Christianity & Class War

Originally published in 1933

“Every man is made in the image of God, however indistinct that image may become, and every man is called to eternal life; in the face of these truths, all differentiation by class, all political passion, all the superfluities that social life piles daily on the human soul are trivial and unavailing. That is why the problem of the class war, important as it is economically, juridically, and technically, is above all a spiritual and moral problem, involving a new attitude of Christians towards man and society and a religious renewal of all mankind.” —Nikolai Berdyaev

Very few Christian writers have dedicated a book to the memory Karl Marx, but while Berdyaev pays tribute to ‘the social master of his youth’ he sees Marxian class war as only the contemporary manifestation of a deeper spiritual struggle. Going further than even the humanist element in Marx could ever go, Berdyaev argues for the rediscovery of work as an authentic spiritual expression of human dignity and worth. It is here—and not by standing aloof from material life—that Christianity must make its voice heard on behalf of those suffering the multiple and catastrophic ill effects of capitalism. Written in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and in the shadow of impending world war, Christianity and Class War is an eloquent call for a creative Christian response to the practical and spiritual challenges of modern society. —George Pattison, Honorary Professorial Research Fellow (University of Glasgow) 

Readers of this short book, written in 1931 during a time of great upheaval—the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the Great Depression, Stalinism in Russia and the build-up to the Second World War—will be surprised at how relevant this volume is in our age of increasingly sophisticated economic, technological and political control. Nikolai Berdyaev, the author of the book, devoted his entire life and work to the pursuit of truth and the defence of human dignity and freedom. Christianity and Class War is an uncompromising critique of secular ideologies on the left and right from a Christian point of view, offering a solution to the materialism and spiritual emptiness of modernity. —Tsoncho Tsonchev, Ph.D., editor of The Montreal Review and a Fellow of the Northwestern University Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature and Religious Thought

This small book, written by Berdyaev in the early 1930s at the peak of his creative flourishing, provides a key to understanding his historiosophical positions and protects the reader from a purely socio-political interpretation of many of the philosopher’s statements. Berdyaev offers a Christian anthropological perspective on issues of human rights, the meaning of labour, and the spiritual significance of Economics, which he brilliantly addressed as early as 1918 in his emotive Philosophy of Inequality. Here, however, he unfolds his arguments as a comprehensive guide to his philosophy of history and societal life. In 1925, another brilliant Russian philosopher, Fyodor Stepun, who was also permanently exiled from Soviet Russia by the Bolsheviks, criticized Berdyaev, noting that in his End of Our Time he does not provide political paths for the embodiment of spiritual potentials outlined in that essay. In this book, Berdyaev exhaustively explains why such political paths do not exist—and what is entailed in his “third way” beyond communism and capitalism, or “right” and “left,” stating that he “firmly sits” on this “third chair”. Berdyaev clearly demonstrates that bourgeois mentality and economic outlook—the very materialism that turns a person into a thing and labour into a commodity—is, in fact, a spirit. This spirit, he maintains, “cannot be opposed by any economic system” but only by a different spirit. —Sofia Androsenko, organizer of “Tea with Berdyaev” international meetings (St. Philaret’s Institute, Moscow)