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Is it even possible to "stamp out" religion?
I have often heard militant-atheist Marxists say that "religion" needs to be "stamped out" and that Marxism-Leninism is the vehicle for accomplishing such ends. I do not think it is possible since in the vacuum of a "legitimate" religious hegemony it appears that people delve into esotericism and more or less folk religion - seems to me the human psyche requires something greater than the mundane to aspire to. Thoughts?
"If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them." The Nationalisation of the Land Karl Marx
"To belittle the socialist ideology in anyway, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." What Is To Be Done? V.I. Lenin
ironicly enough marx and lenin wernt to fond of "stamping" out religion, for marx religion would wither away after the socialist revolution, and lenin for the most part only wanted to use propaganda and education in order to deal with religion.
All i want is a Marxist Hunk.
It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.
Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten!
There's a difference between religion and spirituality. Spirituality could be defined as an "apprehension of the divine". It could mean Freud's "oceanic experience", a feeling of being part of the cosmos. Its also closely connected to an aesthetic appreciation. It seems to be triggered by anything that takes one out of identification with the ego, meditation, gardening, art, yoga. It probably has much to do with a change in the brain's serotonin level. Some people may have a bent for this way of thinking, some may not.
Whether or not spirituality reflects the structure of the universe leads to complicated questions of epistemology and ontology.
A "religion" is a socially constructed conception of what is regarded as the "ultimate reality" of the universe and how this UR wants people to live and society to be organised.
Religions and spirituality are different but have always had complex interactions with each.Spirituality is a subjective experience, religion is socially defined. Religions have been used by ruling classes to mobilize society for certain ends, certain modes of production. In early agrarian societies religions were used for surplus wealth extraction. In feudalism to justify the rule of landowning elite.Under capitalism the role of religions changed again.
I don't think Marxists should advocate an attack on religion, that alienates the working classes by condemning something that people use to impose meaning on a meaningless world, the "heart of a heartless world".Rather when people are able to collectively take control of their own destiny, the power of reactionary preachers will fall away.
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget
Arundhati Roy
Lenina Rosenweg is a glorious beacon of light
The problem with "religion" is the conflation of two completely distinct ideas: organized religion and personal religious belief. The way I see it, it's necessary in many cases to remove the former, but the latter is less of an impediment than some militant atheists make it out to be.
In a country like Russia, the priests were not just men dedicated to their faith; they were a whole caste in service to the Tsars. The Russian Orthodox Church was tied to the institution of Tsarism through and through, and like many institutional churches, owned a huge amount of land. It's obvious that this institution would be totally counter-revolutionary, and it had earned a deep-seated hatred from many Russians, so the Bolsheviks had to suppress it. This also meant a thoroughgoing commitment to atheism, since Christianity now was tarred with utter support for the ancien régime.
Every European country had to deal, in one way or another, with liquidating Church property. It was a major problem, since Church landownership meant poverty and backwardness in the countryside (the Church of course did not reinvest its profits in industry etc). This was something that many revolutions, especially in Russia and Spain, have had to deal with in a rather blunt manner. To some degree this backfired - the persecution of priests can create a counter-revolutionary sentiment among certain sectors of the population.
I have nothing against people being personally religious after the revolution; if people want Bibles or Qu'rans or whatever, they can have them. What we would need to do is to stand against two things: one, the church as proprietor would need to be expropriated, taking everything but the church building; two, the churches could not be allowed to be bastions of counter-revolution, with concrete consequences for this. Beyond that, it's a question of strict separation, with science being taught to kids rather than religious creationism and so on.
But why is the latter an impediment at all? There are countless examples through out history which are becoming superfluous to even meantion which show shamanism, and esoteric beliefs as a driving force in pre-Marxian peoples' movements.
But again, it only meant a "thoroughgoing commitment to atheism" because that had become a major tenet of orthodox Marxism. It would have been very possible to undercut the power of the Church and replace its influence on the psyche even with something subtle and secular (which happened anyway with the apotheosis of MELS) along the lines of God Building, or Robespierre's "Cult of the Supreme Being", rather just leaving a vacuous void easily exploitable and condemnable by the forces of global reaction.
"If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them." The Nationalisation of the Land Karl Marx
"To belittle the socialist ideology in anyway, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." What Is To Be Done? V.I. Lenin
The solution is education (counters all belief systems) and suppression (counters organized religion).
Religious ideology plays a role in social control, and frequently in times of crisis it creates the basis for a sort of "halfway" position, such as radical pacifism, that can only go so far before it needs to be overcome by more direct action. The best example I can think of is the shift in the Black liberation debate; when it was dominated by well-meaning but middle-class Black Christians, it was pacifist, although a fairly radical pacifism, but could not go beyond the narrow yet important field of winning suffrage and formal equality in the South. It could not challenge the ghetto conditions of the North, and within a few years was bypassed by more radical forces, most of them Black Nationalist and/or Pan-Africanist.
This sort of thing reveals a really paternalistic attitude which existed in the ideas of "God-Builders," Robespierre and the Stalinists. By that I mean, the idea that the common people can't take hard reason, have to have the religious sentiments in their brains stimulated and pandered to, is ludicrous. It sets up the expectation of an atheist elite and a superstitious rabble, which is as alien as you can be to socialism.
Why can't the human sentiment of reverence and awe be directed at culture and nature? Beautiful music, a scenic landscape, and the night sky all fill me with a sense of reverence and deep appreciation, but I don't need to worship them to validate it. It's such a narrow view that can't see that this could be the most natural expression of the "religious impulse" without building up some artificial, patronizing "religion" that the elites all know is bunk.
Hmm...maybe...
Problem is it often just gets people really pissed off and provokes ever more fundamentalist approaches. Usually based on some kind of 'they're trying to oppress us, therefore we must fight against them for our freedom of religion!' idea. I've mentioned before on here my experiences with Ukrainian Christians, who have responded to the Soviet...let's call it discouragement of religion...by going kinda hardcore about it. Lines like "you've been baptised and don't even care about it...I wasn't lucky enough! We had to fight to be baptised! You don't know how lucky you are!" are often flung at irreligious Western Europeans. Doesn't seem productive to me, sorry...
These guys were radical pacifists, right?: Yellow Turbans, Taiping Rebels, Boxer Rebels, Brethren of the Free Spirit, the esoteric left of the French Revolution, etc, etc...
Atheists which say through one side of their mouth that they support reason in the working classes, while at the same time scoffing, laughing at, and ridiculing those "backwards provincials" which maintain spiritual beliefs or insights which they do not just believe, but hold to be subjectively true display an ultra-paternalistic attitude directed towards changing the very thought patterns in regards to what no one can Know for Certain, and therefore try to redefine reality to fit their mundane understanding of it. Atheism really is no different than any other kind of organized religion when it is in official state power...
No, you do not have to worship them, or anything material to appreciate these things, but it reminds me of this quote:
Porphyry said: “By images addressed to sense, the ancients represented God and his powers–by the visible they typified the invisible for those who had learned to read, in these types, as in a book, a treatise on the Gods. We need not wonder if the ignorant consider the images to be nothing more than wood or stone; for just so, they who are ignorant of writing see nothing in monuments but stone, nothing in tablets but wood, and in books but a tissue of papyrus.”
"If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them." The Nationalisation of the Land Karl Marx
"To belittle the socialist ideology in anyway, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." What Is To Be Done? V.I. Lenin
Comrades, we must embrace reality here.
Religion itself is not the problem, the institutions associated with religion are.
Let's look at history, shall we?
Religious beliefs and rituals developed prior to class society; therefore, religion can exist in a future classless society.
Religion only adapted to class society, it was not a creation of it. When classes and states began emerging, various new religious concepts did as well- for example the formation of religious hierarchy and ties between state and religion.
Organized religion is not intrinsically bad or opressive. The problem is the manner in which it is organized. If people mutually come together for spiritual reasons, is that really a bad thing?
However, if some guy in a fancy hat tells you when, how, and where without telling you why, with a constant threat of retribution- that is the element of organized religion that must be done away with.
And it is being done away with. As folk religions- the traditions that precede class society- reemerge, education is improved, means of communication improve, etc. we can expect the totalitarian nature of various religious organizations to vanish.
Truly, the best way to deal with religion is to accept what is going on, and allow people to explore religion further. If we suppress or preach against religion, it will only increase religious opposition. If we accept religion, we can expect religious support.
[FONT=Calibri]“Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.”-Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
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The 'stamping out' of Religion is unnecessary what is necessary however is an alternative to religious practices on a state basis that represents the collective thought of humankind and is the embodiment of humanity itself. Such a religious order would have its very goals to be on the basis of Scientific thought, rationality and of materialism. Religion itself can't simply be stamped out as it goes along with the cultural identity of humanity and has been placed into human thoughtform for thousands of years and can likely be traced back to the beginning of humanity in various forms.
Obviously, the replacement though would need to be a proponent of rational, positive Atheism in nature, but it as well would be required to at the same time be neutral towards positive, non-organized religious thoughtforms, but at the same time have the intentions of leading on scientific progress, materialism and rationality.
Religions will probably always exist in some form or another as there will always be unanswered questions. But as we slowly become a more secular society, religions will eventually be seen as fringe groups.
"I'm anti-Republican and Democratic / if they self destruct that's anti-climactic"
Yes it is. mostly. For the most part traditional religions in Albania were eradicated. Apparently after capitalist restoration a lot of people didn't know what crucifixes meant and didn't even understand the differences between Christianity and Islam.
1.) 'Yes it is. mostly.'
As it is futile to directly dismantle religion, as it is a cultural and social-construct that must be combated indirectly through building a new state religious order founded on Materialism, Scientific thought and rationality and create this to be the state sponsored alternative to religious activities.
2.) 'For the most part traditional religions in Albania were eradicated.'
As the way that Hoxha had opposed religion was the incorrect method, which instead of building a new religious order with Proletarian Intellectuals, he had instead chose to force forward 'State Atheism' without offering the alternative as previously mentioned. Which is the reason that it was rather unsuccessful, not to mention the fact that Albania had been a predominately Islamic country and he had attempting to lead forward Anti-Religious scientific progress in a small period of time and force it on the general population. The idea is to not directly destroy religion physically, instead the idea is to simply create an alternative that represents the collective interests of humanity.
3.) 'Apparently after capitalist restoration a lot of people didn't know what crucifixes meant and didn't even understand the differences between Christianity and Islam.'
I don't myself see this as a positive, the historical nature of religion shouldn't be forgotten, instead the historical nature should be remembered and through this historical nature the fallacies of religion should be understood. As well as using these religious concepts in a Proletarian manner that is representative to a newly created revolutionary society.
Ignorance is strength
Yes it is possible.
Yes it is possible.
would it even be productive to stamp out religion? what would be the point?
There's a rat in your house. It's eating your food and spreading disease. It breeds more rats.
You kill it. Problem solved.
You men eat your dinner,
Eat your pork and beans
I eat more chicken
Any man ever seen
"If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them." The Nationalisation of the Land Karl Marx
"To belittle the socialist ideology in anyway, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology." What Is To Be Done? V.I. Lenin
"We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out. "
Hitler speech, October 24, 1933
"Still, the Earth turns."- Galileo
