The struggle for secularism

[Paul Cockshott]

I have been having a prolongued debate with Lucretia under a thread heading about Trotskyism and Islam. The debate has gone well beyond these specific points so I thought it worth haveing a thread of its own.
The key issue being debated is what religion is, and what its relationship to class society is. This is a point that has very general political implications touching not only on Islam, but on other religions.
I have been arguing that religions are ideological state apparattuses that exist to maintain relationships of class and gender subordination. Lucretia disagrees with this and argues that religion is a primitive feature of human society that has existed since the old stone age, and that it is wrong to treat it as irreducibly poltical.

I have been arguing that whilst beliefs in supernatural explanations may preceed class society, this is on the one hand inevitable prior to the existence of scientific explanations, and such beliefs should not be identified with religions which involves ogranised bodies of trained men and to lesser extent women, supported out of surplus labour along with buildings like churches and temples and other machinery for mind control: images, statues, ritual phrases to be chanted etc.
These state machines arose with class society and private property and exist to maintain patriarchy and exploitation.

These institutions are one of the greatest support for reaction on a world scale. They are the rallying point for counter revolution, and indeed have been since the days of the French revolution.
It is a social democratic error to pretend that religion is a private matter. Religion is never private, it is always social, and political. It involves collective gatherings, ideological propagation, regulation of reproductive activity etc.
A revolutionary regime is forced to engage in a ruthless struggle against the ideological apparatus of the prior society. In this it has to replace the old machinery with a new one : typically the school system and the communist party. Within the repressive apparattus of the state political commissars replace padres. The regulation of sexual activity by the religious state machine has to be replaced by freedom of sexuality and the institution of civil marriage to the extent that residual semi property rights persist ( right to continue tenancy of a house for example after the death of a partner).


History teaches us that the struggle to extirpate these institutions will be long and bitter, running potentially for centuries. In such a battle a variety of means will have to be involved. In some cases direct armed force is necessary because the religious counter revolution takes up arms. In this struggle it may be necessary to confiscate the property of the old ideological apparttus, destroy its symbols and buildings, take control over the appointment of staff, prohibit the teaching of religion to children, etc.
In capitalist societies too the socialists should be the most consistent supporters of secularism: opposing the teaching of religion to children, religious regulation of sexual behaviour and dress, state funding of religion ( including tax exemptions ). If you look at political developments in Turkey, Syria, France you can see that the struggle for secularism remains a central issue. It is not something we can allow liberal or appologetic positions on.

[UnderTheSun]

I agree with you on most of the stuff there. But when you talk about rejecting liberal attitudes to religion, we have to remember that there are those, like Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson who use gay rights and women's lib issues within Islam to put forward anti-immigration and generally racist agendas against Muslims, appealing to liberal sensibilities, avoiding this is important when tackling minority religions.

[Paul Cockshott]

Well do you respond to that by defending one religion or expanding it to a general attack on Christianity as well?

[helot]

I have been arguing that religions are ideological state apparattuses that exist to maintain relationships of class and gender subordination.

[...]

I have been arguing that whilst beliefs in supernatural explanations may preceed class society, this is on the one hand inevitable prior to the existence of scientific explanations, and such beliefs should not be identified with religions which involves ogranised bodies of trained men and to lesser extent women, supported out of surplus labour along with buildings like churches and temples and other machinery for mind control: images, statues, ritual phrases to be chanted etc.
These state machines arose with class society and private property and exist to maintain patriarchy and exploitation.


Ofc youd be correct because you're defining religion is such a way so as to require the exploitation of toilers.

The issue at hand is, as you put it, what is and isn't religion. It's a tricky subject that's been debated extensively with no consensus being reached.


Let's use Christianity as an example. As what point did it become religion? I'd maintain that christianity emerged as a sort of revolutionary force that had to be co-opted by the Roman state. Did it become a religion at its co-option and the creation of the Roman church or was it religion beforehand?

[Paul Cockshott]

Well it moved from being a potential ideological apparatus of a Israel state at the start, to becoming an ideological apparatus of the Roman state. Hence all the stuff about Jesus being of the royal line etc.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Beghards, Beguines, Diggers, Brethern of The Free Spirit, The Catholic Worker Movement, various Sufi movements, etc., etc.

Quit it with your ahistorical broadbrush bs.

[UnderTheSun]

Beghards, Beguines, Diggers, Brethern of The Free Spirit, The Catholic Worker Movement, various Sufi movements, etc., etc.

Quit it with your ahistorical broadbrush bs.
Good point, but talking about Religion in general is not the same as talking about every individual religious group.
As has been mentioned above; Christianity started as a anti-imperialist and egalitarian movement in Roman Judea, but later it would be used to justify and support all the things it originally condemned.

[Paul Cockshott]

Prior to the invention of political parties, if you wished to set up an opposing ideological state apparatus to contest power it took religious form. None of the examples you give were able to establish themselves as dominant ideological state apparatuses. Saying that religions are ideological state machines does not mean that there is no struggle for political power between the ideological apparatuses of different territories or classes. Europe was torn apart by such struggles.

[helot]

Well it moved from being a potential ideological apparatus of a Israel state at the start, to becoming an ideological apparatus of the Roman state. Hence all the stuff about Jesus being of the royal line etc.

I dont think its enough to state that tbh with you considering there was also the claim that master and slave are equal and the rich and the powerful will burn. Not to mention alot of early christians worked in common and shared the product of their labour.

[Paul Cockshott]

According to Kautsky you have to distinguish 3 phases:
1. An Israelite rebel movement, sharing the ideology of the state of Israel - christianity as a trend within the jewish religious ideology.
2. After the supression of the Jewish uprising the development of a new ideology that initially recruited among the urban proletariat, but its emphasis on redistributive communal meals meant that it depended on financial support from wealthy individuals to provide the food for the communion meals. At this stage it is not a state supporting ideology, but it is already rewriting its history to accomodate to the Roman state: blaming the crucifiction on the Jews who were now seen as dangerous rebels, rather than on the imperial authorities.
3. Incorporation as the official ideology of the Empire 'in hoc signo vinces'. It is only at this point that it is able to build up the full apparattus of a religion: large staff of paid full time priests, large impressive buildings based on the design of Imperial basilica or law courts and symbolic artworks, images of its god as an imperial authority figure within these basilica. Systematic supression of competing ideologies, destruction of their books and ideological machinery etc. From this point on it is the Christian religion as we know it.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The utilization of religion by ruling powers is political, but the social role of religion is making an unlivable world into a livable one. The struggle for secularism is a non-struggle ... what we need is a struggle for social liberation. That said, the socialist movement itself should be a secular one, and it should not play religious sectarian issues, but if a Muslim woman wants to wear a head scarf or a Christian woman wants to wear a crucifix, that shouldn't be a problem for her being a part of the movement for worker's liberation.

As for whether or not religion predates class society, if we say it doesn't, then do we then not count the mythologies of classless tribal societies with minimal social and economic contact with the global economy as "religions"? In that case, it seems the issue is one of semantics. Clearly, societies without class division have just as much of an ideological commitment to mythological beliefs as those in a class society.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Geeze, circular reasoning much?
Religions are ideological appendages of states. Therefore, if a religion is not an ideological appendage of a state, it is not a religion.
Not only is this poorly thought out, but it doesn't actually offer any insight for communists in relation to . . . I was going to say religious movements, but I guess those don't exist. Nevermind.

[Paul Cockshott]

The utilization of religion by ruling powers is political, but the social role of religion is making an unlivable world into a livable one. The struggle for secularism is a non-struggle ... .
What about the history of the third French Republic?
The struggle against clericalism was absolutely central to its politics and the labour movement sided with secularists.

The struggle for secularism is not a struggle!
Do you watch TV, what on earth do you think is going on in Turkey and Syria now!

[Paul Cockshott]

Geeze, circular reasoning much?
Religions are ideological appendages of states. Therefore, if a religion is not an ideological appendage of a state, it is not a religion.
That religion is part of the state machine is not a theory but an obvious empirical fact that a moment's examination of legislation will show you. To deny this fact is to fall for the most naive liberal illusion.


Ok you deny that religions are ideological arms of states. Why then do states have official religions that are supported out of tax revenues?
This is widespread in Europe where people have religious taxes paid out of their wages.
In Turkey the mosques are supported out of state revenue whidh pays for their staff and building of new ones, similarly in Saudi the mosques get huge state subsidies.

Why then are religions given explicit constitutional powers:
It is obvious to all in Iran, but in Northern Europe, the head of state only becomes head of state after they are blessed by the appropriate church authority.

Check out the coronation oath in Britain: http://www.royal.gov.uk/ImagesandBroadcasts/Historic%20speeches%20and%20broadcasts/CoronationOath2June1953.aspx
the oaths at the Acession Council
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_Council#Religious_oath

Look at the powers of the Bishops to vote on laws

http://www.churchofengland.org/our-views/the-church-in-parliament/bishops-in-the-house-of-lords.aspx

The established status of the church : http://www.atheismuk.com/about/positions/church-of-england-established-church/

These are not British peculiarities but the way that religion always worked. It was tied to, justified and was part of the state machine.

The Act of Restraint of Appeals by which the Church of England was set up was drafted by Cromwell with the explicit justification that
"Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same, unto whom a body politic compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of Spirituality and Temporalty, be bounden and owe to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience: he being also institute and furnished, by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God, with plenary, whole, and entire power, pre-eminence, authority, "

Ie, England is an Empire so it needs its own independent ideological state machine ( Church ).
What was the Anglican religion but the ideological state machine of England's empire, spreading as the Empire spread.

The Catholic Church was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire, before which the official religion had been the cults of the divine emperors.


The fact that in some bourgeois states like the USA and France there is a theoretical separation of Church and State, is a relic of their Bourgeois revolutions, but such revolutions have not occured in most of the world. The US bourgeoisie only declared the separation of church and state to get out from under the icontrol of the English ideological state machine. And even in the USA and France the church has still special privileges that the state in practice recognises:

The church has the right to regulate sexual relations -- ie church officials can carry out marriages, but these are only carried out between men and women, it is only now, that the secular state is challenging this by creating the right to gay marriage. The French state has succeeded against the teeth of opposition by the church, but progress in the US is much slower.

The Church has special tax exemptions, which amount to government subsidies in disguised form.

The Church has the right to appoint ideological agents in the most crucial machinery, the armed forces : padres.



It is untrue that god is the complex of ideas which awaken and organise social feelings. That is Bogdanov idealism, which suppresses the material origin of ideas. God is (in history and in real life) first of all the complex of ideas generated by the brutish subjection of man both by external nature and by the class yoke – ideas which consolidate that subjection, lull to sleep the class struggle. (lenin to Gorky 1913)

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

What about the history of the third French Republic?
The struggle against clericalism was absolutely central to its politics and the labour movement sided with secularists.


Secularized capitalism is still capitalism. France is one of the most radically secular countries in the world but it is no more nor less Capitalist than England, the USA or Saudi Arabia for that matter. In addition, despite its secularism, patriarchy still exists and it only legalized homosexuality this year. For that matter, many Soviet and Soviet aligned states in fact continued to operate with the moral assumptions of the Christian world, as can be evidenced by the routine repression of homosexuals and the patriarchal nature of many Communist parties.



The struggle for secularism is not a struggle!
Do you watch TV, what on earth do you think is going on in Turkey and Syria now!What's going on in Turkey and Syria right now has to do with more than just "Islam". Religious sectarianism as often as not is based on community bonds or a broader sense of cultural commonality, not the ideological content of the religion. Alawis and Sunnis in Syria are not fighting over the details of their faith but for political power. This is why many Sunnis side with the regime, and why many Sunnis in Lebanon side with Hezbollah - it has more to do with people's social and economic status, which has to do with many factors not just spiritual beliefs. Those who are fighting for their faith are largely Sunni radicals who want to shape society in a certain way, but aren't doing this because they are Muslims but because they want to impose a certain notion of Islamic identity on their fellow Muslims. The struggle against people like al-Nusra is not the struggle against Islam, or Sunni Islam, but the struggle against religious reactionaries attempting to impose a certain political ideology on the Middle East that most Sunni Muslims themselves would find backwards and out of place.

Secularism picks up religion as a particularly problematic institution, ignoring the fact that this view is fundamentally an idealistic critique. I think our focus should be on the class nature of society. Struggle against certain religious institutions or social laws are important, for instance the alienation of homosexuals, but the struggle against religion as such is not the central feature of social liberation.


That religion is part of the state machine is not a theory but an obvious empirical fact that a moment's examination of legislation will show you. To deny this fact is to fall for the most naive liberal illusion.


Ok you deny that religions are ideological arms of states. Why then do states have official religions that are supported out of tax revenues?
This is widespread in Europe where people have religious taxes paid out of their wages.

The issue is whether or not religions are necessarily a tool of the state or a particular class, particularly whether or not stateless societies can have religion or what the status is of politically or economically disenfranchised religious sects. Nobody is disputing that religion is used the way you describe.

[Marxaveli]

I agree with both Paul Cockshott AND Lucretia. I believe religion does indeed predate class society (used mostly by man as a way of explaining all the natural phenomena around them since there was no scientific development yet), but just because it did so doesn't mean that it hasn't been or isn't an instrument of false consciousness used by the ruling class, to varying extents and in various ways in different societies, to subjugate the subordinate class. If you think religion does predate class society as I do, it doesn't seem logical to conclude that the original purpose of religion is to serve the ruling class. But on the other side of the coin, religion, like any other social construct, is shaped around the material conditions of society, and thus why it ultimately became an way for the ruling classes to strengthen their dominant position within the social order. So I think both of you are right to some extent.

[Turinbaar]

I think it would be more precise to say that religion, in addition to predating class society, is also the basis for it as well. In his 1844 manuscripts, Marx repeatedly analogizes the relation of the laborer and property to that of the worshiper and the divine. The state being an overall compromise between property owners naturally lends to a system of god-like absolutism. This extends into familial social relations as well. This alienated existence imposed on humanity by itself in these various spheres has religion at its root, and Marx's greatest insight was to see this and advocate a world that did not require illusions to exist.

[Paul Cockshott]

There was a time in history when, in spite of such an
origin and such a real meaning of the idea of God, the struggle of
democracy and of the proletariat went on in the form of a struggle
of one religious idea against another.
But that time, too, is long past.

Nowadays both in Europe and in Russia any, even the most refined and best-intentioned defence or justification of the idea of
God is a justification of reaction.(Lenin to Gorky)

Sinister, in your reluctance to confront religion you tail far behind the masses in Turkey who are out on the streets fighting the police for a secular state. The Attaturk model of a secular state is being progressively undermined by the government which is seeking to reinstate 'Ottomanism'. The very spark of the protests was the proposal to build a reconstructed Ottoman style building on a public park. Attaturks struggle to suppress the idelogical state apparattus of the old Ottoman empire, is being reversed. The prime ministers policies of moving to a ban on alcohol, imposing bans on public kissing etc are part of reintroducing this old imperial ideological apparttus, and these in turn link into a re-assertion of a new Turkish sub-imperialism.

[Comrade #138672]

This might be interesting to read. According to Kautsky, Christianity started out with a lot of class hatred (towards the rich): http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch09.htm#s2 And gradually it had been revised to fit the ideology of the ruling class. Reminds me of something...

[Questionable]

This might be interesting to read. According to Kautsky, Christianity started out with a lot of class hatred (towards the rich): http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch09.htm#s2 And gradually it had been revised to fit the ideology of the ruling class. Reminds me of something...

I'm pretty sure that Engels wrote a lot on that subject before Kautsky did.



http://atheism.about.com/library/marxism/bl_EngelsEarlyChrist.htm

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Sinister, in your reluctance to confront religion you tail far behind the masses in Turkey who are out on the streets fighting the police for a secular state. The Attaturk model of a secular state is being progressively undermined by the government which is seeking to reinstate 'Ottomanism'. The very spark of the protests was the proposal to build a reconstructed Ottoman style building on a public park. Attaturks struggle to suppress the idelogical state apparattus of the old Ottoman empire, is being reversed. The prime ministers policies of moving to a ban on alcohol, imposing bans on public kissing etc are part of reintroducing this old imperial ideological apparttus, and these in turn link into a re-assertion of a new Turkish sub-imperialism.

The struggle between the "Ataturk model" and the "neo-Ottomans" of the AKP is a struggle by different factions of the bourgeoisie. Fighting Erdogan is good, but if your motive in protest is to be able to drink in public and not to change the way the economy is structured, you're going to be left with a bourgeois Kemalist party in power with a bourgeois religious party in opposition. It's not that these rights aren't nice or useful, but they're not the heart of the struggle. Religious leaders don't get this kind of power or control without certain conditions, which have more to do with the interests of other ruling classes. The conservative Saudi Imams, for instance, get their wealth, power and international significance through their alliance with traditional feudal monarchs.

Extreme secularism helped the AKP play the human rights card during their rise to power anyway. Restricting Muslim women in public employment from wearing a scarf is as silly as requiring women in public buildings to wear a scarf.

[Lucretia]

I am really not interested in participating in this thread any more than to say that I encourage everybody here to see my posts in the other thread about this issue. My criticism doesn't revolve around whether religion is "irreducibly political" (actually, I fault Paul for reducing a religion to a political position). I am fully attuned to how many aspects of every religion are political under class society. My point was, as you will see in those posts, that religion cannot be reduced to a political position or political ideology, and that therefore adherence to a religion does not entail a definite position in the class struggle, just as there are aspects to every religion that do not directly entail any kind of direct or obvious political logic, but which are still unique to that religion in a way that delineates it from other religions.

My point in raising the fact that religion predates class society is to show that religion is not just a ruling-class scheme to trick people into being exploited, and that adherence to a religious belief does not necessarily mean lining up with the ruling class in their nefarious scheme.

Speaking as an atheist, I am sickened at the way secularism is increasingly being used to line up behind American imperialism.

[Paul Cockshott]

The struggle between the "Ataturk model" and the "neo-Ottomans" of the AKP is a struggle by different factions of the bourgeoisie. Fighting Erdogan is good, but if your motive in protest is to be able to drink in public and not to change the way the economy is structured, you're going to be left with a bourgeois Kemalist party in power with a bourgeois religious party in opposition. It's not that these rights aren't nice or useful, but they're not the heart of the struggle.
This is an economist position, like dismissing the protest movement because it has a lot of middle class participation. See this response to such criticisms by the TKP

Well, we can’t really dodge the issue by simply saying that this is the reaction of middle class. If the middle class reaction has reached this level in Turkey, we should start thinking about other things. OK, there is a middle class character to this but there has been serious mobilization in the working class neighborhoods, particularly in İstanbul and Ankara. If we forget what we have known all along and talk off the top of our head, we will make mistakes. Firstly, the ideological political impact, both in terms of bourgeois and socialist ideology, has to overcome the middle class obstacle. The struggle for hegemony here needs to be taken serious. If everyone labels this wide field as they feel like it, it would be a great mistake. The Left has for years looked down on this field labeling it with labels such as “White Turk”… Ideological rigor is important, so is the class sensitivity. But we also need to avoid oversimplification. Secondly, it is the structure of the working class in Turkey. There is limit to organizing in the workplace a labor mass that is unsteady, ever moving while dealing with unemployment. It is time to look at the laborer localization with a new logic. We have transferred the working class to the union structure but they are not on solid ground either. The whole country has risen up and unions are nowhere to be found. There is no tool that will activate the working class as the leader, that will make it the dominant force! In previous incidents where this was achieved by political structures, there was absolute success. Tens of thousands of people who were labeled as “Middle Class” have in fact laid claim to an anti-capitalist axis. The reason is that most of these people are people whose labor is exploited.

[hatzel]

Speaking as an atheist, I am sickened at the way secularism is increasingly being used to line up behind American imperialism.

Interesting that you should say that...


[S]ecularism is a name Christianity gave itself when it invented religion, when it named its other or others as religions. And the question now remaining is whether there was a specific religion that was particularly targeted with this name. Was there one (or two) that was—and may still be—more heavily cathected? Is there still? And if so, which?

In order to answer this question, I will soon turn to Orientalism and argue that it must be read as a critique of Christianity, secularized or not. This should not be surprising. Orientalism is secularism, and secularism is Christianity. Said took us on these syllogistic steps, substantiating his claim in various ways and first of all by pointing out that as a field of study, “in the Christian West, Orientalism is considered to have commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of Vienne in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in ‘Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Bologna, Avignon, and Salamanca’” (O, pp. 49–50). Moreover, Christianity—which is to say, Orientalism—invented both religion and secularism. Consider, for example, how, recasting the sacred/secular divide as a distinction between the Hebrews and all other nations (in effect, turning on its head Augustine’s political theology, which located the Jews outside of the history of salvation, outside of the Age of Grace), Vico—whose historicism and cultural relativism was significantly “preparing the way for modern Orientalism”—at once reinscribed and participated in the transformation of “the distinction between Christians and everyone else” (O, pp. 118, 120). More generally, in its secularized form, Christianity invented (or fashioned or produced or enforced or yet definitely institutionalized by way of knowledge and law—whichever of these you think is better to describe the massive power of hegemony and its operations) Judaism and Islam—the Jew, the Arab, or, to be perfectly historical about it, the Semites—as religions and, more precisely, as being at once the least and the most religious of religions. And of races. Subsequently, it cleared the Jews of theological and religious wrongdoings (heaping upon them, in its more elaborate versions, the new anathema of racial inferiority) and made Islam the paradigmatic religion, the religion of fanaticism. In doing so, Orientalism—that is to say, secularism—became one of the essential means by which Christianity failed to criticize itself, the means by which Christianity forgot and forgave itself.

This endeavor, needless to say, was not about academic politics (and do consider that the unavoidable disingenuousness of this last remark in this publishing context does not make it less valid). It was no academic or scholarly matter, nor simply the subject of epistemic shifts. It took place as Orientalism “accomplished its self-metamorphosis from a scholarly discourse to an imperial institution,” its self-metamorphosis from Christianity to secularism (O, p. 95). It took place, as Orientalism demonstrates, across discourses of knowledge and power; as culture and imperialism, economics and politics, religion and secularism. It still does today.

Woah woah woah did I seriously just go there? I think I did, what on earth was I thinking?

[Turinbaar]

Interesting that you should say that...



Woah woah woah did I seriously just go there? I think I did, what on earth was I thinking?

It may a bit simplistic to say that secularism is merely a disguised form of Christianity. If socialism is secular, wouldn't that then make it a religion under that definition, and by extension an orientalist imperial ideology?

[Rafiq]

Didn't marx say something along the lines of, secularism as it developed in europe is not in spite of religion, but that it pre supposes religion?

Does the very notion of secularism pre-suppose the existence of a sacred? Perhaps we should move beyond this. As atheists communism should not fall into the secular/sacred paradigrim and instead we simply declare it irreligious, devoid of any religious character.

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[Turinbaar]

Didn't marx say something along the lines of, secularism as it developed in europe is not in spite of religion, but that it pre supposes religion?

Does the very notion of secularism pre-suppose the existence of a sacred? Perhaps we should move beyond this. As atheists communism should not fall into the secular/sacred paradigrim and instead we simply declare it irreligious, devoid of any religious character.

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His doctoral dissertation on Epicurus suggests that secularism grew up alongside religion like its shadow.

[Paul Cockshott]

Related to this discussion, observing the absence of any temple complexes in the Neolithic Anatolian sites which appear to have been classless:


Paul Cockshott I have been having a big argument on another site as to whether pre class societies have religion in the modern sense or just myths. It is very hard to say from this, but the absence of any temples leads me to say that they were not religious
about an hour ago

Greg Michaelson I agree with you. Without obvious constructs for organised religion like temples, Neolithic conceptions of the universe cannot be deduced from artefacts alone without imposing our own sensibilities. I found the Ice Age Art exhibition in London irritating precisely because of this over interpretation. Is a "venus" model evidence of matriarchal worship or a toy or pocket porn or art...? We just don't know. It is claimed that widespread Venuses imply a pan-European religion. Do contemporary widespread sales of Playboy have similar religious implications...?