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Grady McMurtry The Millenial Glow Myth and Magic in The Marxist Ethics V 1.0.5 PDF
Grady McMurtry The Millenial Glow Myth and Magic in The Marxist Ethics V 1.0.5 PDF
Grady McMurtry The Millenial Glow Myth and Magic in The Marxist Ethics V 1.0.5 PDF
I')
By
THESIS
MASTER OF ARTS
in
Political Science
in the
GRADUATE DIVISION
of the
UNIVERSITY 0? CALIFORNIA
Approved:
Conaoittee in Charge
has often occurred to me, when I have had occasion to refer to Marxist
per se. It is not until we understand how a person thinks that we are
as a world-view and the myth, magic and ethic of the tribalistic uni
understand the term, for the writings of Marx comprise only a small
of magic is the only way in which one can understand Marxism, but rather
fore plunging into the work at hand. What, after all, is meant by
its scope may be, a myth is a whole and attempts to explain or justify
trol of things and events by a direct act of will on the part of the
which we live. Magic knows and does by a direct act of will on the
part of the person knowing and doing, and magic is understood by a magi
cal myth which interprets the world in terms of the coercive relationship
Marxist ethic where the goal is the act of Revolution and its consequence,
the millennium.
method. Second, irrationality arises from the assertion that all knowl
edge can be directed to conform to one and only one system of truth, for
held, and will he here held, to center around certain basic principles.
clusive magical myth, the goal oriented ethic of the millennial act,
used as an outline for the subsequent three chapters. The second chap
ter is concerned with the Marxist act, its millennium, and the goal
state of mind the Marxist brings to his vocation of leadership, and the
which the ethic of the act and the charisma of the leader are comprehensible.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE............................................................................................................................................ ii
Myth............................................................................................... 70
Magic............................................................................................. 78
Definitional .............................. 90
Protean................................... 99
Conclusion.................................... 118
BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................... 119
vi
Chapter I
K. R. Popper
In making this inquiry into the myth and. magic of the Marxist
ture, but all totemic structures have the element of tribal inclusive-
salient characteristics:
of group will;
Malinowski says
1
2
society "in the large", as it were, and I shall not discuss the question
for that is not the point at Issue. We are not discussing personalities,
but ideas and how they affect people. What is important is that there
issues, that we call "Marxism" and that this corpus of ideas has its
in mind let us delve into the subject of myth and magic in the Marxist
ethic and ascertain the extent to which our criterion of comparison may
be said to apply.
politics one often encounters the term "tribalism" or "the new tribalism"
than superficial is indicated by the ease with which the terms of tribal
with the addition of a terminology that obviously fits easily into the
universe of the closed world of tribal unity there is still little incli
speech. After all, it is obvious to even the most casual observer that
Nazi Germany, for example, was not a "primitive tribe", but a modern
nation state in the grip of a somewhat more than usual fanatic demagogue.
gods, language, food, artifacts, warfare, and so on. Still the people
3 K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1949), 152; cf. Franz Neumann, Behemoth (New York:
I, p.
and. for all its outward complexity there are certain basic similarities
outside the tribe "are not regarded as full human beings"4 is such an
than one alternative is allowed. Such being the case I propose to take
Marxist irrationalism.
Tribalism is an ancient wisdom and for all its lack by many of our
period of time, something that rational man with his rationally calculated
zation may have grown out of tribalism it has long since left this way
tribalistic modes of thought, to the myth and ritual of the totem society,
3
(continued) Oxford, 1942), pp. 92-6; Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic,
Science and Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948), p. 301; Ernst
Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale, 1944), PP. 82-3; Hans Kohn,
Prophets and Peoples (New York: Macmillan, 1946), p. 149.
magic in the Marxist ethic I shall subsume each of the three salient
another way of saying that each tribe is a closed universe socially and
Now let us turn back the clock and refer to F. M. Cornford’s remarks on
6
Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (New York: Harper & Bros.,
1949), p. 99.
6
societies he says
in a sense initiated into a new life, given a new birth of social respon
this let us turn to the anthropologists again for a few comments on this
inowski,
8 Ma Freedom and Civilization, op. cit., p. 213.
7
that the modern phenomenon of the "closed society" finds its prototype
cal element into politics. Some years ago Graham Wallas was laying stress
10
Raymond G. Gettell, History of Political Thought (New York: Century,
1924), p. 446.
8
thought.
perhaps the more prominent of the two as the continuity of his influence
that we must turn for the clearest and most precise enunciation of the
man’s belief in the efficacy of the tribal soothsayer and his ability
to coerce the forces of nature. Stated simply this is the basic assump
tion of the primitive mind that "like produces like" and that if the
fertility in just the proper sequence or pour the beer on the rain
magic the forces of nature will somehow be coerced into producing the
among whom Bergson is our best modern example. As Cornford says, speak
13
Cornford, op. cit., p. 132
10
And again
And finally
Here we have all of the elements of mythology and magic that have made
Bergson such a fertile source of inspiration for those who would think
magic.
17Ibid., p. l64.
19Ibid., p. 239.
we must now outline the theory of magic and test it with an analysis of
In the same way he explains the collectivist social origin of this con
cept by saying
21
Cornford, op. cit., pp. 132-3.
22
Ibid., p. 130.
23
Ibid., p. I34.
12
substrate and that which changes the substrate. After all if every
can transmute wheat Into rye (mutability of matter) and realize that
sistencies that result from the arbitrary and a priori use of definition
and metamorphosis can he and are resolved by merging thesis and antithe
discourse. After all this is the way people have thought for millennia
and still do in many parts of the world today. Nor is it necessary for
the person who thinks in such terms to be aware of these critical dis
language. And while it is true that this world of protean substance and
After ail, why a Marxist? How do they get that way? What are the over-
many of our idealistic young into this closed world of tribal magic?
its actions and the people who are motivated by it. And to understand
Earth. Here we have both myth and magic, myth as the fabulous story of
cal transmutation of the old into a new and more glorious future. And
it is belief in this myth and this magic that has given a sense of pur
but to all that section of political opinion that finds meaning and sig
nificance in what has been called "the ’mystique' of the Left". Once
correct they are able to pull around themselves the comprehensive intel
lectual world view of Marxism and so close themselves off from the rest
ism we must turn to Georges Sorel for the clearest enunciation of the
29 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949),
PP. 192-3, 196, 202-3, 223.
15
Here again we have all of the necessary elements of the mythology and
magic in the Marxist ethic: the apocalyptic vision,30 the messianic com
into a Golden Age by a magical act of will,33 and then within this world
of the intellect attempts to convince itself that this is, somehow, the
only real scientific approach,34 even though placing all truth in the
32Ibid., p. 145.
33Ibid., p. 187.
34 Ibid., p. 170.
Ibid., p. 142.
35
36 Popper, op. cit., II, p. 46; cf. Mannheim, op. cit., pp. 118, 198,
202-3, 193-5, 212, 185.
37
Popper, loc. cit.
38 Bergson, op. cit., p. 308.
the closed, world of an eternal present, and past and future are merely
our reflections seen on the mirrored surface inside our "wave of the
all three fits into the same magical universe of discourse. In this
during the years when Sorel "shared with Antonio Labriola the reputa
tion of being the leading philosophic spirit among Marxists",40 a leader
We have delved into the myth and magic of the Marxist universe of
erate the "mundane" world. We have left to consider the culture hero who
will direct the act of regeneration. Sorel has provided us with a clearly
tion. Max Weber delineates for us the concept of the charismatic hero
who can, by exercising the power of his divinity, prophesy the future in
order that the future may be made to come to pass. To direct an act
the original prophet is, of course, Marx himself, but in the myth of
the man who directed, the primary act of regeneration and made the Revolu
says
That this hero is Lenin in the Marxist myth is attested by Sidney Hook
who says, "without him there would have been no October Revolution",46
this is the "empty frame" into which he has stepped. The Hegelian
46 Sidney Hook, The Hero in History (New York: John Day, 1943), p. 203
Ibid., p. 153.
47
18
transformations for the masses. After all Lenin did. not seek approval
in Russia, he demanded approval and got it.48 That this is within the
And again
Such has been the role of magical leadership from time immemorial, from
the war chief of an Indian tribe to the high mandarins of China who were
That the rational may exist within the irrational and that the
irrational may be generated by the rational may seem strange to those who
51 Ibid., p. 439.
19
have been excessively impressed, by the ease with which the methodology
had a charismatic leadership.53 In the same way the Marxist ethic, when
prescribes that the world so created, created both by the general "will"
only right, just or moral world and therefore any device or means used
eumann,
53 N op. cit.,p. 81
54
Mannheim, op. cit. , p. 118.
20
hy which the idealist enters the closed moral world of Marxist tribalism.
For if he can accept the belief that the world can be completely changed
self with those who supposedly generate this mass movement then he can,
cut himself off from the rest of the universe. He has pulled around
intellectually plausible.
that is confused and identified by the Marxists with the historical "act"
universe of discourse within which both of these operate. All three are
tionary act of the masses by which the world is transformed into the
glow of a millennial dawn, the charismatic prophet who can divine the
succeeding chapters we will deal with these seriatim under the following
titles: The Marxist Ethic, The Marxist Mind, and The Universe of the
New Tribalism.
Chapter II
Harold Lasswell
this chapter we will be primarily concerned with the act and its conse
paper. The formula is the universe of discourse, the rite is the act,
remembering that the rite is not complete without the projected will of
the magician alone or with his assistants, and the performer is, of
sition concerning the validity of magic as a way of life that has not
22
23
way of knowing and a history of its own, so we might assume that a pre
ing things to say concerning the role of history in the Marxist ethic.
And again
3
Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History Abridgement of Volumes I-VI
by D. C. Somervell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 400.
24
We may take it, then, that the Marxist ideology with its emphasis
for the legitimacy of the Revolution and for the power of those who
guide it. One clue to the basic instability in the Marxist character
is his need for asserting the legitimacy of this claim to world domina
continuity as follows:
6 Ibid., p. 13.
25
Spirit of History in its progress from its origin in the Orient through
taining many words but little substance. This same concern with con
tinuity can also he found in the necessity felt hy the Red Chinese to
intervene in Korea. “Red China” fights for the legitimacy of its politi
sary for the Red Chinese to assert this claim by force of arms externally
insight into the compulsive nature of the Marxist need for historical
continuity.
This again demonstrates the magical attitude of the Communist, for magic
depends for its efficacy on the right ordering of ritual.9 The world
from the established rules of the ritual will destroy the spell
But what justifies this Marxist world of magic? What makes people
problem of motivation in the Marxist ethic. One of the best and most
12
Chambers, op. cit, p.9
13Ibid.,
PP . 10-11.
14 Ibid.,
P. 13.
15Ibid.,
P. 17.
16
Ibid., P. 209.
28
be strongly charged with the Christian conscience that has had. such a
17
profound, influence on the tradition of middle-class radicalism. It
in the social conscience that was not put there in the first place by
the Christian conscience. This faith that calls for the best in men--
threshold of the Marxist world. As Silone says in The God That Failed:
Earth":
l8Ibid., p. 609.
19
Richard Crossman (ed.), The God That Failed (New York: Harper 8s
Bros., 19^9), P- 99*
29
This is equally true of the revolt against the West in Asia where
Western ideas of Justice were imported and then used to Justify the
men, to seek a nostrum for the ills of the world, so it is belief, not
reason, that stands as the gate by which the idealist enters the closed
moral world of Marxist tribalism. The belief is that man alone, rational
man, can usurp the Throne of the Most High and speak the Word of Power
that brings order out of chaos, that creates the millennium by an act
of his own will, that utterly transforms society, that changes the world.
It is around this magical act of will that the whole of the Marxist
ethic is constructed. The act is the goal, the Revolution, for which
the historical myth has been designed to provide the legitimacy of con
succinctly as follows:
20
Crossman, op. cit., p. 3.
21
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1945),
p. 209.
30
That sounds like Sorel but it is really Bakunin,22 the same Bakunin who
if the members of the German Communist school should ever capture State
power they would "divide the mass of the people into two armies—indus
trial and agricultural armies under the direct command of the State
The desire for material gain plays very little part in the making
25
of Communists.
23Ibid., p. 295.
24 Ibid., p. 289.
25
Chambers, op. cit., pp. 191-2.
31
The Communist can live in "permanent revolt and anger against the in
if he has a strong and active conscience, and in the West that means
impelled men to win Pagan Europe for Christianity, to launch the Crusades,
and to fight the Reformation, on one side or the other, and without it
27
Ibid., p. 231
32
that the rigors of the Industrial Revolution should have called forth an
political, should also tap this deep spring of activism. What is sur
prising is that the man who becomes a Marxist should abandon the
pelled to seek a solution, and not being satisfied with the evolutionary
stand that this burning sense of moral indignation is often the Christian
The eloquent testimony of Chambers, Silone, Wright and others who have
made the journey to and the return from this far land shows us how wrong
anyone who has ever watched a Marxist orator in operation. First there
be", then the quick switch to the militant threat based on the intellec
28
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 195l), p. 428.
33
fication. Back and forth, back and forth, using the ethical appeal-
in general that the Communist takes into the Marxist world with him,
is good.
ment of the means used in achieving the goal and so there is always the
science may encounter one enormity too many and revert to his former
29 ,
Margaret Mead, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1951), p. 28.
30
Ibid., p. 23.
3^
this paper.
shapes shift so easily as they phase in and out of focus, why opposites
ordered sequence of habit, ritual and tradition and why a change can be
fantasy, terror, omnipotence and the stuff of dreams. And myth is the
validation of magic.
31
Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, op. cit., p. 67.
35
for drama:
Richard Chase, Quest for Myth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univer
32
sity Press, 1949), pp. 80-1; cf. Raymond Royce Willoughby, “Magic and
Cognate Phenomena: An Hypothesis”, Chapter 12, A Handbook of Social
Psychology, Carl Murchison (ed.) (Worcester, Massachusetts: Clark Univer
sity Press, 1935), passim.
34 Harold J. Laski, Karl Marx (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), p. 45.
true".37
oriented40
and finding a functional activity in a holistic group.
35
Cassirer, op. cit., p. 76.
37
Mead, op. cit., p. 19.
38
Ibid., pp. 50-1.
39
Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives (New York: Scribner's,
1946), p. 4.
40
Mead, op. cit., p. 28.
37
This "mystical haze, bright and inviting but vague and elusive" is the
civilization and there is very little in it that is new under the sun,
And again:
That the founders of Marxism were well aware of this can be seen by even
class struggle and Christian chiliasm are interwoven and used as a part
-----------
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press,
44
1951), p. 285; cf. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, 1949)> p. 223; H. S. Crossman, Government and the
Governed (London: Christophers, 1939), p. 276.
a happier time. Marx might have been interested to know that many of
the Indian tribes on our Western Plains, as well as many Negro tribes
the Marxist ethic is created by an act, the act of will whereby the new
world, the millennium, is brought into existence, but the new world is
cal pedigree that comes before the act and lends it legitimacy, while
group and drama and chiliasm each help to round out the perspective.
51
The system stands or falls as ethical . . .
ethic.
Marxist ethic it is in terms of the act and. the new society. Thus, in
Lenin also based his view of the Marxist ethic on the act and its con
sequences.
But it is Engels who provides the clearest judgement of just what con
approval another author and makes the following words his own. The
underscoring is by Engels.
55 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (New York:
International Publishers, 1939), P. 69; cf. Marx and Engels, Selected
Correspondence, op. cit., pp. 4l6-7.
For this we are to set the world in flame. Because we are baffled by
take the world apart that we might retreat to the primitive democracy
of totemic tribalism. This is the goal towards which History has been
W. R. Inge
and its consequence, the millennium. Here we will be concerned with the
genesis of this act and the psychological world, or mind, of those who
Marxism with now one, now the other, in the ascendancy, but Marxism
rides in tank armies today because that faction which emphasizes leader
ship achieved state power in Russia in 1917 and, more recently, in China.
prediction and much of its appeal has been in the postulated inevitability
of the Coming Event that casts its shadow before it.1 Consideration of
Marxism can be traced from the Manifesto itself. Thus in one place Marx
43
44
achieving the benefits of the Revolution. Later on, however, the fangs
say that it stems from the earliest writings. Our present consideration
motive,5 but the track has some curious breaks. Progress along the
cally determined, but the tracks are broken at the intersection between
2
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
(New York: International Publishers, 1937), p. 30.
3 Ibid., p. 44.
4 Ibid., p. 21.
Socialism:
laws of natural science. Marx very conveniently decides the issue for
us in a letter to Engels.
8 Ibid., p. 338.
46
You are quite right about Hofmann. You will also see
from the conclusion of my chapter III, [Capital] where the
transformation of the handicraft-master into a capitalist—
as a result of purely quantitative changes—is touched, upon,
that in the text I refer to the law Hegel discovered., of
purely quantitative changes turning into qualitative changes,
as holding good alike in history and natural science. In a
note to the text ... I mention the molecular theory . . .9
refer to a letter from Engels to Bloch written in 1890 near the end of
Revolution.
Apparently those who accept the Hegelian dialectic must also accept the
11
Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, op. cit., PP. 475-7.
47
Hegelian Owl of Minerva12 along with the Hegelian Hero as a part of the
ing mea culpa as the shades of night are gathering and he is looking
of youth have not been fulfilled, and suggesting that, just perhaps,
quence Marx denies that there are abstract universal laws that govern
history,14 but suggests rather that such laws are immanent to each epoch
of history so that every historical period has laws of its own and when
14 Ibid., p. 23.
48
another set of laws. When we turn to what Hegel actually said, how
too obvious.
That the inevitability of the Revolution depends upon the harmonic pro
he says
17
G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, W. H. Johnston and L. G.
Johnston, trans. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1929), Vol. I, pp. 388-9.
49
And he continues:
in which
But it was the dream, not economic determinism, that inspired men
to resort to the force of arms in order to win the world for Communism
and lead the "slaves" into a brighter day. What kind of leadership prin
involved here there seems little doubt, but the legend that Lenin and/or
Stalin "betrayed" the Revolution has greatly obscured the issue. There
20
Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (New York:
International Publishers, 1940), p. 8.
50
present and compare them with the ideas of Marx and Engels.
prising, but the Marxists’ concern for legitimacy, the need to identify
which the fiction of the committee system was introduced into the Marxist
device, hut the function of command was his and the recent magnification
of Stalin Magus to the rank of Hero indicates that the power was suc
cessfully
transmitted to his successor.22 Stalin himself certainly
21
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization
(New York: Scribner’s, 1936), p. 339.
22
Margaret Mead, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1951), p. 6l; Julian Towster, Political Power in the U.S.S.R.,
1917-1947 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 365.
23
Edward H. Carr, Studies in Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1950),
p. 203.
51
extension of his own ego in the gigantic act of history that was to
turn the world upside down and allowed him to assume the leadership
definitional ideal and the real flesh and blood workingmen who composed
coerce them into accepting it. Thus, speaking of the strikes that
It was presumably from this passage that Lenin took his title for the
Thus it is the leaders who understand, who bring theory to the headless
masses, who act as transformers for charging the amorphous masses with
Marxism, the Hero, or Leader, or "Fuehrer", who alone can intuit the
26
Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1927), p. 29.
27
G. W. F. Hegel, "Introduction to the Philosophy of History", The
German Classics, Kuno Francke, ed., Volume VII (New York: The German
Publication Society, 1914), P. 65.
53
Substitute Marx, Lenin and Stalin and Class for State and the Hegelian
And are these intellectual leaders to cringe slavishly before the spon
wants that is decisive. And if the will of the people runs contrary to
the will of History, then the will of the people must be coerced into
says:
31Ibid., p. 117.
55
is good, therefore any means used to achieve this goal are acceptable.
The fact that Marx spent twenty years in the British Museum thinking up
33
Harold J. Laski, Karl Marx (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), PP. 45,
42-3; cf. Carr, op. cit., p. 204.
it a job that one may take or leave like any other job, or does it have
But an activist organization must have its ideology, and Marx had said
that
he believed, that
37
Sidney Hook, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (London:
Gollancz, 1933), PP. 57-8.
57
the light of the original spirit behind, them.”38 And. the original spirit
power of moral indignation, and to effect change the leader must have an
was hardly new to Marxism, and by his approval of the Vehmgericht Marx
For that matter, his suggestion to the General Council of the Inter
58
just how shallow his faith in economic determinism really was and how
sonal capacity.
Revolution was the ultimate good, the end in itself, and it was Lenin’s
for as Crossman says, "Lenin was the one revolutionary who really under
stood
Marx’s theories and developed them on revolutionary lines."41 Let
leaders.
... we must have a committee of professional revolutionists
45 Ibid., p. 201.
59
It is notable that it is Lenin who puts the word "sin" in italics, for
one cannot sin unless there is a state of grace from which one may fall.
just any leader, but the Leader; not just anyone, but the One.
this is the "success” of the charismatic leader who cannot fail,49 and
as Cornford says
Very well, but is this the type of leadership that is found in a fully
Yet this is not the whole of the story. This is what one does if
51 <alinowski, op.
cit., p. 213.
52 Mead,
op. cit., p. 19.
61
Lenin is speaking as One, as Leader per se, we might think that the
speeches, he says,
But when bourgeois intellectual Lenin took his alien ideology54 to the
53
V. I. Lenin, Speeches of V. I. Lenin, Voices of Revolt Series,
Volume VTII (New York: International Publishers, 1928), p. 62.
54 Max Eastman, “Introduction", to Capital, The Communist Manifesto,
and Other Writings by Karl Marx (New York: The Modern Library, 1932),
p. vii.
55 Lenin, The Soviets at Work, op. cit., p. 38; cf. Mead, op. cit.,
p. 56
55.
P. Maximoff, ed., The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific
Anarchism (Glencoe: Free Press, 1953), P. 13.
sionate desire."59
Marx, that each class generates its own ideology,65 then when he left
59
Cornford, op. cit., p. 139.60
61 Ibid., p. 84.
62
Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?", p. 134.
63Loc. cit.
64Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1949), P. 136.
65 Ibid., p. 278.
63
void, to the proletarian world, he must have retained, some of the leader
it leaves very little purchase for the observer aspect of the observer-
have placed him between the worlds, in fact he was suffering an almost
Lenin, but are merely discussing the effect of ideas on his motivations.
"injustices", and he had found the "real" world in the historical perspective
of Marx. Here was the way the world operated, here was the
64
true reality, and here was a promise that injustice would be overthrown
And again
Lenin may have been a normal human being in many respects, but
Proletariat there is little doubt that his stable self and rigid role
ting
acts of will."69 Take, for example, the period in the 1920’s when
Revolution was about to fail. Never for a moment does it occur to him
67 Ibid., p. 514.
68
Theodore R. Sarbin, "Role Theory", Chapter VI in Handbook of
Social Psychology, G. Lindzey, ed., in press; cf. Mead, op. cit., pp.
56-9.
69
Mead, op. cit., p. 51.
that the noncoincidence of theory and practice suggests that there is
for granted that this theory accounts for the only reality, that which
apart. Great gaps are opening between theory and practice. How ex
satisfy his subordinates, but when the magic of the spell is broken
there is only one way to keep the world it holds together from disinte
how desperately Lenin strives to will order and sanity back into his
world, because of course the will of one, the single iron will that is
71 Ibid., p. 15.
72 Ibid., p. 29.
66
There seems little doubt that this single will to which the world must
Marx and Engels, the magical universe where change can be effected by
discourse.
75 Richard Chase, Quest for Myth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univer
sity Press, 1949 ), p. 84.
76 Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 192.
Chapter IV
Ernst Cassirer
gested, however, that magical thinking per se is not alien to the human
mind but, rather, is man’s oldest, easiest, and most natural way of
Thus we may say that magic as a way of thinking does make sense, and
very good sense, to the people who find a coherent explanation of the
67
68
could not have been, as Cassirer says, "the first school through which
primitive man had to pass."3 Tak1ng the long view of historical per
ship of man and nature, who appear as exceptions to the rule and the
The never broken and never varying order that had thus
been found to reign in all the known movements of the
stellar cosmos was now assumed to govern the Universe as
a whole: material and spiritual, inanimate and animate.
. . . And since the cosmic discipline implied that all
these members of the Universe that moved in so perfect a
unison were 'in sympathy'--en rapport--with each other,
was it unreasonable to assume that the newly revealed
pattern of the movements of the stars was a key to the
riddle of human fortunes, so that the observer who held
this astronomical clue in his hands would be able to fore
cast his neighbour’s destinies if once he knew the date and
moment of his birth? Reasonable or not, these assumptions
were eagerly made; and thus a sensational scientific dis
covery gave birth to a fallacious philosophy of determinism
which has captivated the imagination of one society after
another and is not quite discredited yet after a run of
nearly 2,700 years.5
Not all the rationality of the Greek academicians can alter the
tween man and nature than it is to separate man and nature for objec
tion such as the Literary Gazette, published in the Soviet Union, call
Union and how it arose and, second, the epistemology, i.e., the universe
Myth
George Santayana
As was pointed out in Chapters I and III, it was Lenin who assumed
the mask, the persona, of the tribal genius and became the charismatic
slain again and again by means of the printed word. Thus while it may
come to pass at some future date that Soviet Communism may find it
tity such as Orwell's "Big Brother” as the ideal and idealized Leader,
at the present it would appear that Lenin has been made to share his
And again:
Margaret
8 Mead, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1951), p. 65.
72
in each Soviet citizen, and for that matter in each Communist through
12
coincidence with the blood myth previously remarked by Popper.
But of course a myth would not be a myth if it did not want "to
bring about the truth it proclaims,"13 and for this there must be a
11 Ibid., p. 134.
12K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1949), I , P. 58.
He can "direct the entire world at one time” because, as Bauer has re
We will enquire more closely into this idea that it is possible for
one man to control the entire universe in the section on the protean
the fact of the myth itself and why it has achieved its present place
in the world.
14
Mead, op. cit., pp. 61-2.
15Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 192.
74
It becomes apparent, then, that we must delve more deeply into the
ceive its sense of reality? For this we need a somewhat wider perspec
upon Bergson, but to continue and now consider the historical school,
17
J. H. Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind (New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1940), p. 458.
75
in the affirmative.
Randall
18 , op. cit., pp. 501-2.
76
hypothesis borrowed from biology. This, I take it, is what Eastman had
Commenting, then, that Marx and Engels had developed their intellectual
20
Max Eastman, Marx, Lenin and the Science of Revolution (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1926), pp. 34-5.
77
The mere use of the word "animistic” here should not, however, cause us
following summation:
being done and willed",23 i.e., "the verbal expression of the same
emotion and desire" by which the magician seeks "the realisation of the
21 Eastman, Marx, Lenin and the Science of Revolution, op. cit., p. 37.
noted, however, that any field of study has its verbal expression of
the descriptive universe of discourse and does not try to compel the
course or, more properly, the magical myth, is cast in compulsive terms
Magic
Maurice Thorez
from the arbitrary and. a priori use of definition and metamorphosis can
tions can be and are caused by an act of will, and the world has a
three subheadings, but first we must turn to Engels and his Dialectics
cording to Engels
25 Sidney Hook, From Hegel to Marx (New York: Reynald & Hitchcock,
1936), p. 67.
26
The law of the negation of negation
Engels, when they “turn the thing round”, are not doing exactly that
of which they accuse Hegel, i.e., reading these laws into nature and
26
Frederick Engels, Dialectics of Nature (New York: International
Publishers, 1940), p. 26.
Developmental Essence
E. S. Hartland
30
Hook, op. cit., p. 67.
31 Loc. cit.
32
Bauer, op. cit., p. 94.
33
Stalin, op. cit., p. 15.
34 V.I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (New York: Inter
national Publishers, 1927), Collected Works, Vol. XIII, p. 323.
history" as the "inner law running through all its apparently acci
dental phenomena." 38
tive shift, hut this is only its external manifestation. The power for
the Marxist practice of reading the "laws of thought", which are really
sational debate or "bull session", into nature and history, hut this is
quantitative-qualitative shift.
37 Ibid., p. 623.
In all this Lenin and Stalin have good ground in the writings of the
ELEMENTS OF DIALECTICS
(15) The struggle of content with form and vice versa. The
throwing off of the form, transformation of the content.
to essence, and from less deep to deeper essence, the repetition of the
morphoses of Ovid, to the student of the esoteric in the Tao Teh King
world of the new genetics in the Soviet Union as reported by Hudson and
Richens.
To begin:
46 P. S. Hudson
Richens, The Newand R. H. in the Soviet
Genetics
Cambridge
(
Union
:
England
,
S chool of Agriculture, May, 1946), P. 18.
87
that some alternate theory should share in any portion of the Truth.
wheat can change into rye, if the universe is fluid, then the genotype
view.
fined as "the leader of the chorus, especially in Greek drama." For the
chorus of the Greek drama56 is merely the vestigial dance group of the
Koures, and the leader of the chorus was originally the tribal magician
Definitional
Magic ... is briefly this: how can a de
sirable object be coerced?
Paul Radin
material of the universe and the equal1y material active, vital, essence
know it. But this substance is itself in motion, and the motion of
Engels says:
And again:
Again we substitute Class for State and the Hegelian world becomes the
that took shape in the Proto-literate period around, the middle of the
Now compare this with the following ideas on child training published
Hegelian "Soul-Leader" who alone can arouse that universal Spirit that
ness."66
It is possible for the Soul-Leader to do this because the
Marxist universe does not, as Jacobsen points out that the Mesopotamian
Hegelian man of destiny who will execute, a bloody metaphor, the will
of History, nor for us to recognize that Eastman was right when he said
surroundings and make his own decisions, whether right or wrong. This
world and, ultimately, in the mind of the seer who, by exercising his
for his own benefit. It is within this frame of reference that we must
69 Harold J. Laski, Karl Marx (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), P. 37.
Almost exactly the same could be said of astrology, or, if one wished
cally opposite gametes” with the Ptolemaic epicycles. The stigma can
73ibid. p. 76.
97
But there cannot be a "struggle" of any kind unless one or more vi11s,
But of course Hegel and Lenin are not the only ones who have so treated
'Its Father is the Sun, its Mother the Moon. The Wind
carried it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth. It is the
origin of all perfectness in the entire World; its power is
complete, if it has become Earth.
’Divide the Earth from the Fire, the fine from the
coarse, without tenseness and with mighty reason. It ascends
from Earth, and gains the strength from the Above as well as
Lao-tse the Paradoxical, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. But to con
be coerced into producing rye from wheat or, on the macrocosmic scale,
into producing the Act of the Revolution. The Act of History is sup
76
Frederic Spiegelberg, Alchemy (San Mateo, California: Greenwood
1945), PP. 1-2.
,Press
99
and Proletariat allowing the Leader and his charisma group-party cadre
completely
Protean
Richard Chase
Aristotle
We have said that the world of magic is the world of mind, that
magic is the enveloping of the universe by the mind of the magician, and
that magic is the coercion of the world to the will of the magician.
While all of this is true, only the first statement describes the world
of magic per se, because the other two statements make or imply a dis
tinction between the knowing and the known, and in the world of magic
that which knows is that which is known. Consider why this must he
so.
Bergson, who gave the modern era its clearest and most precise enuncia
Cornford’s analysis of known and knowing among the early tribal Greeks.
8l
Bergson, op. cit., p. 29.
101
tions that were used to separate the matter of physis into animate and
inanimate and the motion of physis into mechanical and. vital, vital and
divine.
But how does the magician control this universe? Ogden and
cidence becomes identity, and that the founders of Marxism were aware of
103
Marx and Engels were Hegelians and were quite aware of Hegel’s "recon
cally correct conception of the world." And what was the contribution
This is why Hegel can say, "Reason directs the world", and Engels can
assert that theory is "a lever which could set the . . . masses in
motion."88
connect thought and matter so that the thinker controls that about which
85.
Socialism,
,
86.
87.
op.
Frankfort,
Hegel,
Engels,
cit. op.
Utopian
p. 45.
op. cit.
cit.,
and
p.Scientific
29.
pp. 380-82.
1 04
he is thinking? We have seen that the magician can do this because the
mind of the magician is also his world, and when he names something
turn to Engels and find him speaking of this very problem in episte
mology.
and if we can grasp a thing then we can handle it, it can be "steered".
trine which states that knowing essence penetrates into, knows, and
Lenin,
90 op. cit., p. 8l.
91Ibid., p. 31.
that would distract him and he must coerce them that they may do his
thereby agreeing with Cornford who, speaking of the early Greek view
of the mobility of physis, had. said., "Its motion, and its power of
generating things other than itself, are due to its life, an inward,
98 Ibid., p. 76.
99 ibid., p. 128.
talin,
101 S op. cit., p. 16.
These are useful hints but they do not answer the question as to what
which would certainly seem to equate the subjective given phenomenon and
subjective cognition and the world of objective reality. That they are
already know that he equates matter and objective reality, 109 so what
matter, or, to put it another way, for the Marxist, thought is matter
in motion.
And also:
can penetrate into and know objects then, as Cornford says, soul is
united with object known,112 and to control the mind is to control mat
ter,
i.e., "soul knows and is a cause of motion"113 in matter.
That Engels and Lenin understand this is obvious from a perusal
Thus we grasp and coerce motion in the world, and the world is matter in
comprehends things and ... motion . . ."116 Lenin puts it this way:
112
Cornford, op. cit., p. 132.
113 Ibid., p. I34.
say, and are in a position to steer this dialectic by which the world
Lenin and Bergson agree. As Bergson says, "I incline to liken quali
ties
to quantities.”119
That is, "motion ... is the mode of existence of matter”,121 and he,
117
Lenin, op. cit., p. 280.
118 Bergson, op. cit., p. 369.
119Ibid., p. 216.
cause
it is "linked in physical contact",124 and this is Lenin’s
cal consequence concerning the nature of the mind and the world with
Ibid., p. 133.
124
the tradition of Darwin. Adoratsky demonstrates just how far one can
It will also be remembered that it was Engels who said that some Marxists
any traditionally accepted sense of the word, or for that matter in any
the world because it has direct control of the material forces of the
Lenin, op.
136 cit., p. 240.
137 ., p. 221.
Ibid
It is for this reason that neither Lenin nor Stalin ever "betrayed"
the Revolution. On the contrary, they were simply working Marxism out
ing group and world, are part of the magician’s "objective reality",
for of course he considers his own "self" and "will" to be real and
they are a part of his given phenomena. As a part of himself the "forces"
develops a volitional will of its own and the masses become a nightmare,
they must be coerced, back into their proper relation in the order of
Marx could look forward to a forcible overthrow of his own world, and
V. I. Lenin, "
140 What Is To Be Done?" , in Collected Works, Volume
IV, Book II (New York: International Publishers, 1929), p. 123.
Ibid., p. 126.
141
115
the masses142 in order that the mutable masses might be galvanized into
German Marxists in America, could say that they "have not understood
how to use their theory as a lever which could set the American masses
in motion",143 and why Marx could suggest to the General Council of the
Nor is this merely commentary. Marx was being quite specific and
when he said, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world differ
ently,
the point is, to change it."147 As Eastman points out, "It was
Marx and not History, that was determined to produce a social revolution.148
Change it, rejuvenate society, save the world, totally transform all
Marx and Engels, op. cit., p. 449; cf. Stalin, op. cit., p. 24.
143
147 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York:
International Publishers, 1939), P. 199.
Eastman, Marx, Lenin and the Science of Revolution, op. cit., p. 62,
148
116
mythopoeic world the Egyptian knew where "any human might become so
It may sound childish, like the mighty imaginings of a small boy who
mythology where gods could change their shape at will and where the
vital and the mechanical in motion had not yet been distinguished.
Unfortunately for any such suggestion, Engels has been quite specific on
the subject.
Conclusion
the Myth of the Iron Hand of Lenin that could destroy, create, and con
trol the universe, or the Myth of Stalin Magus, the Magical Hero-King
and Ritual Magician, who, as God of Grape and Grain, could Rule the
People Wisely and Well and Forecast the Future that it might be Fruitful
men until we recognize that the Marxist is a normal flesh and blood
grounded in the most ancient, and most common, of all universes of dis
Too often we have attempted to solve our problems of dealing with the
they are amoral and, therefore, are without a conscience. If they have
spring-wound mechanisms of some kind that will sooner or later run down
and would be the most fatal error on our part. Marxists have a con
ways and means for breaking the compulsive cycle of Marxist activism
millennial glow, the myth and magic in the ethic, of this Marxist uni
verse of discourse.
I
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