Review of Austrian Economics, Volume 4 by Murray N. Rothbard

Author:Murray N. Rothbard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781610165402
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 1990-05-09T05:00:00+00:00

Reabsorption Theology

But the nature of Marxism-as-religion cuts deeper than the follies and evasions of Marxists7 or the cryptic and often unintelligible nature of Marxian writings. For it is the contention of this article that the crucial goal—communism—is an atheized version of a certain type of religious eschatology; that the alleged inevitable process of getting there—the dialectic—is an atheistic form of the same religious laws of history; and that the supposedly central problem of capitalism as perceived by “humanist” Marxists, the problem of “alienation,” is an atheistic version of the selfsame religion’s metaphysical grievance at the entire created universe.

As far as I know, there is no commonly-agreed upon name to designate this fatefully influential religion. One name is “process theology,” but I shall rather call it “reabsorption theology,” for the word “reabsorption” highlights the allegedly inevitable end-point of human history as well as its supposed starting point in a pre-creation union with God.

As Leszek Kolakowski points out in his monumental work on Marxism, reabsorption theology begins with the third-century Greek philosopher Plotinus, and moves from Plotinus to some of the Christian Platonists, where it takes its place as a Christian heresy. That heresy tends to bubble up repeatedly from beneath the surface in the works of such Christian mystics as the nineteenth-century philosopher John Scotus Erigena and the fourteenth-century Meister Johannes Eckhart.8

The nature and profound implications of reabsorption theology may best be grasped by contrasting this heresy to Christian orthodoxy. We begin at the beginning—with creatology, the science or discipline of the first days. Why did God create the universe? The orthodox Christian answer is that God created the universe out of a benevolent and overflowing love for his creatures. Creation was therefore good and wondrous; the fly in the ointment was introduced by man’s disobedience to God’s laws, for which sin he was cast out of Eden. Out of this Fall he can be redeemed by the Incarnation of God-in-human flesh and the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Note that the Fall was a moral one, and that Creation itself remains metaphysically good. Note, too, that in orthodox Christianity, each human individual, made in the image of God, is of supreme importance, and each individual’s salvation becomes of critical concern.

Reabsorption theology, however, originates in a very different creatology. One of its crucial tenets is that, before Creation, man—obviously the collective-species man and not each individual—existed in happy union, in some sort of mighty cosmic blob, united with God and even with Nature. In the Christian view, God, unlike man, is perfect, and therefore does not, like man, perform actions in order to improve his lot. But for the reabsorptionists, God acts analogously with humans: God acts out of what Mises called “felt uneasiness,” out of dissatisfaction with his current lot. God, in other words, creates the universe out of loneliness, dissatisfaction, or, generally, in order to develop his undeveloped faculties. God creates the universe out of felt need.

In the reabsorptionist view, Creation, instead of being wondrous and good, is essentially and metaphysically evil.

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