On Christian Communism: The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky
Abstract
The story - or, as I prefer, myth - of the communism of the first days of the early church is a distinct contribution of Marxist criticism. That it was taken up in critical New Testament and early Christian studies, however mutated, challenged and debated it might have been, and continues to be, is a credit to the idea itself. What I wish to do here is critically assess how the story of Christian communism was first developed in the work of Rosa Luxemburg and then Karl Kautsky at the beginning of the twentieth century. From there I make two points. First, I argue that their reconstruction of early Christian communism really functions as a political myth, and that such a myth has an enabling and virtual power with historical consequences. In other words, the myth of Christian communism may initially be an image, using figurative and metaphorical language that expresses a hope concerning communal living, but once it becomes an authoritative story, it gains a historical power of its own. It becomes the motivation for repeated and actual attempts at Christian communism. In this sense, it is possible to say that the myth of Christian communism will have been true at some future moment. Second, I pick up Kautsky's effort to construct a longer genealogy of communism in his monumental Forerunners of Modern Socialism to argue that the religious inspiration for socialism is but one moment or use that may be made of this idea and political program. Over against Kautsky's tendency to see the Christian form of communism as an original and enabling form that only comes into its final shape with Marx and Engels, I suggest that both may be particular uses of a much wider and deeper tradition.
