The next mention of Marx is in the section called Social and Organic Unity of Mankind. I’m taking the thesis implied in this title as the first point for discussion. Then I address the section where Moreno references Marx about Christianity. The section opens with the famous lines:
A truly therapeutic procedure cannot have less an objective
than the whole of mankind. But no adequate therapy can be
prescribed as long as mankind is not a unity in some fashion and as long as its organization remains unknown.
“Who Shall Survive?” p. 3.
Moreno’s assertion that “no adequate therapy can be prescribed as long as humanity is not a unity” reveals a denial of the present fractured reality of class struggle. For Marx, healing “humanity” begins with acknowledging its divisions—class antagonism. Marx proposes a resolution of these contradictions through revolutionary change. In this light, Moreno’s insistence on an organic unity, I read as him countering Marx, sidestepping the role of material conditions in shaping human relationships.
As I read the opening pages of “Who Shall Survive?” I see Moreno with Marx’s books nearby. Moreno’s reflections on earlier human closeness and “stages of development”—parallel Marx’s concept of primitive communism, where social relations were egalitarian due to the absence of private property. The “differentiation” Moreno speaks of—drawing humans apart—becomes a vague notion, attributed to climate, race, or happenstance which he calls sociogenetic law. Marx, by contrast anchors this differentiation in the emergence of private property and the division of labor, which alienated humans from their work, each other, and themselves.
What is Moreno avoiding here as he creates a new world view?
Here’s the passage with the word “Marx”…
It can be said that the goal of Christianity was from its very beginnings the treatment of the whole of mankind and not of this or that individual and not of this or that group of people. An attack against its foundations has been attempted many times during its existence but none has been so persuasive and aggressive as the concentrated efforts against it during the last hundred years. The one line of attack as led by Marx asserted that Christianity is a tool in the hand of the capitalistic class, a narcosis of the people to keep them under suppression. Marx thought little of psychotherapeutics of any sort . He thought the psyche a private matter and expected a solution from economics .
“Who Shall Survive?” pp. 4-5
Religion
Is Moreno thinking that Marx does not attend to the whole of mankind, i.e. humanity? “The history of all hitherto existing society† is the history of class struggles.” Communism is a form of future projection based on that history and it has as its object the whole of humanity.
I have commented Marx and religion in an earlier post responding to the same points in the Preface that Moreno makes here. It is clear Moreno is caught up in stereotypical anti-Marxism. He misconstrues a more nuanced perspective.
Moreno’s reductionist view of Marxism
Moreno’s claim—that Marx considered the psyche a private matter and expected solutions only from economics—doesn’t hold up under examination. It reflects Moreno’s reductionist view of Marxism as narrowly economic, missing its analysis of human relations, ideology, and consciousness.
A deeper perspective lies in Marx’s early works, particularly the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx describes how the worker under capitalism is deprived not only of the product of their labour, but of their humanity as creators (species beings). Alienation of and estrangement are Marx’s words to describe our sense of self, and connection to work and others. This isn’t a “private matter”; it’s a social and systemic one.
Marx also recognized the role of ideology in shaping human perception and psyche. His theory of ideology, further developed by later Marxists like Gramsci, shows how ruling ideas penetrate the consciousness of individuals, influencing how they see themselves and the world. This is a clear recognition that the psyche isn’t a purely private phenomenon; it’s mediated by social structures and power relations.
What Marx rejected wasn’t the importance of the psyche (though he may not have used that word?), but the bourgeois focus on individual solutions to social problems.
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Psychotherapy as I have experienced it locates suffering within individuals rather than in social forces. Psychodrama and Moreno’s focus on group work, Action and “concretisation” place him well away from psychoanalytical and positivist traditions. Yet Moreno misses the fact of power and class relations.
What would psychodrama or sociodrama look like if Moreno did not have this beef with Marx?
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This post is part of a series.
See Intro and References in this post Marx and Moreno Monograph