Another voice
God and the trade unions
Auberon Waugh
Christopher Booker, it may be thought, has said the last word on the British trade unions, and it only remains to hope that he will be prevailed upon to say it again and again. His argument, for those who for one reason or another have not managed to penetrate the later pages of the Spectator, is that from the easily recognisable symptoms of infantile regression — demanding immediate satisfaction of every whim with total protection from the consequences — the unions are now moving to a state of psychopathic aggression, where resistance to their will is the ultimate and unchallengeable wrong.
This may provide an explanation for the present state of the proletarian ascendancy in Britain, but it scarcely explains why, as Mr Booker himself believes, the next stage is more likely to be an authoritarian and repressive left-wing system than a sensible conservative reaction. If the unions are as stupid as Mr Booker's analysis suggests, and as intent on self-destruction, it would seem logically more probable that salvation — or at any rate the drive for an alternative arrangement — would come from somewhere other than the union-dominated British left.
Let me declare at once that I fully accept that the unions are as stupid as Mr Booker says they are, and that some of them are as intent on self-destruction. But these two considerations do not explain their own consequences, which we can see most viv idly in Indochina and, to a lesser extent, whenever we look behind the Iron Curtain.
There is another important element in the present collapse which Mr Booker seems to ignore, and which explains more than any thing else the horrible things which happen after proletarian stupidity has been allowed to destroy these societies where it gained the upper hand. This element, to use a suitably Bookerish expression, is the psychopathology of the power urge.
I have never read Freud or Jung and certainly don't propose to do so now, but clever dicks generally try to explain the power urge in terms of sexual supremacy, proof of virility, compensation for sexual inadequacy and all the rest of it. Obviously there is an element of sexual display in some forms of competition, or intelligent people would never have accepted this as an expla nation for the power urge, but I am convinced it is not the only or even the major explanation for it. Above all, it does not explain the most fascinating phenomenon of all, which is that, as power seekers organise themselves to exert power, other and larger sections of the community are organising themselves to have it exerted over them. Teachers, sociologists, goodie-goodies gen erally and above all Catholic priests are now preaching that man must see himself first and foremost as a member of the community, as a cell in the social organism, rather than as an individual answerable directly to God.
An explanation which embraces the psychopathology of the power urge, its ascendancy, and the collapse of resistance to it must be found elsewhere. The only one which occurs to me must be expressed either in terms of good and evil as active forces in the world or in terms of the collapse of religion and its replacement, as one prefers. To accept my thesis—that in the hot, damp eyes of the Catholic priest facing his congregation and asking them to say after him We believe, one can see the first stepping stones by which Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge cross the Mekong River — one will need to start at the beginning.
God occupies that part of the human awareness which is emptied when finite reason instinctively recoils from contemplation of the infinite. At its simplest and barest, this occurs in thinking about death, when the intelligence contemplates its own extinction, or in grief over the death of a loved one. By extension, this area of awareness can be activated in any moment of perplexity, or by an operation of the will at any time, when it may be applied to matters which have nothing to do with death or eternity — the ordinary preoccupation of everyday life and human society. I do not propose to tackle the gigantic question of whether God has an external existence, intelligence or will, or whether He exists only in this perception of Him, because that is not relevant to my thesis. Faith may be a supernatural gift of God, but its first manifestation in human awareness is as an act of choice or the will in response to the urgings of Hope. We recoil in dismay from the infinite, from the prospect of eternity, and Hope leads us to Faith. Charity emerges, in this non-sacramental view of things, as the product of Faith and Hope. It may exist in somewhat perverse violation of the religious instinct, but it is not part of it, and it is of religion that I treat, Man's relationship to God is therefore an intensely private affair, the most intimate and personal of all his relationships. The purpose of organised religion — church services, hymn singing, sacraments — is to help him develop that relationship. It is not — as primary, secondary or any other purpose — to give him a sense of belonging, to help him make friends, or to turn him into a useful member of the community. Its purpose, and the whole reason it was ever called into existence, is to reassure him, through his relationships with God, (even if God exists only in his mind) of his individual identity, his individual dignity In other words, the purpose of religion is exactly the opposite to that of political education aimed at teaching man to see himself as part of a bigger human society, of human history and social development. This notion is the one which can replace religious belief, or be forced into that area of human understanding which God has traditionally occupied. Religious humility is exactly the opposite of socialist humility, because it teaches that man is infinitelY grander and more important, in the perspective of human history. Charity is a bYproduct of that awareness, but never its uarting point. But for socialism, or any other anti religion, to triumph over religion it must first destroy that essential perception of individual dignity. It must emphasise man's role as a member of the community, make him obedient to the community's requirements, make him, in fact, amenable to the power urges of the few whose instincts are to lead and to exert power. The essence of the Creed, and indeed of all religious observance, is contained in its first two words, 'I believe'. Never mind what you believe. Belief is an acutely Personal affair, whether or not it is shared with those standing around. By shifting the whole basis of the liturgy from personal to communal activity, the Church is destroying the essential basis of religion. Worse than that, it is preparing the ground for the triumph of anti-religion. Beside the psychopathology of the power urge — or evil, to give it its old-fashioned name — must examine the parallel psychopathologY_ of self-abasement. Look at them both how will, I cannot escape the impression that they are working towards the same end. With which gloomy reflection, I am off to Thailand and Hong Kong for a week, bolt., now crowded to bursting-Pointwit refugees from socialist paradises in China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Whether God can see what is happening is something I prefer not to discuss, but one would hoe see. The fact that it can't or refuses to see thought that the human intelligence could is surely the most significant development of our time.
Previous page
