A short history of Cosmism
1970
(This is a guest column in some American college newspaper written by an exchange student from the USS)
In my time here in America, I had the opportunity to meet people of many different faith and people from all over the political spectrum. I often found myself in arguments about the merits of the socialist economic system since then and it is a fascinating intellectual exerciser. If you are in a position to defend and explain what you took for granted for so long you really learn to appreciate it on a whole new level.
There is one exception thou. I would like to say the same about reactions concerning my church but somehow decades of misinformation manged to twist the picture of Cosmism in the public mind into something very ugly, not resembling reality in the slightest. While disheartening it is understandable that reactionaries might be willing to listen to their demagogues but it was most shocking that some of the most hostile people I met were other Socialists. Seeing so many members of the student movement falling for Comrade Mao's propaganda was one of the most disturbing experiences I had so far.
Although some might say hoping to convince them or you may be futile task, but I still believe that any one who considers himself a Socialist or Progressive will sooner or later find approach issues with an open mind. So please let me tell you and them the history of Cosmism, so you may judge yourself and exercise the inquisitive parts of your mind.
God Seeker and God Builder (I)
The history of Cosmism, although being only a fairly young “religion” (*1), is a very complex one. Indeed an entire library of microfiche is filled with the intricacies of Cosmist thought and history.
This little series of articles therefore doesn't make any claims to completeness. They are only short, cliff-note introductions giving an overview of the historical development of Cosmism. At the end of each article I'll add a list of interesting material for those who want to go into the depth of the topic.
In this first chapter I'll give an inside into the earliest stage of Cosmism, before it even had its name or a clearly defined identity.
It all began in the Russian Empire with the Religious-Philosophical Meetings which took place from 1901 onwards. These meetings were the result of ideas formulated by Zinaida Nikolaevna Gippius and her so called “New Church” concept. Like many religious reform movements before (protestantism would be a prominent example), it was a reaction to the old, orthodox church, which as Gippius put in her own words had proven "...to be imperfect and prone to stagnation".
This philosophical society was organized by her husband Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky and his companions. They claimed their meetings were "a tribune for free discussion of questions concerning religious and cultural problems", serving to promote "neo-Christianity, social organization and whatever serves perfecting the human nature".
Merezhkovskys thought that the new society should have its own outlet. He started the publication of a magazine which would serve as a means of "bringing the thinking religious community together".
In July 1902, in association with Pyotr Pertzov and with a little help of some senior officials including ministers Dmitry Sypiagin and Vyacheslav von Pleve, the society opened its own magazine under the name of Novy Put (New Path). The groups popularity grew and some socialist thinkers, first and foremost Anatoly Lunacharsky regarded it as necessary to find an socialist answer to the God-seeker movement, as it became known.
Anatoly Lunacharsky
This answer was the God-building (Bogostroitel'stvo) movement. In its earliest stage God-building was much more shaped trough the critical dialog with the idealistic, God-seekers and a lot less by discussions with the entrenched, materialistic, radically, atheist Marxist, who were in favor of a strict state enforced atheism (2*) such as Vladimir Lenin or Zinoviev.
Aside form Lunacharsky, the other main proponent of adding a religious (yet still scientific) component to socialism was Vladimir Bazarov (Rudnev). Both men were later joined by Maxim Gorky and most importantly by the future revolutionary leader and statesman Alexander Bogdanov.
Inspired by the the Empiriocriticism of Ernst Mach and R. Avenarius, Bogdanov wished to modify Marxism. His goal was to put a greater emphasis on the
superstructure, the culture rather than simply seeing it as just the “shallow” result of the prevalent economic
structure.
In Bogdanov's eyes breaking the knowledge monopoly of the ruling class, was at least as important as changing the relations of production, i.e nationalizing the ruling class's property. During the years of the Great War and the Revolution he somewhat shifted in his actual policy a little more to the late Lenin's strongly economic position but more out of necessity than anything else. Bogdanov was willing to somewhat postpone but absolutely not to abandon his focus on the cultural transformation of society.
In his “Empiriomonizm”, Bogdanov laid out the key assumptions and consequences of his worldview.
"Empiromonizm",
monos (one), stood in opposition to the philosophical school of dualism (
two). The physical and psychological world can't be strictly separated, as it was proposed by disciples of dualism, into the two factors mind and body. Both are way too dependent, related to each other.
In the same vein he criticized Marx premise that "Being determines consciousness" and replaced it with "Being is consciousness."
Bogdanov saw that humans aren't alone in the world and that everybody's individual, subjective experiences are therefore shaped to significant degree not only by their "physical", economic environment but also by their peers. Rules, role models and accessible knowledge, all influence how we perceive the world around us, or as Bogdanov said: "The objectivity of the physical bodies, which we come into contact with, in the end depends on the mutual assurance and harmonization in concert with other people's experiences.”
However he was not going so far as to marginalize the physical realm completely. After all “The mind is as much a product of the physical as it is of the psychological..." He recognized that people's imagination as well as their options of action are always constrained by the material world. The main result of his philosophical inquirers can be summed up as follows:
People's minds are structured by their social environment but at the same time they themselves participate in structuring their social environment as well. Depending on their position in their society and how well they understand the structuring process, their influence can vary drastically.
"Tectology" the universal science of organization was according to Bogdanov the tool to achieve an organized effort to reconstruct society and the world at large to the benefit of all humankind. Bogdanov explained that trough the "tectological approach" we get "the one, the only, the monistic understanding of the universe. It reveals itself to us in an unlimited, unfolding whole of forms, different kinds and stages of organization. It begins in the unknown elements of the ether and ends in the human collective, which will once it realizes its own power, spread across the across the stars."
Bogdanov from his early youth on was an atheist but also a believer in humanity. The right circumstances, which are entirely accidental, generated life on our planet. This might happen everywhere else in the universe as well. Life diversified over the next million of years but in humanity it became a self aware collective, a "supemind" or "over-growth" as he called it. Once humanity understands its role, its potential, it will overcome the artificial separation into classes, races, nations and all those limits currently constraining human ingenuity and cooperation won't exist anymore.
It is humanity's destiny to conquer space and sow the seed of life into the void of space. Once we reach the stars nothing will ever again be able to vanquish the Gospel of Progress.
Bogdanov saw religion as more important in prehistoric societies than modern ones but he was open to Lunacharsky's ideas. After all in his “The Psychology of Society” in 1904 he wrote “that the historical Monism, [as well as orthodox Marxism] (…) isn't satisfactory to us anymore (…).
To simplify Bogdanov after analyzing human society, saw the superstructure (culture) as important as the structure (distribution of resources and means of production). Religion might as well serve a organizational role in a future society. He also aside from that, generally had a high opinion on the potential of humankind. In his eyes we may develop into a godlike species of creators outgrowing our own home world.
While he reached this conclusion more from a scientific, analytical starting point, it was very much in sync with Lunacharsky's more “spiritual” approach of the matter.
“When we look at the success of the species of man, don't we say: “Who is the one that made nature his tool? (…) Don't we see him, the newborn God … humanity?”
In his essay “Birth of a new God” he wrote that “New priests will educate the masses, will perform socialist mystery plays revealing the power that lies dormant in the human collective. We will praise man and his work, in temples build by us and dedicated to us. The new proletarian priest, the proletarian artists will create the new religion of hope and progress."
Lunacharsky proposed that the new religious sentiment, which would be accommodating to the world-view of socialism and later communism, was not only compatible with science but necessary. The inborn, natural human desire for spirituality had to be shifted away form the supernatural and be placed on a firm, rational footing.
It became apparent to him, that Marx's purely materialistic world view lacked the emotional appeal to sustain, a society in the long run. “Socialism without religion is a gray, dry, stiff affair and doesn't speak to the heart of the proletariat, worse it often speaks above their heads.”
Some also interpret this comment, as a thinly veiled critic to the then party leader Lenin, who was not only a fierce critic of Lunacharsky's God-building but to an extend was perceived as being a gray, dry, stiff personality. Also as Krasin remarked later “both men [Lenin and Bogdanov] had a grand vision of a new socialist world, but while Bogdanov sought to teach the worker how to learn, Lenin wanted to teach them how to follow.”
Lunacharsky's efforts to counter the God-seeker led to the creation of the group "Forward" inside the RSDLP. There proclaimed goal was the synchronization of religion, science, and socialist economy, to create a new proletarian culture, proletarian science and development of the new proletarian philosophy. The group lectured students in the Capri school which had been founded in 1908. It included Lunacharsky and Bogdanov as well as F. Kalinin, (....) Alexinsky, Marat, Liadov and many more important party members.
The movement flourished, especially after Lenin's death which finally brought Bogdanov into the official leadership position of the party. “Forward” launched their vigorous campaign in the press to educate the Russian revolutionary movement with their ideas: Lunacharsky published two volumes of "Religion and Socialism" (1908), Vladimir Bazarov wrote his articles on "Mysticism and realism of our time" (1908) and "God-seeking, and God-Building" (1909).
The most prominent critic of their efforts was Georgi Plekhanov who wrote in his "On the so-called religious quest in Russia" that God-Building would be a "...break away from the fundamentals of Marxism …”. Plekhanov's opinion carried weight in socialist circles, after all he was founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as a Marxist.
His opposition gave fodder to internal critics of Bogdanov and his comments became an important source of legitimacy for the Leninst fraction inside the Socialist Party. Even today Comrade Mao is using Plekahnov and his critic of Cosmism and Idealism to persuade members of the Tria Internacia and members of the Western Student movements to follow his path of “doctrinally pure Marxism”.
Cosmist Jesus Icon
Indeed both Bogdanov and Lunacharsky weren't shy of criticizing Marx and rightly so. Bogdanov noted that Marx vastly underestimated the importance of the superstructure, Lunacharsky only remarked how regrettable it was that Marx “didn't incorporate more ideas of the great German Idealists such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.” into his works.
Another important German philosopher Marx had a rather ambiguous relation to was Hegel's student Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach laid the groundwork for the projection theory, explaining the development of religion in general. Early primitive civilizations were very vulnerable to the whims of their environment. Still they were as curious and intelligent as we are today, they just lacked the knowledge and infrastructure each subsequent generation would inherit from their predecessors.
And as we do now, they asked themselves the essential questions of
why and
how the world works. The big difference was their limited knowledge and tools to answer those questions properly. Thus their world was one of undefined spirits, roaming the plains and forests causing illness and natural disaster.
Once civilizations arose, complex hierarchies and political bodies emerged and people's gods became more bureaucratic as well. After all they were mythological reflections of the current society, constrained by people's imagination.
However seeing Gods as merely fantastically powerful humans was not satisfactory in the long run. Instead God became the generalized good, the pure, the eternal. Everything humans strives to be. On the flip side humans were viewed as sinful, distanced form paradise separated form God and therefore imperfect. Feuerbach described this notion this view on humanity with the old saying "homo homini lupus est", "man is man's wolf”.
Only the authority of “God” and the believe in the afterlife could keep humans in line. But instead of worshiping God as some foreign entity, as a intermediary that allows us to love our imperfect brother and sisters, we should find him, it, directly in our fellow human, or as Feuerbach called it “homo homini deus” man's God is man. Unfortunately as Marx commented "Philosophers [like Feuerbach] have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." A criticism Feuerbach took to heart as he joined the Social Democratic Party, turning to the world and doing his part (1).
The disagreement that Lunacharsky had with Marx analysis of religion was not that we shouldn't stop contemplating instead of acting but that Marx described region as the “opiate of the people”. In Lunacharsky's eyes religion wasn't a form of escapism that would wither away once people won't have to deal with the hardships of the capitalist society anymore. Quiet the opposite.
Religion is something eternal, inherit to the human nature itself. According to Lunacharsky even if the party successfully helped to create a materialistic utopia, a world without hunger, disease or rigid hierarchies, people still will desire to be part of a spiritual community, with more time at hand maybe even more so than now. In order not feel isolated, alone and helpless as individuals, they need to know, feel and experience that they are part of a bigger whole, that life has a deeper purpose.
Lunacharsky saw the desire, as well as the seed of self awareness of the human collective, in all major religions, but especially in the Abrahamic variety. Most strongly it is expressed in the creation myth which is stating that humanity shall “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
The more sophisticated our culture became the less important God turned out to be for us. The Judean God “evolved” from some semitic tribe's god of war, to the the less active law maker to the beloved universal father figure Jesus preached about and later to the no longer active creator, many Deist American founding father believed in.
Now it was time to take the last step and remove the last remnants of superstition out of religion all together. What is left are the inspiring tales and teachings of outstandingly charismatic proto-revolutionaries, shrouding their ideology of the united human community into religious sermon. The Socialist had and have to speak to the hearts of people as much as to their minds.
A lesson that became important in the years of the revolution and the next decades afterwards when the struggle for the soul of the USS was fought over then. A lesson that has lost nothing of its power since we are right now struggling for the soul of the international Socialist movement.
(1*)
In the USS we have to different words for religion. “religio” and “scienca religio/scireligio”. The latter means “scientific religion” differentiating Cosmism and the strictly philosophical from of Buddhism, who lack any supernatural elements, from traditional religions.
(2*)
They regarded anything resembling the religious worship as suspect, even if it only served as a communal bonding exercise and explicitly didn't involve any supernatural beings or afterlife.
Notes:
(1)
Feuerbach's legacy becomes evident in the first phrase of Cosmist Church's version of the Lord's Prayer: “Homo homini deus est. Sic itur ad astra sternendas nobis et vere immortal” or “Man to man is a god. Such is path to the stars and immortality paved for us.”This overdose of Latin in the early history of the Cosmist Church is partly responsible for the tendency of soveta institutions to give themselves classic motto and mythological themes.
Despite or because there was a general policy to overthrow the old order in any aspect of life, people were seeking the familiar, some form continuity, a connection to their roots. Using Latin as well and drawing form Orthodox Iconography helped people in the transition years to find this pillar of stability in their life.