Harari's Humanist Horror Story:
Why History Matters
4. Despotic Communism and
'Socialist Humanism'
What does Harari take 'socialist humanism' to be in essence? As with evolutionary humanism, Harari [2017: 305] counts socialist humanism as an atheistic creed, disbelieving in 'any transcendental power or divine law book'. Furthermore, he treats it as simply identical with socialism. Indeed, Harari slides effortlessly between 'socialist humanism' and 'socialism' as though they were interchangeable. For example, in Sapiens, Harari [2015: 258] writes: 'Another important sect is socialist humanism. Socialists believe that "humanity" is collective rather than individualistic.' Likewise, in Homo Deus, after introducing 'socialist humanism' as an offshoot of humanism, Harari [2017: 290] then immediately conflates 'socialist humanism' with 'socialism' by referring to adherents of the former simply as 'socialists'.
'Socialist humanism' is not a synonym for 'socialism', and still less for Soviet communism. In fact, the historical record shows how this distinct current of socialism emerged in the 1950s and 1960s specifically as a pushback against Stalinist state-control and Maoist authoritarianism. It was fermented by the rediscovery and publication of the young Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, with its emphasis on alienation, freedom, autonomy and creativity. Its prominent advocates—Edward P. Thompson, Erich Fromm, Leszek Kołakowski, Raya Dunayevskaya and others—were among the sharpest critics of the Soviet system. Dunayevskaya's [1958: 240] verdict on Stalinism was withering: 'everyone knows Russian Communism as the greatest barbarism on earth. Stalin is the name which symbolizes this.' In 1966, Erich Fromm edited a landmark collection of essays titled Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, which brought together writings from various thinkers who sought to reclaim Marx's early humanist works and distinguish their views from both dictatorial Statist socialism and Western capitalism.
Was socialist humanism even atheistic? Following Marx's critique of theistic religion, what is known as 'Marxist humanism' denies the divine. But not all socialist humanists were Marxists, and not all were atheists. The movement embraced Christian socialists and religious, non-Marxist labour party members, such as Mathilde Niel, Danilo Dolci and Léopold Senghor [Fromm 1966].
In short, atheism is not a defining feature of socialist humanism. And socialist humanism is in fact oppositional to Lenin, Stalin and Mao's repressive socialism. Once again Harari has conscripted a term into his pseudo-history not knowing, it seems, of the thing the term denotes. Socialist humanism was antithetical to the very regimes he blames it for.
