Marxism and God

[JerryBiscoTrey]

Im sure this has been asked before for but i was wondering if Marxism and a belief in a personal God were compatible

[Goatpie]

Well it depends,Marxism is against it because religion is oppresive,Ill take it that your talking about christianity. The church is at a higher level than the people this is why religion is disliked by marxists. But i can see no problem in the actual belief in Religion unless you have to make people unequal in your worship.

[Rafiq]

Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism and Materialism in general is incompatible with the belief in a god. Unless you belief in some sort of Material God.

[StalinFanboy]

There's no reason why you can't believe in a god and be a marxist. I am personally against the idea of a god and all forms of religion, but really I think there is more to human existence than pure logic.

[JerryBiscoTrey]

Well it depends,Marxism is against it because religion is oppresive,Ill take it that your talking about christianity. The church is at a higher level than the people this is why religion is disliked by marxists. But i can see no problem in the actual belief in Religion unless you have to make people unequal in your worship.

Yes i was actually talking about non-institutionalized Theism (Christian, Jewish, Hindu, anything) but i see what you are saying

[JerryBiscoTrey]

Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism and Materialism in general is incompatible with the belief in a god. Unless you belief in some sort of Material God.

Thats what i figured would you care to elaborate?

[Rafiq]

If you believe in a spiritual world you are not a materialist.

[NGNM85]

I choose; 'None of the above.'

[Savage]

Man makes religion, religion does not make man. ... The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.-Marx

[Zanthorus]

Well, that really depends how broadly or narrowly you define the term 'Marxist'. Obviously any kind of spiritual belief is incompatible with Marx and Engels' works taken as a whole but I don't see how believing in a 'personal God' or whatever is incompatible with following Marx's social theory. As a matter of fact, Marx and Engels' work taken as a whole isn't compatible with atheism either, yet there still seem to be quite a few Marxists who are followers of what Marx called the "critical religion... the last stage of theism, the negative recognition of God", so there would appear to be a prescedent here for being a Marxist while ignoring Marx and Engels views on religion.

[Mr.Awesome]

I can't see why you couldn't be a Marxist and religious. I am :p

However, I do think it is contradictory to be a Marxist and to support a religious insitution eg. the Catholic Church or the like.
The idea of priests being closer to God than other men and that you have to do what your priests say and all seems to me to be against Marxism

At any rate, being a Marxist doesn't necessarily mean you must follow Marx to the letter. You can easily agree with most of what he said, but disagree with his stance on religion.

[ZeroNowhere]

Really, 'Marxist' is a nebulous term. If one counts it as inclusive of Marx's basic framework, namely a materialism based around human practice a la Wittgenstein, then it's not possible. Still, the word is generally not used that way, and I suppose that if we have atheist Marxists, we can certainly have theist Marxists, as Zanthorus pointed out. In any case, these would be Marxists of superstructure and not of base, so to speak. It's not a matter of dogmatism, as if Marx's general method was independent of his treatment of religion (to be fair, many 'anti-dogmatists' act like they were independent of his concrete politics, which is probably sillier), but of Marx's general framework since the 1844 manuscripts. Marx didn't reject religion because it didn't have enough evidence or some such rubbish, nor because he thought that it was an evil scheme of the upper classes, and a 'religious Marxist' does in this sense seem something like an 'idealist Marxist'; but then, I'm sure that there are a couple of those, too.

[Jose Gracchus]

As a matter of fact, Marx and Engels' work taken as a whole isn't compatible with atheism either, yet there still seem to be quite a few Marxists who are followers of what Marx called the "critical religion... the last stage of theism, the negative recognition of God", so there would appear to be a prescedent here for being a Marxist while ignoring Marx and Engels views on religion.

This might as well be Chinese to me. I don't understand what you're saying. Could you explain how Marxism is incompatible with atheism?

[Zanthorus]

Could you explain how Marxism is incompatible with atheism?

Well, as I said, this depends how we understand what is meant by 'Marxism', but certainly several of Marx and Engels' statements would seem to suggest as such:


Finally, I desired that, if there is to be talk about philosophy, there should be less trifling with the label “atheism” (which reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man), and that instead the content of philosophy should be brought to the people.- Marx to Ruge, November 1842


Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man – a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man – has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation.- Marx, Private Property and Communism


Herr Bauer, as a genuine, although Critical, theologian or theological Critic, could not get beyond the religious contradiction. In the attitude of the Jews to the Christian world he could see only the attitude of the Jewish religion to the Christian religion. He even had to restore the religious contradiction in a Critical way — in the antithesis between the attitudes of the Jew and the Christian to Critical religion — atheism, the last stage of theism, the negative recognition of God.- Marx, The Holy Family


It can even be said of the German Social-Democratic workers that atheism has already outlived itself with them: this purely negative word no longer has any application as far as they are concerned inasmuch as their opposition to faith in God is no longer one of theory but one of practice; they have purely and simply finished with God, they live and think in the world of reality and are therefore materialists.- Engels, The Programme of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune

ZeroNowhere can probably give a better answer in terms of explanation than I can since he seems to have a relatively informed viewpoint on the whole religious question. I'll just point out that Loren Goldner had this to say about Marx's view of religion:


Another major distinction between the Enlightenment and Marx is the attitude toward religion. This is particularly important since most Marxists have tended to think that Marx's view is basically identical with that of Voltaire: religion is "wrong", "false", l'infâme. But Marx, coming after 50 years of the rich philosophical discussion of religion in German idealism and then in his materialist predecessor Feuerbach, saw religion "as the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of a world without spirit". Religion for Marx was a prime case of what he called alienation, whereby human beings invert dreams of a better life into an other-worldly form. But a Voltairean would never have said, as Marx did, that "you cannot abolish religion without realizing it". Simple Enlightenment atheism never asserted there was anything to "realize", because such a view accords its (alienated) truth to religion.- The Renaissance and Rationality: The Status of the Enlightenment Today

[sunfarstar]

WE CAN WIN:rolleyes:
WE MUST WIN:cool:
WE WILL WIN:lol:

[Proukunin]

there are the Christian Communists.

I dont believe that Marxism and God CANT exist. It's just that most Marxists think the church and religion is oppressive and personally im an atheist and I dont push atheism on anyone. I think we can have freedom of religion in a socialist state so long as they dont PUSH their views on atheists.

[hatzel]

there are the Christian Communists.

Indeed there are. And they spend a surprising amount of time debating whether it's possible to be a Marxist and a Christian :rolleyes: Actually a lot of them don't claim to be Marxists, just communists in the pre-Marxian sense, who may or may not, to a greater or lesser extent, have been subsequently influenced by those elements of Marxist thought which fit in with their ideology and understanding.

[BlackMarx]

I believe in God and I am a Marxist. The thing to remember is that the church is not God. The Church is a human institution, built on hierarchy, and like all elements of capitalist society is controlled and perverted to meet the needs of Capitalist. I find it hard to maintain my faith ever since I left the church sometimes, but I still find time to pray every once in awhile for personal courage and clarity. The way I see it, in the long run, I am fighting for social justice, human liberation and for a better society. From my Christian perspective, there is nothing about that God would frown upon.


Jesus was the first socialist, a liberator of mankind. - Mikhail Gorbachev

[Mr. Contradiction]

And Marx himself makes references to a creator, I think he even used the word "God".

And from my view, Christ and the Marxist have the same attitudes toward the cleansing of the temple.