Both Church and Marxists condemned existentialist freedom for undermining their authority

Evidence

The Catholic Church put Sartre’s entire works on its Index of Prohibited Books in 1948, from his great philosophical tome Being and Nothingness to his novels, plays and essays. They feared, rightly, that his talk of freedom might make people doubt their faith. Simone de Beauvoir’s even more provocative feminist treatise The Second Sex was also added to the list. One would expect political conservatives to dislike existentialism; more surprisingly, Marxists hated it too. Sartre is now often remembered as an apologist for Communist regimes, yet for a long time he was vilified by the party. After all, if people insisted on thinking of themselves as free individuals, how could there ever be a properly organised revolution? Marxists thought humanity was destined to move through determined stages towards socialist paradise; this left little room for the idea that each of us is personally responsible for what we do. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the incompatibility of free-will-as-burden with both religious and determinist-materialist worldviews, which connects to earlier readings on fascism and ideology in the Frankfurt School and on legitimation crises. — connects to: Communists rejected existentialist freedom because it evaded fixed political commitment. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 792; Sartre’s subjectivist ethics proved incompatible with orthodox Marxism — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 861
• SEED: A counterintuitive angle: the same freedom doctrine attacked from opposite poles reveals that orthodoxies of left and right share a fear of undetermined individuals.

Broader Connections

• Communists rejected existentialist freedom because it evaded fixed political commitment. #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 792
• Sartre’s subjectivist ethics proved incompatible with orthodox Marxism #expands (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 861