Marx and Religion
Oct 26 2009 00:55
Can anyone introduce me to this topic? 'Interested to know what people here think of the current religious climate as well as the atheist movement.
Oct 26 2009 11:49
#2
The introduction to 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' and 'German Ideology' contain Marx's key stuff on religion. I still think they're great and do a great deal to inform the materialist foundations of the social criticism of religion, and they're still more nuanced than any of the 'new atheist' shite.
Oct 26 2009 11:56
#3
as I always say, what Lenin wrote in 1905 is still a good "guide" in daily political work; atheist socialists/marxists/anarchists should realise, that they generally have much more in common with e.g. religious socialists/anarchists or adherents of liberation theology than with atheist liberals
"But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven." (full text here)
some good books on the topic of marxism and religion
* Michael Löwy: Marxism and Liberation Theology
* Michael Löwy: Redemption and Utopia. Libertarian Judaism in Central Europe
* Lucien Goldmann: The Hidden God: a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine
* Ernst Bloch: The Principle of Hope
* Ernst Bloch: Atheism in Christianity
* Antonio Gramsci: plenty of stuff analysing popular Italian catholicism scattered all around the Prison Notebooks
on Dawkins: John McAnulty: Vulgar materialism meets the spirit world
Oct 26 2009 12:30
#4
Entdinglichung wrote:
that they generally have much more in common with e.g. religious socialists/anarchists or adherents of liberation theology than with atheist liberals
Practically, I'd agree here. And Chomsky's just talked about this too when discussing the link between religion and politics.
"I don't join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn't have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in heaven -- that's none of my business ultimately. I won't lecture her on the philosophy of science."
To be honest though, as simplistic as the 'new atheists' critiques of religion are, I think what Chomsky's sayign there is a bit of a strawman, as none of the main voices in that current would lecture a mother of a dying child either.
Oct 26 2009 15:03
#5
the critique of religion as social institution is part of the critique of class society in general. Marx is not concerned with literally disproving God, because a) it's a stupid and meaningless task b) organized religion works not because of a specific belief in God, but because of a specific social arrangement.
I agree with the above point that personal belief in Jesus or any of those cunts is not necessarily incompatible with a libertarian Marxist/anarchist view of things, precisely because religion is not just "crazy beliefs in action," as the liberal New Atheists would have it.
New Atheism is basically a bunch of idealist horseshit:
"Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed."~~Sam Harris
See, it's 'moderate' beliefs that lead to fundamentalism. Nothing to do with social and cultural hegemony, capitalism perpetuating divisions within the working class or any of that.
Of course, the Church are not complete idiots; they realize the value of playing radicalized theists off against the "atheist movement" by pretending to ally itself with the former; I was reading on the SPGB blog about the Catholic Church's recent attempts to recuperate Marx:
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2009/10/marx-for-pope.html
Oct 26 2009 14:54
#6
I'm just wading through Saree Makdisi's William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (University of Chicago Press 2003), which uncovers Blake's critique of the nascent bourgeois individualism of the dominant strand of the radical movement, exemplified by Tom Paine and the London Corresponding Society. While the ideas of Paine and various members of the LCS underpin the democratist ideology of 'free individuals' exercising their rights in the 'real world', but divorced from social reality, paradoxically, the antinomian religious current within which Blake 'swam' gave him the context and vocabulary to launch a proto-communist critique - from the 'unreal' perspective of 'the infinite' - of the finitude of 'a Philosophy of Five Senses' given 'into the hands of Newton & Locke', bound down to earth 'by their narrowing perceptions' ( Makdisi 42). Dawkins certainly seems bound down by such an empirical world view. The prehistory of Marxism in the dialectic of Boehme (an influence on Blake), Nicholas of Cusa and the Neoplatonists has been explored elsewhere by Loren Goldner and Cyril Smith (not the Rochdale Liberal MP).
Oct 26 2009 16:14
#7
The SPGB has a early pamphlet from 1911 on religion and materialism online at
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/sar.pdf
It is well worth a read .
Oct 26 2009 18:45
#8
Agree with Vlad's first point on this question. You might find this article useful...
Quote:
Communists remain ideological and political opponents of religion: there is no question of religion being a private matter in the ranks of the revolutionary organization itself, which is made up of class conscious militants who have broken with all forms of religion.This said, in their battle against popular religious prejudices, the communists must be not only materialists - believing and acting on the fundamental standpoint that it is humans who make their own history and can thus liberate themselves through their own conscious activity - but also dialectical materialists. That is, marxists must proceed on the basis of the situation as a whole, being acutely aware of all the crucial interactions between the respective political component parts. This implies linking anti-religious propaganda in a concrete way to the actually existing class struggle, instead of waging an abstract, purely ideological battle against religion.
Only with the victory of the proletarian class movement can the social roots of religious prejudice in class exploitation begin to be severed. Religion cannot be “abolished” - the working masses must outgrow it, on the basis of their own experiences.
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/110_religion.html
This one also has more analysis of how capitalism uses religion in the current period...
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/301_religion-under-capitalism
BRed -- We'd be interested to know what you think of the current religious climate as well as the atheist movement. It might help the discussion along if we know where you're coming from on this question...
Oct 26 2009 19:34
#9
Modern British Quakers have an organisation based around one of the anarchist models.
There is no hierarchy or priests, and any member is equal to another, and nobody tells you what to do or believe.
Members have a whole range of beliefs including atheism.
But then Quakers are different to organised religions.
Oct 26 2009 20:28
#10
The critique of religion as social institution is part of the critique of class society:
http://www.nimbi.com/songs_of_experience_the_chimney_sweeper.html
Oct 27 2009 00:07
#11
I think with Marx on religion you have to have a grasp of the development of his ideas on the subject.
Whistle stop tour;
Feuerbach in a very early psychoanalytical take on it said that Christianity was the escapist expression of frustrated instinctual communist desires. (That idea had its predecessors with the ‘Life of Jesus Stuff’’ book debate etc.
As far as psychoanalysis was concerned it was well ahead of its time.
Then came the ‘anarchist’ Stirner with his Ego and his Own thing or whatever, where the only thing that was rational and materialistic was selfishness.
Then came ‘German Ideology’ taking on board Stirners basic point.
Then came Darwin and more to the point his social instinct thing in the second book was it.
Then came another anarchist Kropotkin with his Mutual Aid, studying of animal behaviour and ‘wanting to be a communist might be natural’, looping back to pre Darwinian Feuerbach who hadn’t justified or put forward a materialist basis for communist instincts etc and hadn’t watched David Attenborough's natural history programmes. On subjects like;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Babbler
And now people like Marc Hauser and the reciprocal altruists have picked up the Feuerbachian, and one time Marxist position, baton.
But the religion thing has dropped out of it a bit. But it never completely went away from a Marxist perspective.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm
I have not read the SPGB pamphlet.
Oct 27 2009 00:32
#12
should have said that the;
"essence Christianity was the escapist expression of frustrated instinctual communist desires"
what things get distorted into, like Marxism to Leninism, is another issue
Oct 27 2009 17:11
#13
I think that stating , like Feuerbach did, that religious inclinations are "expression of frustrated instinctual communist desires" is a bit much. I get a knee-jerk reaction every time I hear the word "instinct" because it totally takes social and developmental aspects out of the equations, and puts unnecessary constraints on biological possibilites. There are recurrent social and environmental conditions that we partially reconstruct throughout development which may perpetuate certain behaviors ,such as religious tendencies, without limiting the plasticity inherent in biological organization.
Oct 27 2009 18:13
#14
Dave B wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Babbler
hmmm ...
Quote:
Babblers ... offer themselves gifts
sounds perfectly capitalist to me 
(surely 'each other'?)
Nov 5 2009 04:46
#15
I find your socioeconomic explanation of religion interesting especially if viewed in light of there seeming to be some intuitive connection between the work of missionaries and the so called "development" of countries. At the same time, leisure time societies such as for instance aristocratic Greece practiced religion in some sense.
Nov 5 2009 14:20
#16
I actually have some sympathies with the New Atheist crowd, but I think that their lack of any class analysis or critique of nationalism (which, I'd say, has all the features of religion as its worst, but is a much more dominant form of bourgeois ideology today) is a fatal flaw. I think they're a pretty understandable response to modern American politics, where religion is one of the major tools used to promote reactionary anti-working class behaviour - instead of analysing the actual class content of Christian fundamentalist movements, they just oppose the form that they take, which is totally understandable if not that helpful. Just as, f'r instance, silly platformists uncritically aping the left's behaviour is a not-that-surprising response to the uselessness of the anti-organisational post-left milieu, the new atheists make sense in context when looked at as a product of contemporary American theocratic politics.
I find Marx's theories on religion to be wanting, I would much rather suggest Bakunin's "God and the State" for a better analysis. The "new atheist movement" that has emerged in recent years, with its emphasis on the goodness of atheism in comparison to "barbaric" religions falls short of a true analysis as well. The root question is not, we can be good without religion, but why are people religious when we know religions are wrong? Overwhelmingly this is political question and deals much more with problems with socio-economic conditions then with some purported developmental cognitive deficiencies in the heads of religious peoples. When individuals exist inside a political system that reduces productivity and creativity to wage work individuals become increasingly alienated. One way of alleviating this is by participating in a community that maintains higher moral authority then the existing conditions can provide, thus they turn to religion as a release from feelings of alienation.