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opposing oppression just because it is oppression is liberalism. should the right-wing not be oppressed either.
2. the new consciousness will come from class struggle, when the poor wake up as a class and see how they are getting shafted by the bourgeoisie and its tools of religion, nationalism. the driving force of class struggle will not be fighting oppression, but hatred of the bourgeoisie. Hostility towards the upper class is what will motivate the socialist movement, not anti-oppression.
People like the OP, and the abundance of sexists, racists, islamophobe, elitists and libertarians in the "atheist movement", makes me think that perhaps I should reconsider my life-long non-belief. I was gonna throw a Lenin quote at you as well, but you can look up the chapters in What Is To Be Done? yourselves.
"I want to say sweet, silly things." - V.I Lenin
Nothing. It hasn't been as much of a direct issue where I am. I also haven't been on a gay rights march in over a year... so I'm "hot air" if I discuss LGBT rights and movement potential or strategy?
At any rate, some concrete examples of things that might be done in the US would be, for example, the counter-protests to the "Victory Mosque" tea-party bullshit. Shutting those fuckers down certainty does more to create more consiousness about how Islamophobia is used to win people in general to supporting wars, it can help build links between activists and the immigrant community in New York, of which a chunk are Muslims. And of course the anti-Islam rehtoric was also the origin of the anti-immigrant calls for "securing the border" and calls for greater domestic policing powers. So it sould be clear the potential impact this specific struggle could have in opening up wider class struggle. It's not necessarily that you have to first have one struggle and then the other, just that they are tangled together in society and are part of the knot that keep us tied up in this class system.
Um... who said anything about opposing oppression in the abstract... my comment was that opposing oppression (regardless of the motivation actually) is not "appeasement".
If you ain't quoting, I will:
“Agitation must be conducted with regard to every concrete example of this oppression (as we have begun to carry on agitation round concrete examples of economic oppression). Inasmuch as this oppression affects the most diverse classes of society, inasmuch as it manifests itself in the most varied spheres of life and activity — vocational, civic, personal, family, religious, scientific, etc., etc. ”
-V.I. Lenin, What is to be done?
Is this resistance or a costume party?
Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.
fka Creep
Well Jimmy I knew you'd be the only or at least first person to respond to that as I've seen you post about doing things like that before. Yet for the majority of people who "defend" religious workers they don't do shit and then have a go at people who are honest about not doing shit. I find it slightly hypocritical tbh. To me defending something implies active engagement not passive support.
And this has progressed class consciousness how? Did these people become materialists? Do they now understand that the problem is capitalism? I'm sorry but I don't see how these tactics are helping to bring revolution any closer. These are the struggles of the labour movement, the struggles of petty reforms. It makes Lenin's comment on the working class only being capable of attaining trade union consciousness a self fulfilling prophecy.
So how does that translate into action? Are you going to put an article defending Hillary Clinton in your paper? Are you going to send a letter of solidarity to Hillary Clinton, sign a petition on her behalf, or enter into an anti-sexist front with her?
The problem of unpaid labour in the home isn't going to be solved until the family unit, based on private property is dissolved. That is a socialist question. What the media says about Hillary Clinton shouldn't have any impact on the women in my workplace, because they are working class and Hillary Clinton is ruling class along with the media. The first feminists were socialists. The two are inseperable. Hillary Clinton cannot take that away from our movement.
Last edited by citizen of industry; 21st August 2012 at 14:39.
Those who, in the name of the quest for the "new," reject the use of the tested insights, understandings, and accomplishments of the last century or more, will merely repeat "old" mistakes.
Others have made more eloquent and considered posts, all I can say is OP is a bit of a shithead.
'Oh look, those guys are getting fucked over...eh, forget it, they're not my people, those dumb religious folk should stop believing that shit if they wanna stop being raped, killed and oppressed'.
Just an ounce of humanity and empathy would be cool, but whatever, shrug off the suffering of others because they're not prolly enough.
This is just the kind of guy OP is, folks. The other day he pm'd me and told me we shouldn't support gay rights or the struggle for them.
Sure, here's a headline: "Hillary Clinton should be criticized for being an imperialist, not for being a woman." Holy shit, I did it. I proved it is indeed possible to walk and chew gum at the same god-damn time. It's a fucking Christmas miracle.
Leaving ethical considerations completely out of the equation, we should still defend religious freedom. The (overwhelming) majority of the world is religious and a working class revolution for its self-emancipation requires the majority—do the math.
It is better to include (in a sense 'co-opt') religion into the socialist movement than to drive them away to the reactionaries. If we go around condemning all religions as reactionary, the actual counter-revolutionaries will be happy to embrace these religious people: catholics fearing they will be persecuted by the reds, will flood towards the whites. Therefore—from an exclusively opportunistic perspective alone—we should always be sympathetic to religion, but not religious bigotry.
Great headline. Defending Hillary Clinton. How many words are you going to devote to it? Is this on the front page or are you going to bury it somewhere? I'd love to see the full article. You could have chosen working two jobs and trying to feed a kid by yourself with no public daycare while actually having a minute or two to see them, but instead you defend a rich, anti-worker, capitalist. Kudos.
We should only support the working class you know. Well as long as it is white, straight, atheist and male, of course.
"I want to say sweet, silly things." - V.I Lenin
the people can easily become atheist, there is no need to "co-opt" religions. people only follow religion because the ruling class encourage it, most people will abandon their religion as soon as an atheist regime comes in power.
marxism is anti-thetical to religion.
we must be genuine, if we oppose reaction then we should announce it.
Well this is easy. It means defending religious workers from attack by highlighting incidents of their oppression in the pages of our press. It means our branches offering support to local communities when issues arise (helping to build a counter demonstration when the EDL or BNP are marching; or leafleting and texting to build a campaign to defend an immigrant from the Home Office, or whatever). It can also mean sticking up for a workmate who is suffering from racist or sexist abuse by management or other workers in the workplace. It means doing this from the pov of being a socialist who's primary concern is to build networks of solidarity and overcome the divisions placed on us through bourgeois ideology.
Not much imagination or journalistic flair is required to comment on this issue from a socialist perspective, as pluckedflowers has already shown.
The article could begin with an attack on those reactionaries who have attacked Clinton for her gender, asserting that socialists are against discrimination and for an end to the historic oppression of females. It could highlight how ordinary working women are relegated to menial part-time labour and suffer a pay-gap due to these sexist ideas. It could then move on to discuss what Clinton, as a member of the ruling elite, has in common with ordinary working class women and conclude that it's 'not much'. The article could then conclude by stressing the limits of 'sisterhood' across class lines by focussing on the appalling record the current administration has in respect of assisting women who are "working two jobs and trying to feed a kid by yourself with no public daycare". It could compare the salary and personal wealth Clinton enjoys with the benefits and debt that a working class single mother on welfare has to endure, itemising their weekly grocery bill or something.
So it would be easy to defend Clinton the woman and, by extension all women, and then turn it into a question of class without having to write one single line that defends Hilary Clinton, the "rich, anti-worker, capitalist."
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
That is just not true, religious ideas are placed pretty deep in the traditions and thoughts of alot of humans. It takes tens or even hundreds of years to get that out. For example, Albania was ruled by the atheist and of course communist PLA. They declared it the first atheistic state, not because there weren't any religious people anymore, but because religious institutions and education didn't exist. But after the fall of Socialist Albania still quite an amount of people were religious. Getting religion out is not just a matter of who rules the country.
Is this resistance or a costume party?
Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.
fka Creep
in an atheist regime atheism increased, in a capitalist regime religiosity increased.
wow, what a strong argument against the idea that the masses reflect the beliefs of the ruling class.
Yes it increased, but if you see my wording i said STILL which means that they were religious before. Also anti-theism isn't a big part of marxism, we see it as a thing that will go away eventually, and not as a big evil that we must fight against to death. Marx for example thought that calling ourself an atheist was childish:
"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."
The struggle against god and religion, is a struggle against the system that produced it. I think that just like the state, religion will whither away.
Is this resistance or a costume party?
Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.
fka Creep
This is not even empirically true. People are mainly inducted and encouraged into religion by their family, not by the ruling class (unless you think your mom and dad are the "ruling class"). The wider community might also place pressure on families to observe religious norms. But it has not been unusual for communities of believers to thrive in the face of the official disapproval of ruling elites.
Meanwhile the official state oppression and/or disaproval of religion in the USSR and Eastern Europe, did little to dissuade millions of people from their religious belief as we can see from its flowering since the fall of those regimes. In fact, if we are to take Marx seriously when he claims that religion is the opiate of the masses, the soul of a soulless condition, we might have expected that bureaucratic rule might have intensified the need for religious consolation in these countries.
EDIT: Campisino, the point is that religion is sustained by social conditions that arise from specific social relations and that it is the social relations than need to be changed and nothing short of the creation of fully human society will be needed to extricate humanity from its illusions.
Last edited by Hit The North; 21st August 2012 at 16:49.
"Events have their own logic, even when human beings do not." - Rosa Luxemburg
"There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen." - Lenin
how can you use the word "still" if they did not fight and die and cause the atheist regime to collapse. the albanians became atheist genuinely or just by government proclamation, but they did not have "thousands of years of tradition" swell up inside them and revolt, they just accepted it.
point is people are malleable.
we both agree
racism, nationalism, tribalism are tools of maintaining capitalist control, and we oppose them, so why not oppose religion, which falls into the same category as the rest.
it seems ridiculous to oppose racism, nationalism, tribalism but not religion. Just because there is a majority that has a backward mentality does not mean we should embrace it.
there is a very real difference between a homosexual or a person of color who is discriminated against, these people can't help the way they are. Religion is a choice and choosing religion is backwards. If homosexuality was a choice(which it is not, maybe it is I don't know) homosexuality is not backwards or anti-thetical to Marxism, being colored or born in a certain part of the world is not backwards.
