N.

A.

BERDYAEV

(BERDIAEV)

PERSONALISM AND MARXISM

(1935 - #400)
I.
The relationship of Marxism to personalism, as also its
relationship to humanism, is more complicated, than is generally
thought. It is very easy to point out the anti-personalist character of
Marxism. It is hostile to the principle of person, as also is every purely
sociological teaching about man, which purports to know merely the
social man, formulated as object. Likewise anti-personalist in its
understanding of man is the sociological school of Durkheim. Hostile
to the principle of person is every single-planed world-outlook, for
which the nature of man is comprised solely by its belonging to the
social plane of being, i.e. man possesses no dimension of depth. They
often contrast Proudhon to Marx, suggesting, that his social system
was more favourable to personalism, than is Marxism. 1 But the
teaching of Proudhon also about man is indeed entirely social, and
person for him does not possess any inner dimension of depth, i.e.
inner life. True, Proudhon was a very keen critic of Communism, as a
system of the slavery of man, and his particular socio-economic
system was the more favourable for person. But he was essentially
was inclined towards a peculiar individualism hostile to Capitalism,
rather than towards personalism. The philosophic world-outlook of
Proudhon would not permit making a distinction between
individualism and personalism. Likewise to me it does not seem
especially fruitful to contrast Proudhon with Marx in the
understanding of dialectics. In Proudhon the contradiction has not
been surmounted, but has been preserved. 2 But by this dialectic it is
deprived of its dynamic character. Proudhon stands closer to Kants
teaching about antinomies, than to the Hegelian dialectics. But
insofar as Hegel and Marx believed in the attainment of an ultimate
harmony, not permitting of contradiction, at the third stage, at the
synthesis, they certainly are subject to criticism.
To substantiate a basis for personalism, which also possesses its
own social projection, is possible only in such instance, if we

acknowledge, that the problem of man is more primary than the

problem of society. And prior to passing on to a discussion of the
relationship of Marxism to the principle of person, it is necessary to
define, what we philosophically understand by person. It is not
appropriate to confuse the concept of person with the concept of
individual, as was frequently done by thought in the XIX and XX
Centuries. The individual is a naturalistic category, biological and
sociological, and it appertains to the natural world. The individual is
from a biological point of view part of the race, and from the
sociological point of view it is part of society. It -- is an atom,
indivisible, not having inner life, it is anonymous. The individual does
not possess any unique or independent existence apart from race or
from society. The individual as regards itself is entirely a racial and a
social being, only an element, part of a defining correlation with the
whole. Person signifies something altogether different. Person is a
spiritual and religious category. Person speaks not only about man
belonging to the natural and social order, but also to a different
dimension of being, to the spiritual world. Person is a form of being,
higher than anything natural or social. We shall see, that it is not able
to be part of anything whatsoever. Society has a tendency to consider
person as an individual subordinate within it, as its product. From the
sociological point of view, person is part of society, and it is a very
small part. Society is the large circle, person however -- is a small
circle set within it. In a sociological setting, person is unable to oppose
itself to society and it cannot fight for itself. But from the point of
view of existential philosophy everything is turned round -- society is
a small part of person, is merely its social condition, and the world is
merely part of person. Person is the existential centre, not society and
not nature, it is the existentialised subject, and not object. Person
realises itself in social and cosmic life, but it can do this only because
that within it, it is independent from nature and from the principle of
society. Person is not definable as a part in relation to any sort of
whole. Person is an whole, it is a totality, it is integral, it bears within
itself the universal, and it cannot be part of any sort of the general,
whether of the world or of society, or of universal being or Divinity.
Person is not at all of nature nor does it appertain, like everything
natural, to an objective natural hierarchy, nor is it able to be put into
any sort of natural order. Person is rotted in the spiritual world, its
existence presupposes a dualism of spirit and nature, freedom and
determinism, the individual and the general, the Kingdom of God and
the kingdom of Caesar. The existence of the human person in the
world bespeaks this, that the world is not self-sufficient, that
inevitably there is a transcending of the world, its completion is not in

it itself, but in God, in supra-natural being. The freedom of the human

person, is freedom not only within society and within the civil realm,
but also from society and from the civil realm, and it is predicated by
that which is over and above the world, over and above nature and
society, over and above the kingdom of Caesar, for it is supra-natural
being, it is the spiritual world, it is God. Person is a sundering within
the natural world, and it is not explainable from it. 3
Person is first of all unity in multiplicity and immutability within
change. Person is not a coordination of parts, it is a primal unity.
Person mustneeds undergo change, to disclose the creativity of the
new, to grow and to be enriched. And it mustneeds remain itself, to
be the unchangeable subject of these changes. When we meet again
with our good acquaintance after a number of years during which we
have not seen him, we shall perhaps undergo to simultaneously
disturbing and painful impressions. If this man has not changed at all,
and he repeats certain things which have gone cold and stiff, if he has
not grown nor enriched himself by anything, then this produces a
painful impression. This means, that the person has not realised
himself. The realisation of person presupposes changes. But the
obverse painful impression is possible. This man has changed so
much, that it is impossible to recognise him, and then he produces the
impression of a different man. He not only has changed, but is himself
become changed. The unity of person has been destroyed in the
changes, the existential centre torn to shreds. Person is first of all an
unity of destiny. Destiny is change, amidst the history and retention
of unity of the existential centre. This is a mystery of person. Person
presupposes the trans-personal, the higher being which it reflects, and
trans-personal values, which it realises and which comprise the wealth
of its lifes content. Person is not able to be self-sufficient, it
mustneeds emerge from itself towards other persons, towards the
human and towards the cosmic multiplicity, and towards God. Egocentrism, being locked up within oneself and being absorbed by
oneself disintegrates the person. Person realises itself through a
constant victory over ego-centrism, over the hardening of self. The
realisation of person means the filling-in of its universal content, for it
cannot exist only by its particularity. Person is not something
completed, it forms itself, it posits ends, like Gods idea about every
single man. The realisation of person presupposes the creative process
setting off into infinitude. Person-ness is act. M Scheler defines
person, as the concrete unity of all acts. 4 But contrary to M Scheler,
it is not life that manifests itself as active, but rather spirit, the spiritual
principle in man, for life indeed is rather more passive. Only the
creative act can be termed act, and in act there is created the new, the

not previously existing, and non-being becomes being. Person

presupposes the creative nature of man. Creativity however
presupposes freedom. Authentic creativity is creativity from out of
freedom. Creativity is contrary to evolution, which is determinism.
Only the creative subject is person. A being that exists entirely
determined by nature and by the social process cannot be termed
person, not yet having become a person. Le Senne credibly opposes
existence in the sense of an existential philosophy of determinisation.
5
Person defines itself on the outside for nature and for society, but it
defines itself from within. Person is resistance to a determining from
within, a determining by society and by nature. And only that one is
manifest as person, who conquers this determining. Person is not born
in natures generative process and it is not formed in the social
process. The existence of person presupposes an interruptedness, it
does not permit of evolutionary uninterruptedness. Person is created
by God and in this is its highest merit, and the source of its
independence and freedom. That which is born in the generative
process and formed in the social process is merely the individual, in
which person needs to be realised. Person is resistance to determining
and is therefore anguish. The affirmation and realisation of person is
always anguish. The refusal of this anguish, the dread of anguish is a
refusal of person. The realisation of person, of its merit and
independence is a painful process, it is an heroic struggle. Person-ness
is struggle, and the refusal of the struggle is a refusal of person. And
man happens often upon this refusal. Person is contrary to
conformism, it is a non agreement with the conformism, which nature
and society utilise. Since person is an existential centre and
presupposes a susceptibility towards suffering and joy, it is therefore
erroneous to adapt person as a category for the nation and other transpersonal communities, as the philosopher of personalism Shtern does.
The nation is individuality, but not person-ness. We come to this, that
person is a paradoxical combination of contraries: of the personal and
the trans-personal, of the finite and the infinite, of the interrupted and
the developing, of freedom and of destiny. And the fundamental
paradox of person is in this, that it mustneeds still be created and it
mustneeds already be, so that there be possible the creative creating of
person. One, who mustneeds himself create, mustneeds already be.
Person is not determined by society, but it is social, it can realise the
fullness of its life only in community with other persons. The social
projection of personalism presupposes a radical, a revolutionary
transvaluation of social values, i.e. the transfer of the centre of gravity
from the values of society, the state, the nation, the collective, the
social group, to the valuation of person, of every person. The social

projection of personalism is a revolutionary repudiation of the

capitalistic regime, of the utmost anti-personalist, the utmost deathbearing for person, as ever existed in history. The socialisation of the
economy, which affirms the right to work and a guarantee of a
worthwhile existence for each human life not permitting the
exploitation of man by man, is a demand of personalism. The sole
system, therefore, corresponding to the eternal truth of personalism, is
a system of personalist socialism. At the basis of a social worldconcept of personalism lies not the idea of equality nor the idea of
justice, but rather the dignity of every human person, which should
receive the possibility to realise itself.
After these necessary definitions of person we shall look at how
Marxism stands in relation to it.
II.
The attitude of Marxism towards person is antagonistic. This is
connected with the vagueness of the anthropology of Marxism. The
anti-personalism of Marx -- is a consequence of the anti-personalism
of Hegel. Hegel acknowledged the sovereignty of the general over the
individual. The person for Hegel does not possess self-sufficient
significance, it is merely a function of the world spirit. Kierkegaard
revolted against the subordination of the human person to the world
spirit, i.e. to the general. And such was the meaning of Dostoevskys
revolt. 6 The talented creativity of Ibsen is saturated by these motifs.
The anti-personalism of Hegel was inherited also by L. Feuerbach.
The humanism of Feuerbach was through the generative, and not the
personalistic. 7 Man realises himself in the collective life of the genus
and ultimately he is dissolved in it. Feuerbach broke through towards
an existential philosophy, he attempted to discover the thou, and
not only the object. 8 But the Hegelianism that flipped over into
materialism prevented Feuerbach from revealing person, as an
authentic and primary existence. Marx follows upon Hegel and
Feuerbach, and he recognises the primacy of the generic being of man
over his personal being. With Marx it is possible to discover the
realism of concept of the medieval Scholastics. The general, the
generic, precedes the partialised, the individualised, and defines it.
Society, and class, is more primary a reality than is man, than is
person. Class is a reality situated in being, and not in thought. The
class is not, but the human person is an abstraction of thought. Class
is what then is sort of an universalia ante rem. It is class, and not
man, that thinks and effects judgement and holds value. Man as

person, and not as generic being, is not capable of independent

thought and judgement. Man is a socio-generic being, a function of
society. Already predisposed by this is the totalitarianism of the
Communist society and state. In this totalitarianism is in opposition
to man himself, and not to society and state. Only the human person
can reflect in itself the integral and universal being, and society and
state are always partialised and cannot contain the universalised.
Since Marxism is interested exclusively in the general and is not
interested in the individual, the weakest side of Marxism then appears
to be its psychology. If Marx himself not be considered, and from
whom it is possible to find interesting psychological remarks, then the
psychological excursions of Marxists usually is exhausted by
invective. Even the psychology of classes is not entirely worked out.
The bourgeois type is altogether not investigated, but is represented as
being malevolent, blood-thirsty, preparing for an imperialistic war.
The weakness of psychology of the Marxists is particularly
discomforting, if compared with the works of Zombart, de Man, M.
Weber, Zimmel and others. It is impossible to be concerned by
psychology amidst an exclusive interest for the general and the
generic, alongside the interest for the struggle. Instead of psychology
they give moral judgement and sentence. And this is a defect of all the
Marxist teaching about man. Although in Marx himself there is a
prophetic element and he found himself in conflict with the society
surrounding him, yet this teaching about man which emerged from
him, negates the prophetic principle, which always signifies the
elevation of the human person over the social collective, and conflict
with it in the name of the realisation of truth, to which an inner voice
summons, is the voice of God. A complete realisation of Marxism in
human society mustneeds lead to the annihilation of the prophetic
principle, not only in the religious sphere, but likewise in the sphere of
philosophy, art and social life. The annihilation of propheticism
results in a legacy of ultimate conformism of person in relation to
society, of complete adaptability, excluding the possibility of conflict.
This is a very negative side of Marxism, and it results from its antipersonalist spirit. Marx himself was a person, standing in opposition
to the world, yet the Marxists cannot be likewise. An example of the
death of the prophetic spirit was already demonstrated by the
socialisation of Christianity in history. But anti-personalism is only
one side of Marxism, its other side.
The sources of the Marxist critique of Capitalism -- are
personalist and humanist. Marx revolted first of all against the

Capitalist regime, because that in it the human person is crushed, is

transformed into a thing. In Capitalist society occurs that, which
Marx called Verdinglichung, the making a thing of man. He saw
justly the dehumanisation, the inhumanity in this society. Both the
proletariat and the capitalists are dehumanised. The working man,
deprived of the implements of production, is compelled to dispose of
his labour, as though it were merchandise. By this he is transformed
into a thing needful for production. There occurs for man an
alienation from his work activity, it is thrust out into the world as
though objective things, it is projected to the outside. The results of
the work activity of man, of alienation from the total existence of
man, are made by external force, by the oppressing and enslaving of
man. In essence, the gap between mental and physical labour is still a
splintering of the whole of human nature and ought to be
surmounted. But this problem was put to us more by L. Tolstoy and
N. Fedorov, than by Marx. The thoughts of Marx in any case,
particularly of the young Marx about alienation and being made into
a thing, ought to be recognised as marks of genius. Herein lies the
initial motif of his denunciation of Capitalism and of his antagonism
towards the Capitalist order. 9 This motif is purely human. Marx
declares a revolutionary revolt against the social order, in which
occurs the fragmentation of the integral human person, in which part
of it is separated, alienated and transferred into the world of things.
The proletariat is also a man, for whom part of his being is alienated
and transferred into the world of things, into the economy oppressing
it. The teaching of Marx about Verdinglichung, about
dehumanisation, was particularly developed by a very intelligent and
interesting, and quite independent among Communist writers,
Lukacs. 10 Marx emphasises, that if socialists attribute an enormous
universal historical role to the proletariat, this is not because they
worship him as a divinity, but rather, because that the proletariat
represents an abstraction of everything human, and since his human
nature is alienated from it, he also compels himself to return himself
to the fullness of human-ness. 11 And it is especially one, who is
deprived of the fullness of human-ness, that ought to achieve this
fullness. This is dialectic thought. For Marx, for the original Marxism
it was a very important thought, that a deprivation occurs, an
alienation of man from human nature occurs, and in its most acute
form this occurs for the proletariat. Hence result the illusions of
consciousness. Man undertakes personal activity for an objective
worlds of things, subject to inexorable laws.

In the early Marx is to be sensed the very strong influence of

Feuerbach. What Feuerbach says about religion, Marx extended into
all the other areas. In religion Feuerbach saw alienation of the proper
nature of man. Man created God in his own image and likeness.
Belonging to his unique nature presents for man a reality situated
outside of him and over him. The poor man has a rich God, i.e. all
the riches of man are alienated from him and bestown to God. Faith
in God as it were proletarises man. When man becomes rich, God
becomes impoverished and vanishes altogether. To return back to
man his riches, he then becomes a totalitarian being, and no part of
his nature can any longer be alienated. Marx placed this idea of
Feuerbach at the foundation of his talented critique of Capitalism and
political economy. And for Capitalism this is indisputably more
applicable, than for faith in God. The teaching about the fetishism of
goods in Tom I of Kapital is perhaps the most remarkable discovery
of Marx. The fetishism of goods in Capitalist society is also an illusion
of consciousness, in the power of which the products of human work
activity are represented by things, by the objective world, in force by
inalterable laws crushing man. Marx navigated this economic world
of things, in which the bourgeios political economy revealed its laws.
The economy is not a world of things, it is not an objective reality of
some sort, it is but the activity of man, the labour of man, the
relationship of man to man. And since the economy can be changed,
man can take control of the economy. The riches, created by man,
and alienated from him in a world of things by an objective economy,
can be returned to him. Man can become rich, a totalitarian being,
everything can be returned to him, that had been taken away from
him. And this will be accomplished by the activity of the proletariat,
i.e. of those people, from which the most wealth would be alienated.
Everything is but the product of human activity, of human struggle.
Economic fate does not exist, we shall conquer it. From the illusion of
consciousness, caused by the false objectivisation of human activity, it
can be set free. And this is the task of the proletariat. Marx defined
capital not as a real thing, but as a social relationship of people to the
process of production. This definition was very shocking to bourgeois
economists. By this definition the centre of gravity of economic life
was transferred to human activity and struggle. In the Theses of
Feuerbach by Marx is a remarkable place in which he says, that the
chief error of the materialists up until then was in this, that they
viewed reality under the form of object, and not as human activity,
not subjectively. 12 Nothing could be more anti-materialistic. This
place merely witnesses, how controversial the materialism of Marx is.
That which Marx says here is far more appropriate for existential

philosophy, than for materialism. For materialism everything is

object, a thing, whereas for existential philosophy everything is
subject, activity. In Marx, just as in Feuerbach, there were elements of
existential philosophy. The early Marx obtained his understanding of
the exclusive activity of man, as spirit, and not as thing, from German
idealism. But the idea of person was lacking in him.
Economic materialism itself can be understood twofold. First of
all, this teaching produces the impression of a consequent and
extreme social determinism. The economy determines the whole of
human life, not only the structure of society, but also the ideology, all
the spiritual culture, and there exists an invariable regularity of the
social process. It was in such a spirit of extreme determinism that both
the Marxists and the critics of Marxism understood Marxism. But this
is merely one of the interpretations, one of the sides of Marxism, and
another understanding is possible. That the economy should define
the whole of human life, this is the evil of past times, the slavery of
man. The day will come, when this servile dependence on the
economy will cease, and the economy will depend on man, man will
become its master. Marxism announced at the same time both about
the slavery of man and about the possibility of the victory of man.
Economic determinism itself by its sufficiently sad theory is not
capable to summon up a revolutionary enthusiasm. But to an high
degree Marxism possesses the capacity to proclaim the revolutionary
will. Young Soviet philosophy moves in a direction of an
indeterminist understanding of Marxism. 13 Marx still lived in a
Capitalist society and he saw, that economics wholly determines
human life, economics enslaves the consciousness of man and evokes
an illusion of consciousness. But Russian Communists live in an era
of the proletarians revolution and the world discloses itself to them
from another angle. Marx and Engels spoke about a leap from the
kingdom of necessity into a kingdom of freedom. The Russian
Communists sense themselves the accomplishers of this leap, they
already are in the kingdom of freedom. Therefore for them Marxism
is inverted, though they at all costs want to continue to be Marxists.
Already it is not economic being that determines consciousness, but
consciousness, the revolutionary, proletarian consciousness that
determines economic being; the economy does not determine politics,
but rather politics determines the economy. Therefore in
philosophising the Russian Communists want to construct a
philosophy, based on the idea of self-actualisation. Into matter is
transferred all the qualities of spirit -- freedom, activity, reason, etc.
Such a sort of philosophy is demonstrated as corresponding to the

revolutionary will. Mechanistic materialism is condemned, it does not

correspond to the exaltation of the revolutionary will, it is not a
philosophy of the heroic struggle of man. Man is demonstrated to be
free from rule by things, from the objective, from the determinativeregulated world, yet not as an individual, but rather as collective man.
The individual is not free in relation to the human collective, to the
Communist society, and he attains freedom only in identifying
himself with collectivised being. This was so already not only with
Marx, but also with Engels, for whom man is authentically realised
only in commonality, in generic being. Communism is exceptionally
dynamic, it affirms an unheard of activism of man. But this is not an
activism of the human person, this is an activism of society, an
activism of the collective. Individual man is completely passive in
regard to the collective, to the Communist society, it discovers active
strength only by its dissolution into generic being. Communism
affirms the activism only of human generic being. This was contained
in Feuerbach, and this emerged in Hegel, for the Hegelian world
spirit.
Marxism can be interpreted humanistically, and it is possible to
see in it the struggle against the alienation from man of his human
nature, for the restoring of a totalised existence to him. Marxism can
be interpreted on the side of indeterminism , to view in him a
declaration of the liberation of man from the force of the economy,
from the dominion of fate over human life. Marxism exalts the
human will, it wants to create a new man. But in it is also a fanatic
side, deeply debasing of man. The Marxist doctrine about man is
situated in a complete dependence on Capitalist industry, on the
factory. The new Communist man is prepared in the factory, he is a
manufactured product. The psychical soul structure of the new man
depends on the conditions of life in the factory, on big industry. The
dialectic of Marxism is connected with this. Good is begotten from
evil, which becomes all the more powerful; light is ignited from
darkness, which becomes all the more sombre. The conditions of life
of Capitalist industry embitters the proletariat, dehumanises him,
alienates his human nature from him, and makes his existence
possessed by ressentiment, spite, hatred, revenge. Proletarianisation is
dehumanisation, a robbery of the human nature. Least of all in this
are the proletariat guilty. But how to await this progressive
dehumanisation, this robbery of human nature, this terrible
constriction of consciousness of the appearance of the new type of
man? Marxism awaits a miraculous dialectical transition of that,
which it reckons as evil, into good, into a better life. But fate weighs

upon the proletariat all the same, the fate of Capitalist industry, of
being exploited, oppressed, the alienation from the worker of all his
human nature. The highest type of man would be the result of full
alienation of all the human nature, complete dehumanisation.
Suchlike a concept is completely anti-personalised, it does not
acknowledge the self worth of the human person, the depth of its
being. Man for suchlike a concept is a function of the world social
process, a function of the general, and the faculty, which would
manufacture the new man, is the cunning of reason (Hegel). A
quantity of evil transfers into a quantity of good. The activity of
person, its consciousness, its conscience, its creativity, here do not
apply. The cunning reason does everything, which is in general.
Lukacs recognises the debasing influence of Capitalism on the class
consciousness of workers and he warns about this, he proposes to
struggle against this. 14 This all speaks but about the complexity and
the conflicting condition of Marxism. Marxism gave expression not
only to the struggle against the oppression of man by man, against
injustice and slavery, but also reflected with the materialist spirit the
repression obtaining from Capitalist bourgeois societies, the spiritual
decay of these societies.
III.
Neither classical Marxism nor Russian Communism remark on a
point here, nor did Feuerbach note it either. The critique of Marxism
humanism is connected with this. An alienation of human nature
occurs. According to Feuerbach and Marx, faith in God and in the
spiritual world is nothing other, than the alienation of the higher
nature of man, and the transfer of it into the transcendental sphere.
Human nature in its totality ought to be restored to man. But how is
this restoration to man of the fullness of his nature to occur. In
materialistic Marxism this restoration does not happen. The spiritual
nature is not restored to man, it perishes together with the destruction
of the transcendental sphere. Man remains robbed, he remains a
material being, a lump of matter. But a lump of matter cannot possess
human dignity. In a material being there cannot be realisation of the
totality of life. Communism wants to return to the proletariat the
means of production alienated from him, but it does not at all want to
return the spiritual element of human nature alienated from him,
spiritual life. There therefore cannot be talk about attainment of the
totality of life, just as there cannot be talk about the authentic dignity
of man. The dignity of man is connected with this, that he is a
spiritual being, the image and likeness of Divine being, that in him is

an element independent of the external world, and from society. The

dignity of man and the fullness of his life is connected with this, that
man belongs not only to the kingdom of Caesar, but also to the
Kingdom of God. This means, that man possesses an higher dignity
and totality, a value of life, if he is a person. The idea of person does
not exist in Marxism, just as it does not exist in Communism, and
therefore they cannot offer a defense of man. Communism at best
affirms the individual, a socialised individual, and demands for him a
totality of life, but it denies the person. The individual is merely a
being, formed by society by way of a drilled discipline. Lenin said,
that after a period of dictatorship, in which there would be no sort of
freedom, people would become accustomed to the new conditions of
social life and they would sense themselves free in the Communist
society. 15 This preparation of people by way of a drill-discipline and
habit is contrary to the principle of person, of always presupposing
autonomy. Marx began with the struggle against dehumanisation in
Capitalist society. This dehumanisation it was necessary to oppose by
humanisation. But in actuality a complex dialectical process
transpired, in which the humanism crossed over into anti-humanism.
Marxism is one of the crises of humanism, one of the exists from the
midst of the humanistic kingdom, which attempted to affirm man
upon himself alone, i.e. it acknowledged his existing as self sufficient,
sufficient unto itself. In materialistic Communism the process of
dehumanisation continues, which Marx denounced in Capitalist
society. Communist industrialism can likewise dehumanise man, just
like Capitalist industrialism, it can transform him into a technical
function. Man is not examined as free spirit, i.e. not as person, but as
a function of the social process, as a material existent, pre-occupied
exclusively with the economic and technical, and during the hours of
leisure being entertained by art, summoned forth to embellish the
industrialised life. The anti personalism of Communism is connected
not with its economic system, but with its spirit, with its denial of
spirit. This mustneeds be kept sight of all the time. Personalisation
indeed requires a socialisation of economy, but it does not allow of
the socialisation of the spiritual life, which would signify the
alienation of the spiritual life from man, i.e. the deadening of spirit.
The anti-personalism of Marxism is moreover connected with a
false attitude towards time. Marxism and especially its practical
application in Communism looks upon the relationship between
present and future, as upon a relationship of means and end. The
present time is a means, in it an immediate end does not exist. And
they permit of means having no sort of semblance with the end --

coercion and tyranny for the realisation of freedom, hatred and

contention for the realisation of brotherhood, etc. The totality of
human life would be realised only in the future, the perhaps remote
future. At the present time man remains robbed, from him everything
is alienated, and he himself is alienated from himself. And while
Marxist Communism affirms man and the totality of man in the
future, at the present time it negates man. Man at present is merely a
means for the man of the future, the present generation merely a
means for the future generation. Such an attitude towards time is
incompatible with the principle of person, with the recognition of the
self-worth of every human person and its right to realisation of the
fullness of its life, with its self-consciousness, as an end and not as a
part, as an end and not as a means. Regardless of what sort of man or
to whatever sort of class he might belong, it is impossible for him to
be converted into simply a means, or to consider him exclusively as
an obstacle. This is a problem of anthropology, and not sociology,
though in Marxism there is however not yet an anthropology.
There are two problems -- the problem of man and the problem
of society, and the primacy, ultimately, ought to appertain to the
problem of man. But Marxism affirms the primacy of the problem of
society over the problem of man. Marx was a remarkable sociologist
and made large contributions in this area. But he was not at all an
anthropologist, his anthropology was to the extreme simplistic and
out-dated, it was connected with a rationalistic materialism and
naturalistic evolutionism. Man is the product of nature and society,
more concretely -- he is the product of social class, and there is no sort
of independent inner core in man. Anthropology is entirely
subordinated to sociology, is merely an aspect of sociology. Man is
considered as the image and likeness of society, while society also is
that higher being, which he reflects. To this is opposed an
anthropology, based not on sociology, but on theology (I here use this
word not in the scholarly sense). Man is not the image and likeness of
society, but rather the image and likeness of God. Therefore in man
there is a spiritual principle independent of society, wherein only is it
possible to affirm the dignity of man, as free spirit, active and creative.
Philosophic anthropology first of all teaches about man, as a person,
and it is personalistic. Person cannot be without the spiritual
principle, which makes man independent from the determinism of the
external environment, both natural and social. The spiritual principle
is not at all opposed to the human body, to the physical material
condition of man, connecting him with the life of all the natural
world. Abstract spiritualism is powerless to construct a teaching about

the integrality of man. The spiritual principle encompasses also the

human body, and the material in man, it means seizing mastery
both of soul and body and the attainment of integrality of the
image of person, of utmost qualification, the entering of all the man
into another order of being. Body likewise belongs to the human
person and from it there cannot be abstracted the spiritual in man.
Body is already form, signifying the victory of spirit over formless
matter. The old Cartesian dualism of soul and body, spirit and
matter is a completely false philosophy, which it is possible to
reckon surmountable. The present-time dualism is a dualism of
spirit and nature, freedom and necessity, person and
thing, which has altogether a different meaning. The body of
man and even the body of the world can come forth from the
kingdom of nature, of necessity, of thing, and cross over into
the kingdom of spirit, of freedom, of person. This meaning
possesses the Christian teaching about the resuscitation of the dead, a
resuscitation in the flesh. The resurrected flesh is not natural matter,
subject to determination, nor is it a thing; it is spiritual flesh, new
flesh, but it is not fleshlessness, not abstract spirit. The teaching about
this resurrection is also distinct from the teaching about the
immortality of soul, in that it requires eternal life for all the whole of
man, and not for its abstracted part, not for the soul only. This
therefore is a personalist teaching. The independence of the spiritual
principle in man from the dominion of society does not likewise mean
the opposition of the spiritual to the social, i.e. the abstraction of
the spiritual from the social, but it means that man ought to
define society and be its master, to realise in full his life also in
society, and not the other way around, not to be defined by society,
not to be its slave, its function. The spiritual comprises also the
social, the social condition of man, and this signifies the attainment
of wholeness, integrality, totality. The end-purpose is not society, the
end is man himself, the fullness and perfection of life, while the
perfective organisation of society is itself but the means. Marxism is
anti-personalist in that it posits the end-purpose not in man who is
called to eternal life, but rather in society.
The fundamental error basic to Communist Marxism is with
this, that it believes in the possibility of coercive accomplishment in
not only of justice, but also of the brotherhood of people, in the
possibility of coercive organisation not only of society, but also of
community, of the communion of people. Socialism derives from the
word society, Communism however derives from the word
communion, the mutual uniting of people one to another. Socialism is

quite distinct from Communism not on the plane of the socialeconomic organisation of society, and on this they can agree. But
socialism can be perceived exclusively as the social-economic
organisation of society therein limiting its task to this, whereas
Communism inevitably is totalitarian, it presupposes a whole worldoutlook, it wants to create a new man, a new brotherhood of people,
its own relationship to all the whole of life. Communism is not
agreeable to this, that it should be accepted in part, it demands an allentire acceptance, a conversion to Communism, as though to a
religious faith. The partial, extended but to the social-economic
sphere, recognition of the truth of Communism, and united with a
different world-outlook, is also socialism. By socialism it is necessary
to connote the creation of a new classless society, in which there
would be realisation of great social justice and in which there would
not be permitted the exploitation of man by man. The creation of the
new man however and the brotherhood of people is a spiritual and
religious task, it presupposes an inner regeneration of people.
Communism does not want to permit this, what actually is religion.
Therefore a Christian can be a socialist, and even, in my conviction,
ought to be a socialist. But it is difficult for him to be a Communist,
since he cannot be agreeable to acceptance of the totalitarian worldoutlook of Communism, into which enter in materialism and atheism.
Christian personalism not only ought not to oppose the creation of a
classless society, it ought to direct its creation. The class society,
which considers as but means the vast quantity of human persons and
permits the exploitation of the human person and the negation of the
human dignity of workers, is contrary to the principle of personalism.
Personalism ought to desire the socialisation of the economy, it ought
to guarantee each human person the right to work and to a dignified
human existence, it ought to secure for each the possibility to realise
the fullness of life. But the socialisation of the economy is not able of
itself to create a new man or a brotherly community of people, it
regulates the community by communication between people on the
soil of justice, but it does not create the community, the communion
between people, the brotherhood of people. A community of people
bears a personalist character, it is always a community of persons, a
matter of I and Thou, the uniting of the I and Thou into the We.
This is unattainable by an external organisation of society, which
seizes upon only part of the condition of the human person and does
not attain to its depths. No sort of organisation of society is able to
create the totality of life. The illusion of this totalisation obtains in a
strange constriction of the life of the person, the impoverishment of its
consciousness, by the strangling in it of the spiritual side of life. The

Communist consciousness is propped up by this illusion. Marxism

creates this illusion by a non-credible teaching about person, about the
whole man. A movement, directed towards the creation of a new
classless society, one indisputably more just, can be accompanied by a
degradation of spirituality, by a shrinking of the spiritual nature of
man. But it is possible, that the creation of a classless society, which
would be accompanied by the materialistic illusions of consciousness,
would lead to a spiritual renaissance, whereas at present it is
belaboured by the class struggle, its wicked topic of the day. When the
classless society would be created, they would then see, that
materialism and atheism, the Dukhobor-like spirit-denying in
Communism belongs to the past, to an epoch of the struggle of
classes, and the new classless man would be set afront the ultimate
mystery of being, afront the final problematics of spirit. Then also
would be disclosed in plain view the tragedy of human life, and that
man longs for eternity. Then only would there be attained a totality of
the existence of the person, and they would cease to accept the partial
in place of this totality. In a period aggravated by the social struggle,
the social system most corresponding to Christian socialism, is a
system
of
personalist
socialism.
Nikolai

1999

by

translator

Fr.

Berdyaev

Stephen

Janos.

Journal Put,

juil./sept.
48,

(1935 - 400 - en)

PERSONALIZM
1935,
p. 3-19.

MARKSIZM.
No.

(Appeared in English translation under title Marxism and the

Conception of Personality in Journal Christendom, dec.
1935,
No.
2.
Above
translation
is
not
a
reprint
of
this.)

Vide the interesting book of Denis de Rougemont: Politique de la

personne. De Rougemont contrasts Hegel and Marx -- opposite
Kierkegaard and Proudhon.
2

Vide concerning the dialectics of Proudhon, in distinction from that

of Hegel and Marx, in G. Gurvitchs: L id?e du droit social.
3

This is the fundamental thought of the remarkable book of

Nesmelov, The Science of Man (Nauka o cheloveke).
4

Vide Max Scheler: Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die

materielle Wertethik.
5

Vide the remarkable book of Le Senne: Obstacle et valeur.

Belinsky revolted against the world spirit of Hegel in the name of the
living human person and he anticipated the dialectic of Ivan
Karamazov. Vide the book, The Socialism of Belinsky, in which
are gathered the remarkable letters to Botkin.
7

Vide L. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentum.

Vide his Philosophie der Zukunft.

Vide K. Marx, :Der Historische Materialismus. Die

Fruehschriften. Kroener Verlag (Into two volumes are gathered the
youthful works of Marx). Vide likewise August Cornu, K. Marx:
LHomme et l?uvre. De lHegelianisme au materialisme historique.
10

Georg Lukacs, Geschichte und Klassen -- Bewusstsein. Studien

ueber marxistische Dialektik.
11
12

Vide Tom I, Der Historische Materialismus, p. 377.

Der Hauptmangel alles bisherigen Materialismus ist, dass der

Gegenstand, die Wirklichkeit, Sinnlichkeit nur unter der Form des
Objekts oder der Anschauung gefasst wird: nicht aber als sinnlichmenschliche Taetigkeit, Praxiss, nicht subjektiv. (The chief defect
of all hitherto existing materialism is, that the matter, the reality, the
sense will have been grasped only under the form of object or concept:
but not as sensual human activity, praxis, nothing subjective.) -Thesen ueber Feuerbach. -- Der historische Materialismus, II
Band. S. 3.

13

Vide my article, The General Line of Soviet Philosophy and

Militant Atheism. -- Put.
14

Vide his cited book, Geschichte und Klassen -- Bewusstsein.

15

Vide V. Lenin, State and Revolution. Lenin in his book,

Materialism and Empirico-Criticism, defended a quite vulgar
materialism and naturalism. His philosophy is much inferior to the
philosophy of A. Bogdanov, and it cannot even be termed socialist, let
alone
philosophy,
ultimately.

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