and now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. and the greatest of these is love.
(St. Paul to the Corinthians. 1 Cor. 13:13)
for a while - what felt like a long time, to be honest, but so did everything feel like a long time over the course of the pandemic - i let my criticisms (deep and serious as they are) of the american left turn me away from communism. but i was wrong. in fact, there are things i see in communism now that i never saw before. this is a self-critique only in a limited sense; i see the process i went through over the last six years or so as a dialectical one. my initial draw to communism in the wake of trump's election was a genuine one, but in a relatively simple way. my disillusionment with the american left over the next few years hit so hard because the ground it was founded on was, in fact, relatively unstable. some of you began following me, and perhaps even got to know me personally, in that period of uncertainty and disillusionment. i hope whatever respect for and affinity with me you've formed in that time will be enough to make you want to hear me out about this, and that you will keep an open mind. for those of you who already identify with the left, i hope you'll also have something to gain from this.
for context, i grew up in a relatively conservative and religious household, but it was one that contained its own contradictions. i've found it alienating at times to attempt to explain it to other people, because nothing about the conservatism or the christianity of my parents was particularly ordinary or easily explicable with the usual identifiers. the church we went to was baptist in name, and descended from the same theological school as evangelicalism did, but differed significantly from both in critical ways. they were highly dogmatic and conservative, women were not permitted to be pastors, the bible was taken extremely literally and as the incontrovertible word of god, politics and matters of the world were seen as antithetical to christian life, and they took an expected conservative stance on many of the usual culture war issues (homosexuality, abortion, divorce, etc) - although these things were rarely addressed from the pulpit, as they were themselves matters of the world. but they were also rigorous scholars, referring back to the original greek and to historical context, and taught everyone, including women and children, how to study this way using a greek-english interlinear, bible indexes, and greek concordance dictionaries. they placed a heavy emphasis on the practices of the early church and agape love. they were relatively "plain" and regarded themselves as part of the anabaptist tradition that also spawned the quakers and the mennonites, but the rituals they did practice, such as communion and (adult) baptism, they took extremely seriously and treated with reverence. i left the church, and religion in general, around 18-19 years old, and i would be lying if i said it wasn't the trauma of this upbringing that made me an atheist for nearly a decade following. that was, in fact, its own necessary dialectical process. but at this point in my life, despite the trauma, i am far more grateful than i am resentful of this background and what it taught me.
i came back to christianity at the end of 2019. it started with a number of mystical experiences in the year or so leading up to that point, which continued to escalate until i finally shared them with my boyfriend at the time. he was a communist, as well as a hegelian philosopher. i was somewhat familiar with hegel at that point, but not in the kind of depth that he was, and he surprised me by responding to my confession of hearing some voice that felt like god speaking to me not with concern for my mental health, but by sharing with me how hegel thought of god. this was what i needed, more than i ever could have guessed. through hegel, and through my ex-boyfriend, i was able to make sense of my mystical experience of god not through religion in the typical sense, but through a process of reason. i was able to conceptualize my experience as a part of a dialectical unfolding that could be seen demonstrated throughout time, and throughout the universe, in every aspect. this formed in me a profound faith that is unlike the (in retrospect) paltry and shakeable faith i had as a young person. my hegelian god, who was alive in the world in the form of what hegel called "spirit" - the idea of which, for him, was inspired by the christian concept of love, something that rang very resonantly with the true and good things i'd learned in church growing up - became my foundation. and truly, throughout my entire excruciating period of uncertainty about nearly everything else, this is what held me together, and gave me an orientation in the world.
i did not yet, however, recognize the powerful truth of what this process of unfolding means in human history. i still understood communism to mean the thing the american leftists i'd been surrounded by - most of them either anarchists or trotskyists, and no offense, but i'm not sure which is worse - had thought it to be. while i still basically agreed with marx's critique of capitalism, i saw communism as a political program and theory that was largely a historical failure, and had my doubts about its applicability to the current form of our economic system. i suspect that, while the "pipeline" is heavily over-inflated by people from competing political tendencies, this is a big part of why you do see a trend of former trotskyists turning to the right. not because trotskyists are necessarily insincere communists, or because their very basic beliefs are inherently reactionary, but because if you're a hopeful new revolutionary and you're taught that nothing actually existing that calls itself communist is real communism, it's not much of a surprise if that quickly kills your hope.
something i've learned (the hard way, i might add) over the last several years is that hope is not enough. you need faith, because that is what will keep you moving, and oriented, even when hope fails you. this is what was missing for me before, and it's why i faltered. but over the last 10 months i have had the joy of meeting someone who took me by the hand, and didn't regale me with propaganda or dogma but simply showed me their faith. just like i've tried to do for others with my faith in god, but this time, it was for communism. and the thing is, when i finally saw it, i recognized it as the same thing.
history can be analyzed in a scientific way. the institutional division, especially in america and england, between the "hard" sciences and the "soft" sciences - usually not even called sciences anymore, but “the humanities” - is one of the greatest ideological successes of the capitalist class. this is a false separation, in my opinion. the very origin of the scientific method came directly out of philosophical tradition, and for centuries they were basically inseparable. this is the great work that people like kant, hegel, and perhaps most importantly, marx, contributed to. and when you study history in a scientific way, something strangely spiritual is revealed. our story, as humanity, is unfolding in a direction. just as god is unfolding in our world, becoming more and more revealed to us as we build him through agape love, so history, through the very same force that at bottom is always also love, is unfolding in a direction. and to me, these are simply different angles from which to view the very same process.
that unfolding, like all unfolding, is dialectical. it is through the struggle and interplay between internal contradictions that life, time, being, and history unfold; through which god, and the kingdom of god, come into being. it involves twists and turns, ups and downs, defeats and successes, births and deaths. but the direction, when we act upon history in love, is always toward something beautiful that is being revealed to us as we go. and that is why i am no longer so hung up on what constitutes "real" communism or socialism, or the specific mistakes or failures of whatever given socialist country, or what the personal moral code is of whatever given socialist leader. i can see actually existing socialism, however flawed, as a joyous sign of the unfolding i now have faith in, and i can see struggles against capitalism and imperialism across the world in the same way. i can see reactionary movements as part of that dialectic as well, as they are part of the negating force that will always respond to the opposite one that communism represents. i can take a step back and understand historical processes in their greater context. and just like i found with my christian faith, i have discovered in myself a wonderful, beautiful freedom of stubbornness. i don't have to be certain about every detail in order to assert the truths i'm sure about: i know what i know, and i can afford to stand firm in it.
i respect people who have been standing firm in their political principles from day one, without wavering, but i know that for me personally, that wavering was a necessity. i needed my unstable beliefs to be negated in order to re-approach them more fully, more honestly, more richly, and in order to see the need for faith to undergird me when hope fails. i hope, if you take nothing else from this, that you will at least understand the need for faith in your own beliefs. and i hope that if you find your beliefs shaken to their core, you will not despair nor cower, but tarry bravely with that negation. for what is born into this world is born always from negation, and if your belief is to be reborn stronger, it is necessary for its weak form to be undone.
letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith
(Science, System of a Down)
i knew there was something about that excerpt
I too went through a journey out of Christianity and moderate leaning political beliefs at age 20 to where I am currently, which is a more theistic agnosticism and communist leaning leftism that has left me feeling like the dialectical journey itself is as much as part of ones beliefs as the beliefs (possibly more so). And as uncanny as it is, the one proverb I too have held onto and valued deeply for the past 20 years despite the ups and downs of my journey has been 1 Cor. 13:13. Love is everything. Love is, will be, has been, will always be and helps to bring light where there is darkness. And it doesn't require a membership, a registration, a church or doctrine, any terms and conditions, or any constants. The more we search for love in our way through life, the more answers we can find, the more people we can meet, the more experiences we will have, the more fear we can overcome, and the more peace, hope, and faith we can explore. I think I still have a long way to go along my journey of love and better understanding of myself, others, and the universe, but the dialectical journey and the love that grows as one learns more about communism, leftism, and the perspectives of all people globally regardless of their class or history certainly has had much to teach me and hopefully can help us in the potentially challenging times ahead.