Socialism is personalism: Nikolai Berdyaev about the “proper” social organization

Abstract

The article examines the attitude of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948) to the main features of socialism and his criticism of the weaknesses of the socialist so­cial order (the idea of equality, ineffective work ethic, chiliastic sentiments, profanation of Christian values, etc.). It is noted that Berdyaev is undoubtedly a socialist-oriented thinker, and his critical attitude towards the forms of socialist manifestation is associated with the fact that Berdyaev had his own vision of the “target” state of the socialist sys­tem, that may be called “personalistic socialism”. The article examines the main features of personalistic socialism proposed by Berdyaev: justification of inequality and defense of the principle of hierarchism, protection of personal freedom, proper attitude towards work (labor as service to one’s neighbor, as the revelation of the creative potential), “new economic psychology”, and, in contrast to already embodied forms of socialism, Berdyaev declares, that the goal of personalistic socialism is the creation of a classless society. The third part of the article attempts to reconstruct Berdyaev’s “social-philoso­phical dream”, while substantiating the philosopher’s lack of ambition for political action and the creation of a political project of personalistic socialism. In order to reconstruct the ideas of Berdyaev, the author uses texts from different periods of his work: “New Re­ligious Consciousness and Society” (1907), “Philosophy of Inequality” (1918), “Self-Knowledge” (1949), as well as articles from the 1930s: “On Social Personalism (1933), “Personalism and Marxism” (1935), “On modern nationalism” (1938), etc.