Religion and the Communist State

[SkepticEpileptic]

So I've been re-reading the Communist Manifesto, since I haven't read it since I was like 12 or 13, and I got to a part in it where it says that Communism abolishes all pre-existing eternal truths and a whole bunch a stuff. I'm just stuck, it's just a big 'ol word quagmire.

Does it mean that things like religion and different ideologies won't have a place and for that reason will be eliminated? Or what does it mean?

[tuwix]

No. The manifesto was written in the XIX century in very specific economic and social circumstances. And now we are in XXI century which is completely different from XIX century.
The authors were full of hope and confidence that capitalism is going to collapse in the days but the future was very different. Now we must confront completely circumstances.

[Blake's Baby]

While I think that what Tuwix says about circumstances being different is true, and even in 1872 Marx and Engels were saying that certain things in the Manifesto would be written differently were they done 'today' (ie, 145 years ago rather than 170), I think the problem that you're having is not so much with the Manifesto as your interpretation of what it means.

For Marx an Engels religion was a false explanation. What 'communism' - bear in mind, they mean the creation by the working class of a new society of co-operation and freedom, not some monolithic state apparatus imposing its view on society - creates is a situation in which false explanations are shown for what they are.

So yes, 'communism' abolishes all pre-existing truths, by changing the circumstances in which those 'truths' (which are at best distorted reflections of existing power-structures) can flourish.

If one no longer has kings, then the idea of an eternal sky-king no longer has so much sway. No landlords means no notion that a being created the earth and gets to tell you how to live in it. No boss means no god or priest to tell you what to do. The end of the family means no mystical super-father who watches over your behaviour with disapproval. No oppression means no crying out against oppression, which means no necessity for salvation or rebellion, no saving and damning, not eternal reward because the 'reward' is here - a decent, human society.

But I'll repeat - this isn't brought about by jack-booted police who round up 'the faithful' (whoever they are) but by freedom and education allowing people to overcome the ideological blinkers that they have in place in a class society, and which that society encourages in order to justify its own existence.