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p Existentialism, one of the most influential trends in modern bourgeois philosophy, also claims its own solution to the problem of the future of human society. This can be seen even in the titles of works by representatives of this trend. 110 On the Origin and Goal of History is the title of one of the first post-war books by Karl Jaspers, the eminent exponent of German Christian existentialism. For his work The Atomic Bomb and the Future of Mankind he was awarded the Peace Prize in 1958, an annual award made by a society of West German booksellers and publishers. His book Where Is the Bundesrepublik Going? was published in 1966. In the abovementioned works we find not only an exposition of this existentialist philosopher’s ideas about the future, but also attempts to exert an active influence on people’s minds and thus help in a definite way to bring about this future. Thus, in the first of the books mentioned above, Jaspers states: “I trust that my book will help to increase our awareness of the present.... The present is filled with the future, concealed within it, whose tendencies we make our own either by rejecting or accepting them. The second part attempts to discuss the present and the future.... The third part is to debate the meaning of history."  [110•1 

p With regard to Jaspers’ discussion of the “tendencies” and “meaning” of history, we shall see later how the existentialist philosophers try to deny the objective regularity of social development in general and the main substance of our age, the age of mankind’s transition from capitalism to socialism, in particular. With regard to the future, Jaspers, like other bourgeois ideologists, is terrified by the approach of the communist future. And in the second of the books mentioned he makes an outright appeal for stepping up the arms race and giving atomic weapons to the Bundeswehr, seeing mankind’s growing fear of the atomic bomb as the foundation for a peaceful future and a means of averting the “threat of communism".  [110•2 

p Several years later, however, he was compelled to admit the erroneous nature of his earlier views about the future and the danger of the political ideas which he defended in The Atomic Bomb and the Future of Mankind. “But the danger still remains, that the path to stronger control of the entrepreneur, of party oligarchy, coincides in the end with the path to dictatorship and increased danger of war,” wrote 111 Jaspers towards the end of his life. “Anyone who has grown old as a German, has experienced it twice (1914 and 1933) and fears that it could happen again a third time."  [111•1  Thus, one of the theoreticians of Christian existentialism, confronted by the course of history, was forced to review his ideas of the present and future and turn from the abstract heights of the “philosophy of existence" to concrete reality. This is typical of many existentialists: either they adopt reactionary positions, proceeding from their idealistic ideas, and suffer inevitable failure, or the very logic of historical development compels them to review their stand and move closer to the progressive forces which really embody the future. Thus, the evolution of Jaspers’ concrete views on the future actually confirms the theoretical insolvency and reactionary political nature of the outwardly often very abstract ideas of German Christian existentialism.

p The founder of German “atheistic” existentialism, Martin Heidegger, in his definitive work Being and Time (1927) gave in extremely abstract form the fullest philosophical substantiation of existentialist “ontology”.  [111•2  Rejecting the dialectico-materialist interpretation of time as the universal objective form of developing matter’s being the author of this work criticises, first and foremost, the recognition of objective laws of social development. Having adopted this false theoretical position, Heidegger was confronted in practice with German fascism in 1933 and not only failed to perceive the catastrophic effect it was bound to have on Germany’s future, but allied himself with the nazi cause. He actually joined Hitler’s National-Socialist party and urged the German intelligentsia to support the barbarous programme of the fascist dictatorship and the inhuman policies of German imperialism.

p Unlike Heidegger, the famous French atheist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his first important philosophical work L’etre et le Neant (Being and Non-Being) in 1943, while participating in the anti-fascist movement of the Resistance and righting for a new future for France. Immediately after the liberation of the country he even tried to present his version of existentialism as the basis of the true 112 humanism of the future. L’Existenlialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is Humanism) was the title of one of his first post-war books. But it is also characteristic of the French existentialist that his philosophical views on the future of mankind conflict with the practical struggle for a better future and a true humanism. With an inconsistency typical of the existentialists, this very same Sartre varies between playing an active part in the peace movement and the campaign against the shameful wars of the imperialists in Indochina and Algeria and falling prey to anti-communist ideology, turning the full force of his criticism against the communist and working-class movement, the socialist countries and Marxist-Leninist theory. His book A Critique of Dialectical Reason  [112•1  is a clear illustration of this dualism. On the one hand, he actually recognises Marxism as the only philosophy of the future in so many words, but, on the other, he tries to substitute his own version of existentialist revisionism for dialectical and historical materialism. It must, unfortunately, be said that existentialist ideology has prevented and still is preventing certain progressively minded members of the bourgeois intelligentsia from committing themselves consistently to the revolutionary socialist working-class movement and true Marxism-Leninism.

p What is the theoretical insolvency of the existentialist views of the future and the basic cause of the failure of their practical attempts to influence the course of social development? Specifically existentialist views of the future are based on a peculiar interpretation _Of human existence and alienation, on making fetish of the subjective nature of c6 nsciousness and corresponding attempts to substantiate religious faith.

p Like other tendencies in modern subjective idealism, existentialism rejects the materialist answer to the fundamental question of philosophy, in general, and the dialecticomaterialist interpretation of the relation between social being and consciousness, in particular. At the same time, however, the existentialists have developed their own specific arguments concerning these cardinal philosophical questions on the basis of distinguishing between the alleged primary free, 113 subjective consciousness of human beings (existence) and those “phenomena of alienated social consciousness" in which this consciousness is forced to “have its being”. In Being and Time Heidegger developed an existentialist “ontology”, that is, a doctrine of being, in the form of some “phenomenology”, i.e., a doctrine of the “phenomena” of human consciousness. It is not being or time in themselves, but only human ideas and concepts of being and time which interest this founder of existentialist philosophy. The existentialists see man’s future as depending not on objective laws of development, but exclusively on the ideas and concepts of the future and its laws which prevail in human consciousness and in accordance with which people act and thereby realise these concepts and ideas. The declared aim of existentialism is to free people’s consciousness from the grip of false and alienated concepts. In one of his earliest works now rarely quoted, On the Concept of Time in the Historical Sciences (1916), Heidegger openly urged that the teaching and exposition of history should be freed from views, prevalent in the historical sciences, about objective time and the objective laws of society’s development in time.

p Ten years later he attempted to put this into practice in his main work. Man’s future, Heidegger asserts in Being and Time, depends exclusively on himself, on the decisions which he is making every instant and on actions which correspond entirely to these decisions. But the activity and decisions of each person depend on how he conceives his being, his past, present and future, at a given moment. If a person understands his existence as developing in accordance with objective laws, this means that he will act accordingly and realise his idea of the future. Trying to “free” man from what he considers to be the false ideas of the laws of social development, the existentialist bourgeois ideologist declares all such views and concepts to be the product of the “alienated consciousness”. Turning the concrete historical phenomena of bourgeois ideology and commodity fetishism into absolutes the existentialist philosopher depicts all social consciousness as “false” and declares all the objective substance of consciousness to be incompatible with “free existence”. Distinguishing between individual and social consciousness (and on this basis between the individual and society as a whole the existentialist urges man to free himself from 114 social consciousness and objective truth and thus become the “free creator" of his future, outside all objective laws of development. He criticises the “phenomena” of everyday consciousness, seeing them as the result of the alienation prevalent in society. Thus, the existentialist replaces true scientific criticism of the concrete historical principles and manifestations of capitalist alienation by abstract anthropological constructions relating to consciousness which is eternally and insuperably doomed. Thus, existentialist “ontology”, appearing as the “phenomenology” of consciousness, tries to provide a philosophical basis for its version of the subjectiveidealist rejection of the primary nature of social being, the objective laws of social development, and the objective substance of true scientific views and concepts of the laws of development.

p Rejection of the objective laws of development is supplemented in existentialist philosophy by regarding the subjective nature of consciousness as an absolute. The subjective self-consciousness of man is not simply a passive, meditative reflection of his own existence, but is always a kind of attitude by man towards his existence. To quote Heidegger, the difference between man’s being and the being of an inanimate object is that man is constantly aware of his eventual death, that he is afraid of death and through fear of the “transition to non-being" creates for himself the illusory idea of unceasing being in time, of a law-governed future and the possibility of delaying or even evading the “end of being”. Thus, instead of a clear and calm view of one’s future, there arises in the consciousness “worry” or “anxiety” about the continuation of one’s being, that specifically human subjectivity which characterises man’s self-consciousness. The very idea of a law-governed future is regarded by Heidegger simply as the product of the “alienated” means of existence of initially free subjective self-consciousness when it has become dominated by “ordinary” social consciousness and itself begun to exist in the form of the “phenomena” of this alienated consciousness.

p A similar “ontological” structure is developed by Sartre in his Being and Non-Being. He distinguishes between the conscious existing for themselves of human beings and the dead existing in themselves of the things and phenomena of nature, and states that time “comes into" the world by “ 115 existence for oneself”. “Universal time comes into the world by existence for oneself."  [115•1 

p Further he writes that “the future is that which I should be, since I cannot be it”. In other words, the future is a “ project" of subjective desire engendered by fear of “nothingness”, the threat of the transition to “non-being” The consciousness interprets its subjective “project” of the future as a result of certain objective laws. The successful realisation of these “projects” is not proof of the objectivity of the laws of development, but only the result of the fact that many people have interpreted their future in the same way, based their “projects” on the same faith in certain laws created by them and acted accordingly. One need only free people’s minds from this faith for the “imaginary objectivity" of the laws to vanish. Thus existentialist philosophy portrays the future as the result of purely subjective “projects”, as the product of people’s “false” faith in the “imaginary” laws of development, as the sum total of people’s activity based on similar “false” concepts and views about the law-governed development of society.

p Whereas Heidegger sees subjective self-consciousness as based on abstract~“fear of death”\thinspaceand~“anxiety" about existence, Sartre gives the same subjectivity a more concrete basis in the form of “hunger”, the awareness of “insufficiency”, “lack” and the need for commitment, for taking an active stand to overcome this “non-being” (lack of food, freedom, rights, etc.). In the most “left” of the existentialists, Sartre, we also find the most pronounced criticism of the sham “ rationalism" of bourgeois society and many real manifestations of capitalist alienation, including those apologetic bourgeois theories of the future which interpret the objectivity of the laws of social development as the “firmness” of the laws of capitalism. Yet, while rejecting this evolutionary– reformist, false interpretation of objectivity, Sartre also rejects the revolutionary-dialectic, scientific-materialist interpretation of the laws of social development.

p From the very beginning Marxist-Leninist philosophy set itself the aim of revolutionary transformation of the world based on scientific knowledge of the world. Overcoming the contemplative-passive approach of metaoaphysical 116 materialism to reality, dialectical and historical materialism included socio-historical material practice as an object of study, seeing this as the basis of knowledge and criteria of truth. Therefore, in this philosophy the subjective, active aspect of man and consciousness is developed in detail. Man creates and transforms the world, but on the basis of the laws of development of this world, not on the basis of subjective arbitrariness and voluntarist “projects”. If man has not understood the objective laws of development, he acts as an elemental force. The distinctive feature of the communist future is that it emerges only on the basis of the conscious revolutionary creative activity of the working masses led by the party armed with scientific theory. This social creativeness is based on and proceeds from recognition and knowledge of the objective laws of the dialectic of social development.

p By metaphysically rending apart and contrasting objective laws and human activity, objective truth and the subjective aspects of consciousness, existentialist philosophy dooms man to ignorance of objective laws and subjection to their blind operation, to helplessness in the face of the powerful organisational force of state-monopoly capitalism of our time, to inability to become a truly conscious organised revolutionary and the creator of his own future. Furthermore, some “ultra-left” existentialists bluntly reject in the name of “freedom of thought" any ideological-political alliance of revolutionaries, any organisation and discipline of fighters for a better future. And in so doing they objectively serve the forces of imperialism and reaction which oppose this future. They weaken, disrupt and demoralise the only force in the modern world capable of and called to put an end to all alienation and all slavery—the toiling masses led by the working class in the struggle for peace, democracy, social progress and socialism. It is no accident that existentialist ideas are widespread among anarchist students in capitalist countries and representatives of the so-called New Left.

p Herbert Marcuse, the American philosopher of German origin who is a pupil of Heidegger, has attempted to give an existentialist interpretation of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. He sees the allegedly insuperable basis of alienated consciousness and alienated existence 117 not in the historically rooted and revolutionarily surmountable contradictions of capitalist society, but in the age-long essence of human labour which turns people into objects, things. In his article “Existentialism. Comment on Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’être et le Néant”, Marcuse praises the French existentialist philosopher very highly and asserts that it is existentialism, and not Marxism, which has performed the service of formulating those features of the future that would correspond to “free existence".  [117•1  And one of Marcuse’s followers, a leader of the anarchist group of Paris students, Daniel CohnBendit, announced in 1968, without any abstract philosophical constructions and frankly allying himself with anticommunist ideology, that the Communist parties were the main obstacle to the triumph of the existentialist revolt and anarchy, and the main “enemy” of a future society of free individuals.  [117•2 

p Thus, the political degradation of those who, carried away by existentialist ideas, reject the Marxist-Leninist science of the laws of social development and the struggle under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist parties for the communist future of mankind, turns the full circle. By the logic of the class struggle they find themselves in the camp of the enemies of social progress. Heidegger served nazism, Jaspers himself admitted that his advocacy of atomic armament was mistaken, and Sartre, by his “critique” of dialectical materialism and communism, objectively served the split in the united front of the anti-imperialist forces.

p Neither the abstract philosophical constructions of existentialism, nor its concrete-political ideas provide an acceptable solution to the problem of the future. In fact this future is being won in the prolonged and difficult organised class struggle and in the building of a real, new, socialist society. Negative rejection of the present and criticism of the “ phenomena" of bourgeois consciousness and capitalist alienation are no substitute for positive scientific prediction and the victorious revolutionary action of the masses on the basis of this prediction.

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p It is typical of existentialist theoreticians that they frequently demonstrate their reactionary nature in private questions as well. As far back as the immediate post-war years Heidegger lectured in West Germany against the “demoniacal development of technology" and published his lectures on Nietzsche written during the fascist period. He challenged the future age of technical progress, the scientific and technological revolution, with his own existentialist interpretation of the irrational ideas of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Jaspers appeared on West German television, urging millions of viewers to seek salvation in “philosophical faith" and to rely on divine providence beyond human comprehension. Marcuse and Sartre reject the revolutionary role of the proletariat and Communist parties, preach a profoundly pessimistic view of the future’and themselves contribute to disunity and dissension in the anti-imperialist forces. Placing their hopes on the intellectual elite and regarding the inevitable difficulties, contradictions and mistakes of socialist construction as absolutes, the existentialist ideologists are deflecting the true creators of the future from the struggle. They are introducing revisionist ideas into the working-class movement, and attempting to “supplement” Marxist philosophy with the ideas of abstract philosophical anthropology or psychoanalysis, the existentialism of Sartre or Heidegger. The theoreticians of the “philosophy of existence”, the anarchist wing of the New Left and the Rightwing opportunists present themselves as the authors of various “new models" of socialism, various versions of “socialism with a human face”, helping imperialism by this ideological subversion. For this reason it is essential that the true socialist future should be fought for and defended in the struggle against the inconsistent attempts of existentialism to provide a solution to this problem.

p In many countries where religious survivals are still strong existentialism has attempted not only to revive the philosophical basis of religion, but to impose its own picture of the future from the standpoint of religious existentialism. In France, Gabriel Marcel has even developed his own “ Catholic existentialism" which, incidentally, was condemned by the Vatican in 1951, forcing Marcel to rename his philosophy “Socratism”. Marcel seeks the basic affirmation of the existence of God in man’s direct knowledge of his own 119 existence, his own self. For Marcel human subjectivity, subjective self-consciousness and faith are a manifestation of the transcendental nature of God. In a paper entitled “The existential aspect of human dignity" which he read at the 13th International Philosophical Congress in Mexico in 1963, Marcel urged that the future be built not on the basis of rational scientific theories, but on human moral qualities which are the manifestation of God.

p Jaspers too, in his Protestant version of Christian existentialism, linked his hopes for a better future with man’s rejection of “false belief" in science and with the triumph of a purely subjective individual, irrational but passionate “ philosophical belief" in God. Similar attempts at an existentialist substantiation of faith going back to the Danish religious mystic of the early 19th century, Soren Kierkegaard, are also being made by modern Protestant theologists (Karl Earth, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich and others). Karl Barth, for example, urges rejection of apologies for capitalism and narrow-minded anti-socialism in Christian theology. In his multi-volumed work Church Dogma expounding the idea of existentialist “dialectical theology" he states outright that a socialist future does not necessarily contradict the ideas of Christianity.

p In common with the many schools of “Christian socialism”, some exponents of religious existentialism and “dialectical theology" frankly admit that the future is on the side of socialism, but try to challenge atheism and scientific communism with their version of the existentialist substantiation of the future of socialism. Basically this version is a religious-ethical “socialism” and not a particularly original one. Like “atheistic” existentialism the religious representatives of this trend reject the recognition and cognition of the obective laws of social development in general and the laws of the class struggle and socialist revolution in particular. They explain science and technology, rationalism and materialism as products of the “sinful” subjective consciousness of “fallen” man, from which it is already impossible to free oneself entirely, and which lie at the root of “alienated” existence, but over which each man can obtain “inner” mastery by basing himself on the freedom of existentialist solutions and on the freedom to “believe”. They take the view that “faith” liberates consciousness from “false” 120 subjectivity, from purely selfish interests and concerns, from “mistaken” belief in science, and makes it capable of building its own future on moral principles freely chosen by it at any given moment. According to them, it is faith, not science, which rescues man from the mistakes, arbitrariness and voluntarism rooted in human existence. There is no need to show that the religious version of existentialism is just as inconsistent and reactionary in its attempts to solve the problem of the future as the other forms of religion in general. By distracting the working man from a scientific understanding of the essence and laws of the development of class society, religious existentialism like its “atheistic” counterpart, is objectively serving the interests of capital. This does not exclude the fact that some supporters of religious existentialism take an active part in the struggle for peace, democracy and the interests of the working people.

p Thus, a critical examination of the theoretical structures of existentialism concerning the subjectivity of human consciousness, its alienated existence in the form of “phenomena” prevailing in the social consciousness, on which are constructed attempts to provide an original interpretation of the problem of the future and to exert a definite influence on ideas about the future, enables the following deductions to be made.

p Existentialism does not and cannot provide an acceptable solution to the problem of the future. By denying the existence of the objective laws of social development and rejecting the organised class struggle for a communist future, the existentialists volens nolens are assisting the enemies of this future.

Existentialism’s criticism of certain real contradictions and unsolved problems of present-day capitalism may be regarded as a relatively strong and influential aspect of this trend. But existentialism is incapable of revealing the true essence of these contradictions and the ways of solving them in the interests of a better future. By turning labour force into a commodity and splitting society into antagonistic classes, by forcing the prevailing bourgeois ideology on every member of society, capitalism has engendered those contradictions which existentialism reflects as age-long, insurmountable contradictions between man and society, between “existence” and alienated existence, between primary free 121 self-consciousness and the prevailing social consciousness. Only communist society is capable of solving these contradictions. Only the theory of scientific communism points the real way to this future. Only the Marxist-Leninist party, armed with this theory, is capable of organising and leading a victorious campaign against state-monopoly capital which is striving with all its might to prevent this. By rejecting the theory and practice of the socialist revolution, existentialism is acting as a trend of bourgeois ideology and an enemy of social progress. Therefore, existentialist criticism in general, its unsound claims to possess its own solution to the problem of the future and resistance to its influence are an integral part of the struggle for a truly splendid future for mankind.