I have said that faith and force are corollaries, and that mysticism will
always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very
nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication
and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of
reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when
men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion,
communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the
jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is
the state to which mysticism reduces mankind—a state where, in case of
disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence. And more: no
man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary
assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force. Anyone who resorts to
the formula: “It’s so, because I say so,” will have to reach for a gun, sooner
or later. Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not
matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of
conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same.