hatred of Jews can be the common ground that binds the disparity of the opinions they reach out to. Anti-semitism, no matter how thoroughly grounded in fact it may be, can NEVER serve as a basis of unity of any intellectual affiliation. The Jewish question is not one of ontological significance.