Can Revolution Change Human Nature?

A former communist on why lasting human liberation may require more than revolution: a deeper understanding of conscience, responsibility, and love

Continued from part 1: When the Promise of Equality Turns to Control

Continued from part 2: The Love Materialism Failed to Explain

The former communist argued that lasting human liberation requires more than transforming social structures: it also demands an understanding of conscience, moral responsibility, and the origins of love.

Can a society achieve genuine human liberation simply by changing its economic system? Or must any lasting solution to exploitation and inequality also address the motives, desires, and moral choices of the people who make up that society?

These questions became increasingly important to Lee Sang-heon (이상헌 – 1914–1997), a physician and philosopher who once regarded communism as the path to national independence and human liberation. His subsequent intellectual journey led him to question whether an ideology grounded in materialism could adequately explain human nature or provide a reliable foundation for a society free from oppression.

In the 15^th October 2026 installment of its series Communism Without God, South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo examines how Lee’s doubts about materialism eventually directed his attention toward religion and the possibility that love and conscience originate in God.

For Lee, the limitations of communism were not confined to its political record. They concerned a more fundamental problem: even if a society successfully transformed its institutions, would it necessarily transform the people operating them?

A system might eliminate private ownership or reorganize relations between workers and employers, but such measures would not automatically eradicate the desire for power, personal advantage, or domination. If these impulses remained, new forms of exploitation could emerge under a different political arrangement.

In this sense, Lee’s criticism went beyond the familiar argument that communist governments had failed to deliver their economic promises. He questioned whether materialism itself offered an adequate understanding of the human beings who were supposed to benefit from the revolution.

The limits of changing external conditions

Lee’s professional experience as a physician contributed to his reflections. He understood that the physical condition of the body could influence mental life and that human beings were deeply affected by their material circumstances. Yet he also recognized the difficulty of explaining every aspect of human thought, emotion, and moral responsibility solely through bodily processes.

A doctor’s determination to save a patient, compassion for someone enduring suffering, or the decision to defend what is right despite personal danger cannot be fully understood simply by calculating material costs and benefits.

Such examples raised a question that economic analysis alone could not settle: Why are people sometimes willing to put another person’s welfare before their own?

Lee observed that human beings possess a desire to preserve their lives, but they can also transcend immediate self-interest. They may find happiness in giving rather than receiving, discover meaning through caring for others, or willingly accept personal hardship for the sake of someone they love.

These actions suggest that human motivation cannot be reduced easily to survival or economic advantage. Nor can it be fully explained by membership in a particular social class.

For Lee, this was not an argument against addressing material suffering. Poverty, exploitation, and social inequality remained important problems. Rather, he questioned whether changing material circumstances alone could produce the moral transformation required for lasting human liberation.

If the people administering a supposedly equal society continued to seek privilege and control, equality could become an official principle without being realized in practice. The replacement of one ruling group by another would not necessarily bring freedom.

Consequently, Lee believed that a comprehensive approach to social reform needed to consider both external structures and the inner disposition of human beings.

From human nature to the question of God

This line of inquiry led Lee toward a religious interpretation of human nature.

If love and conscience were fundamental aspects of humanity, he reasoned, their origins deserved serious consideration. Perhaps human beings could not be understood adequately as material entities alone.

Lee explored the possibility that human beings were created in the image of God and that the capacity to love reflected this origin. From this perspective, the willingness to sacrifice for another person was not an inexplicable exception to the logic of self-interest. It was an expression of something fundamental to human nature.

This interpretation also offered a different understanding of universal love. If every human being shared an origin in God, then the basis for respecting others would not depend exclusively on class, nationality, political allegiance, or shared economic interests.

Love could therefore extend beyond the boundaries that divide people into opposing groups. It could include strangers, those with whom one disagreed, and even those regarded as enemies.

Such an understanding challenged the tendency to define human relationships primarily through conflict between social classes. It suggested that a society committed to human dignity needed a moral foundation that recognized the worth of people regardless of their position in the economic or political order.

Lee’s turn toward religion thus emerged from his determination to pursue human liberation more consistently, rather than from a simple rejection of his former convictions. He sought to preserve the concern for exploitation and suffering that had initially attracted him to communism while moving beyond what he regarded as its inadequate account of humanity.

An alternative to materialism

Lee developed Unification Thought (통일사상) [See editor’s note below] as an alternative philosophical framework. At its center was the conviction that God must be understood as the source of human existence and that love, conscience, and responsibility are essential to understanding human life.

The broader implication was that social reform and personal transformation should not be treated as unrelated objectives. Institutions matter because they shape people’s lives, but the moral qualities of those exercising power also matter because institutions cannot guarantee justice by themselves.

The question, then, is not simply how to construct a society in which resources are distributed more fairly. It is also how to foster relationships in which people recognize one another’s dignity and act with responsibility toward others.

Lee’s perspective offers a religious answer to a longstanding philosophical problem: whether a materialist account of human beings can adequately explain moral obligations that appear to transcend personal interests. His conclusion was that love was not merely an incidental emotion produced by material conditions, but a force rooted in the very foundation of human existence.

Whether one accepts this conclusion or not, the questions he raised remain relevant to debates about political ideology, social justice, and human freedom. Economic and institutional reforms can address important sources of suffering, but they do not automatically resolve questions about conscience, moral responsibility, or the misuse of power.

For Lee, the search for genuine human liberation therefore required a more comprehensive understanding of what human beings are and what makes their lives meaningful. His answer began with the proposition that love has a source beyond material interests and that recognizing this source is essential to building a society founded on freedom, dignity, and responsibility.

Based on an article by Jeong Seong-su (정성수) in the South Korean daily Segye Ilbo, 15^th October 2026, the second installment of the series “Communism Without God”.

Continued from part 1: When the Promise of Equality Turns to Control

Continued from part 2: The Love Materialism Failed to Explain

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: Dr. Lee Sang-heon (이상헌 – also romanized as Sang Hun Lee – 1914–1997), a South Korean physician and philosopher who developed Unification Thought (통일사상) [See editor’s note 1 below], here at a seminar in Schmitten, Hessen, Germany in October 1991. Photo: FFWPU, improved resolution by Grok xAI, October 2026.

[Editor’s note 1: Unification Thought is a philosophical system developed by Sang Hun Lee (이상헌 – 1914-1997) from the teachings of Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012). It was designed as a comprehensive worldview that integrates religion, philosophy, science, ethics, and social theory into a single framework centered on God’s purpose for creation.

At its core, Unification Thought argues that reality reflects the nature of God, understood as a being of “dual characteristics”: internal character and external form, as well as masculinity and femininity in harmonious unity. Human beings, according to this view, are created to embody divine love through mature relationships, family life, creativity, and moral responsibility.

The system places strong emphasis on purpose and relationality. Everything exists through “give-and-take action”, a dynamic process of interaction that produces harmony, growth, and development. Human history is interpreted as a providential process aimed at restoring the ideal world originally intended by God, overcoming alienation, conflict, and selfishness caused by the human fall.

Unification Thought also attempts to respond to modern ideologies. It criticizes both materialistic Marxism and purely secular humanism while also seeking to modernize traditional religious thinking. Its ethical and political applications include theories of education, art, economics, and social organization grounded in family-centered ethics and mutual cooperation. The philosophical system can be regarded as a synthesis of Eastern and Western thought, religion and science.]

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