Word: niebuhrs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Niebuhr has, in my opinion, missed the boat completely in his analysis of individualism [TIME, June...
Neither is Mr. Niebuhr's thesis that the Renaissance movement toward glorifying the individual was a wicked flight into paganism well taken. It could just as logically be argued that this was a reaction against the depressing, guilt-producing dogma of the church that man is innately evil, and represented a flight into freedom, away from dogma contrary to man's nature...
...Niebuhr, with his mystical emphasis on "sin," is, in my opinion, just as guilty of mental astigmatism as was Karl Marx, who was blinded to everything but man's economic side...
Individualism, according to Niebuhr, is a false and pagan goddess. "The individual is not an end in himself, and cannot live within himself. Love is the law of his existence. The community is as primordial as the individual. Both Nazi and Communist forms of collectivism are inevitable reactions to the individualism of the bourgeois age. They are just as much in error as the individualism; but hardly more...
...also quite wrong, says Niebuhr, to oversimplify Communism as the individual's subordination to the state. Theoretically, Communism is committed to the belief that the state will "wither away," once the evil institution of property is abolished. This illusion is the characteristic error of Communism. "Communism is so cruel and so fanatical because it has a completely erroneous conception of human nature. Living by the illusion that the abolition of a social institution will redeem man of all sin, it naturally feels justified in using any means which will attain this...