asceticism

the limitation and suppression of sensual tendencies and desires (“mortification of the flesh”) as a means of attaining religious or ethical goals. In addition, asceticism can also be a moral norm (readiness for self-restraint and the ability to sacrifice oneself) in the name of definite social goals.

The beginnings of asceticism were already manifested in primitive society (where asceticism was caused by the severe conditions of existence)—for example, in initiation ceremonies. Asceticism was developed considerably in Eastern religions (for example, Brahmanism, Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the ancient Jewish sects of healers, and the Essenes), as well as in religious and philosophical movements in ancient Greece, such as the cult of Orpheus and Pythagoreanism. The motivation for asceticism is different in various religious and philosophical teachings. Thus, the asceticism of the Cynics was determined by their idea of freedom from wants and social ties. In dualistic religious doctrines which regard the body and material things as a “prison of the soul,” asceticism is a way of overcoming the flesh, of liberating oneself from it (especially in Mani-chaeanism). But in essence, in an antagonistic society, religious asceticism has a class significance. The church’s elevation of asceticism to a virtue has distracted the masses of the people from the struggle to improve their material standing and has diminished in their eyes the importance of property, which is owned by the ruling classes in an exploitative society.

The most common forms of asceticism are living as a hermit, fasting, celibacy, and various forms of self-inflicted torure. During the epoch of the primitive accumulation of capital, the bourgeois religions rejected asceticism, in the first place because it was a “renunciation of the world.” Within Protestantism (Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Puritanism) there was formulated a so-called secular asceticism, “the whole secret of which consists of bourgeois frugality” (F. Engels, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 7, p. 378). Completely different in its social significance was plebeian and proletarian asceticism, which “we discover in all medieval uprisings having a religious coloration and in modern times in the initial stage of every proletarian movement” (ibid., p. 377). Such an asceticism was a protest against the exploitative establishment. The preaching of asceticism by the ideologists of early revolutionary peasant movements was connected with the need for equality of possessions and with the struggle against the luxury of the ruling classes. With the development of its productive forces and the growth of its revolutionary awareness, the proletariat gradually has freed itself from religious-ascetic ideology. Plebeian-proletarian asceticism, insofar as it has remained religious, has degenerated into a petit bourgeois ideology and receives its principal support in sectarianism. The preaching of asceticism, which is introduced by sectarian elements into the revolutionary movements of certain countries where the population has an especially low standard of living, is in contradiction to communist morality. While giving its due to revolutionary self-sacrifice, steadfastness, and heroism in the struggle for social progress and for communism, the Marxist-Leninist ethic rejects any efforts to disparage the value of life on earth. It refuses to ignore the tasks of achieving the complete satisfaction of spiritual and material needs of the personality on the basis of socialism and communism. Asceticism is profoundly alien to communist ideology, which has set as its goal the total and harmonious development of man.