Humanism 101: Humanism and Communism

by Fred Edwords

When I was just starting elementary school the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance-the better to distinguish Americans from "godless communists." In the years that followed I was nurtured to become a rabid Cold Warrior by propaganda films at school and Republican politics at home. But then came the 1960s, which forced me to rethink everything, and I graduated from high school as a progressive and a deist. Nearly a decade later I would fully identify with Humanism.

In this social milieu (as we referred to the culture back then) I occasionally had to fend off the charge that my nontheistic outlook made me communistic. Only later would I learn that "top cop" J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI until he was interred, had investigated the American Humanist Association, concluding that the organization wasn't communist and posed no threat to national security. This means that Humanism received a clean bill of health from the most virulent anti-communist of the twentieth century (though he didn't tell anybody at the time, so we had to learn about it much later under the Freedom of Information Act).

Anyway, since I didn't have that celebrity endorsement to fall back upon, I resorted to reason. This is how I tended to respond to the label (and how you can too if it rears its ugly head again).

1. While Humanism is as nontheistic as communism (or, more properly, Marxist-Leninism), this fact is irrelevant. Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which includes an advocacy of laissez faire capitalism, is also nontheistic. So is the academic philosophy underlying Neoconservatism. Meanwhile, there are Christian socialists who are clearly on the godly side of the divide. A person's position on theological questions, then, is no predictor of his or her politics or economic theory.

2. Marxist-Leninism holds that humans are social by nature. The philosophy thus focuses on the cooperative and social bonds between people and assumes that there is one, ideal, nobler side of human nature that should be promoted. Humanism, on the other hand, holds that human beings, while being social animals, are nonetheless capable of independence, individuality, and the pursuit of self-interest. This makes human nature somewhat contradictory, rendering moral dilemmas an uncomfortable fact of life.

So then, while it is true that both Humanism and Marxist-Leninism recognize that humans are social animals, it is also true that Humanists, like Objectivists and libertarians, recognize the value of individual liberty and the right to pursue one's own interests (the pursuit of happiness). Contrariwise, Humanists reject the utopian, statist, and authoritarian social control of communist societies as much as they reject the radical individualism of laissez faire capitalism and Social Darwinism (finding it inherently sociopathic). Humanists hold the view that no society can be effective and rewarding that doesn't give expression to both individuality and community, balancing freedom with responsibility and advancing both liberty and social justice.

3. Finally, there is the issue of knowledge. After the manner of philosophers David Hume and John Dewey, Humanists don't claim to know anything with absolute certainty but only with "warranted assertability," a concept of relative confidence in empirical findings. As Voltaire said, "Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind but certainty is absurd."

By contrast, Marxist-Leninism has historically placed doctrine ahead of an open-ended search for the truth. Unproven (and perhaps unprovable) metaphysical concepts such as "the force of history" dominate Marxist-Leninist thinking to the point that Marxist-Leninist conclusions are derived logically, by dialectic, rather than through reason as applied to observation and experimentation. This doctrine-driven approach leads to the kind of dangerous political zeal that not only blinds believers to the reality around them but also prevents them from grasping the negative moral consequences of their acts. This is why those in the thrall of a communist ideology have at times practiced gross incompetence and outrageous atrocity-leading Humanists to regard communists as quasi-religious in their commitment. In a similar way, laissez faire capitalism and Objectivism are doctrine driven, leading to what some Humanists have termed "market fundamentalism."

Humanism and Its Aspirations: Humanist Manifesto III addresses all of these issues, making it plain that, for Humanists, knowledge "is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis"; human beings "are social by nature and find meaning in relationships"; ethical values involve "freedom consonant with responsibility" in a way that combines "individuality with interdependence"; and major social goals are to "minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability" while upholding "human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society." Therefore no thinking person reading this document could conclude that Humanism is communistic.

Fred Edwords is the editor of the Humanist.

© 2004, the American Humanist Association