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Marxism, Christianity and Morality Replies to Francis Barker and Brian Wicker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Denys Turner
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Extract

So very great is the range and complexity of the issues now raised by the New Black friars debate that it is impossible even to state, never mind argue, a position in relation to all of them. Nonetheless, since two main contributors, Barker and Wicker make some serious criticisms of my views, at least some of them on the strength of equally serious misunderstandings of what they are, some reply is, even if insufficient, also necessary. So I shall concentrate a lot on clarifiication.

First of all, then, I shall try to be clearer about what my basic contentions are, for they obviously cannot be clear from what wrote. Barker, for example, purports to agree with my thesis about Marxism and morality. This thesis was, in short, that they are historically, and therefore contingently, identical. But he then accuses me of lapsing from this thesis and offers a reason which can only show that he does not, after all, understand the nature of the identity I was maintaining there is between Marxism and morality. So I must first of all clear this up.

Having done that I propose, secondly, to challenge the conception of Marxist science and of its relationship to ideologies which underpins Barker’s main criticisms of the Marxism and Christianity “strong compatibility” thesis.

The clarification of this thesis is the third, and most obviously necessary task. Wicker, at least, has badly misconstrued it. This is, perhaps, unsurprising, for in the “Can a Christian be a Marxist?” paper I only mentioned, but did not formally spell out, what the “strong compatibility” thesis holds you to maintaining.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 58 , Issue 683 , April 1977 , pp. 181 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Francis Barker's The Morality of Knowledge and the Disappearance of God, New Blackfriars, September 1976.

2 Brian Wicker, Marxists and Christians: Questions for Denys Turner, New Blackfriars, October 1975 referred to in the text as Wicker (1). Sincerity, Authenticity and God, New Blackfriars, May 1976, referred to as Wicker (2). See also Terry Eagleton, Marxists and Christians: Answers for Brian Wicker, New Blackfriars, October 1975 (Eagleton (1)) Decentring God, New Blackfriars, April 1976 (Eagleton (2)).

3 Morality is Marxism, New Blackfriars, February and March 1973.

4 Can a Christian he a Marxist! New Blackfriars, June 1975.

5 The best source for Marx's account of “fetishism” is, of course, Capital I, i, iv, On the Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof, the following few paragraphs are based on that text. Typically Marx develops the notion of fetishism not a priori, but out of the analysis of the structure of commodity production. The “commodity form” is the appearance of the processes and relationships between processes in the form of objects and properties of objects: the production of commodities is therefore itself a process whereby the appearance of processes as things is produced. Consequently the processes of capitalist accumulation of wealth are simultaneously processes whereby the nature of those processes is disguised. Capitalist production is, in this sense, inherently ideological.

6 Op. cit. pp 122‐3 But cf also Grundrisse, General Introduction, “In bringing things which are organically related into an accidental relation, into merely reflective connexion, they display their crudity and lack of conceptual understanding” p 88 (Pelican Ed.)

7 Capital I, p 74

8 John Maguire Gospel or Religious Language? New Blackfriars August 1973

9 Wicker (2), pp 202‐3

10 Can a Christian be a Marxist? p 248.

11 This does, genuinely qualify some remarks made in Can a Christian be a Marxist? such as: “… for every action we believe is an action of God within history we believe there is a sufficient explanation of a purely historical and material form” (p 249). While still holding this to be true, it is necessary to deny that for every case such explanations can now be known, the “historical necessity of some actions can only be known from within the post‐revolutionary situation which they create, as I argue in the next paragraph.