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Christian Human Rights Thought: Can Marxism Contribute?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Nancy Bancroft
Nancy Bancroft*
Affiliation:
Lincoln University
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Abstract

Marxist analyses can contribute to Christian human rights thought in four areas. First, Marx's anthropology emphasizes process and sociality over fixed or determining human qualities. The species-being concept counterbalances cynical forms of Christian “realism” and secular, genetic determinism. Second, Marx's analysis of rights under capitalism engenders the claim that human rights begin with the right to a non-exploitative social structure. The Marxist critique reinforces the biblical injunction against identification with an unjust status quo. Third, current Marxist analysis of the historical failure of socialism generates hope based on learning from the past. The analysis can help Christians to hope and work for earthly embodiment of human rights short of the Kingdom. Finally, Marxism and biblical thought converge in pointing to the oppressed as crucial for obtaining human rights. Christians and Marxists have common criteria for a human rights agenda.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Fall 1981 , pp. 247 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1981

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References

1 Ethicists, church officials, and lay people are addressing human rights. See, for example, Miller, Allen O., ed., A Christian Declaration on Human Rights (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977).Google Scholar A major book forthcoming on human rights by ethicist Max Stackhouse testifies that Christian interest continues beyond the end of the Carter presidency. Stackhouse also spoke on the topic in an address to the October, 1980 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. The theme of the three day meeting was human rights.

2 White, Ronald C. and Hopkins, C. Edward, The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976)Google Scholar includes an informative closing essay by Christian realist John.C. Bennett. Harold Y. Vanderpool captures the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr and appends an excellent bibliography of works by and about Niebuhr, in Johnson, Roger A., et al., Critical Issues in Modern Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 175–208.Google Scholar

3 For the response of some Marxists the Christian-realist critiques of Marxism and socialism, see Part III of the present article.

4 My discussion of Marx's anthropology is based especially on two sources: Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederich, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947)Google Scholar and Marx's, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts as excerpted in Easton, Lloyd D. and Guddat, Kurt H., eds., Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967).Google Scholar I am indebted to Dr. Theda Scokpol of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University for a particularly useful interpretation of The German Ideology. For a fuller discussion of Marx's anthropology, and its implications for ethics, see my “Does Marx Have an Ethical Theory?” Soundings 63/2 (Summer 1980), 214–29.Google Scholar

5 For the quote in context but in a sexist translation (“Man's life…”), see Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in the complete, multi-volume Marx and Engels Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975 and thereafter), 3:299.Google Scholar The quote in my text is taken from a secondary source which renders a non-sexist translation from the German original: Giddens, Anthony, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Reputable scholars have begun to agree that Marx was not, in fact, an economic or technological determinist. Determinist interpretations of Marx prevail in part because a generation of (vulgar) Marxists after Marx misunderstood and misapplied him. Cambridge professor Anthony Giddens is a good, non-Marxist source for clearing up the determinist and other myths about Marx. See his concise and accurate summary of all of Marx's major ideas, in Part I of Capitalism and Modern Social Theory. See also Arthur McGovern, S.J., Marxism: An American Christian Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1980)Google Scholar, especially Chapter 1.

7 The fount of the sociobiology literature is Wilson, E. O., Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).Google Scholar Nowhere in the book does Wilson discuss racism. For a critique of the book as racist for its treatment of ethnocentrism as ultimately genetically determined, see Rosenthal, Miriam D., “Sociobiology: Laying the Foundations for a Racist Synthesis,” Harvard Crimson, February 8, 1977.Google Scholar The critique of sociobiology for sexism and support of the contemporary status quo is much more common.

8 For one Marxist view, see Rosenthal. For a Christian challenge, see Faramelli, Norman, “The Religious, Social and Ethical Implications of Contemporary Sociobiology,” unpublished paper read to the American Society of Christian Ethics, Toronto, January 14, 1977.Google Scholar The paper has good bibliography for sociobiology and the sociobiology debate to 1977.

9 For more discussion of this point, see my “Does Marx Have an Ethical Theory?” and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.

10 East and Guddat, pp. 308-10.

11 My discussion here of Marx on rights is drawn from his “On the Jewish Question,” in East and Guddat, pp. 216-48.

12 Ibid., p. 241; italics in Marx's text.

13 This emphasis comes especially from G. Ernest Wright, Frank Moore Cross and others in the Bright and Albright tradition of Old Testament scholarship, which sees Israel's lord as the “God who acts” in history. Beyond strictly biblical scholarship, Paul Lehmann in the United States and many theologians in Latin America emphasize socialpolitical aspects of human nature and religion.

14 Marx's ideas on changed physical nature under communism have not been well researched, as it is only recently that scholars have begun to study Marx's view of nature at all. Generally, the stereotype still prevails that Marx emphasized technology and disparaged the natural world. See Giddens.

15 The arguments I review below appear implicitly or explicitly in Christian realism and in most Christian works on Marx. Among volumes with one or both arguments are: Gollwitzer, Helmut, The Christian Faith and Marxist Criticism of Religion (New York: Scribner's, 1970)Google Scholar; Hebblethwaite, Peter, The Christian-Marxist Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1977)Google Scholar; Lochman, Jan Milič, Encountering Marx (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977)Google Scholar; and Vree, Dale, On Synthesizing Marxism and Christianity (New York: John Wiley, 1976).Google Scholar These range from sympathetic to Marx (Lochman) to strongly antipathetic (Vree). I discuss the Christian arguments from history and faith in “Christian Response to Marxism, 1975-1980” forthcoming in Religious Studies Review.

16 I have deliberately omitted to discuss analyses by the many Marxists who consider that Russian and/or China is still socialist. The analysis I review is in the Progressive Labor Party pamphlet, Road to Revolution III (New York: Progressive Labor Party, 1971Google Scholar; not at many libraries but available from publisher, G.P.O. Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11201).

17 Critics of the PLP analysis argue that the Paris Commune model would have meant mass starvation in 1917. I concur with the PLP analysts' reply that the critics' argument is based on a misplaced humanitarianism. Restored capitalism brings a worse fate for more people than does socialist sacrifice. Behind the PLP position is a strong confidence that people will sacrifice much, if thereby they can as nearly as possible guarantee socialism survives counterrevolution.

18 “There is no guarantee … that Socialism once won will not be reversed,” in Progressive Labor Party pamphlet, March on May Day (New York: Progressive Labor Party, 1977), p. 27.Google Scholar

19 Ogletree, Thomas, “Ideology and Ethical Reflection,” unpublished paper selected for circulation by the American Society of Christian Ethics in 1972.Google Scholar Available from the Society, c/o Joseph Allen, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, TX 75222.

20 I have developed this point and extended Ogletree's analysis in my “Does Marx Have an Ethical Theory?” pp. 220-26.

21 The Latin American liberation theology bibliography is enormous, even in English. A classic is Gutiérrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973).Google Scholar See also Bonino, José Míguez, Christians and Marxists: The Mutual Challenge to Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976).Google Scholar