Results 81 to 85 of 85
existence of organized religion and churches doesn't exactly mean freedom of religion
Marx is criticizing you from beyond the grave:
Religion is a reflection of the world we live in. Baptist Christians used their religion to apologize and excuse Jim-Crow at the same time that Baptist Christians used their religion to condemn Jim-Crow. They both believed the same stories and imaginary things... but what was different was not the ideas, it was who the Baptists were and their relation to the real situation in the US Jim Crow south. So as Marx said, religion is not a "thing in of itself", but a reflection of other things going on in society.Originally Posted by Marx
If we want to get rid of irrational ideas and supernatural ideas, then the world has to change to be a world that is reasonable. As long as people's lives are chaos and they have no control, some are going to be drawn to supernatural explanations. Why don't people pray for good harvest generally anymore? Is it because someone explained that raid doesn't come from the chants of bearded men? Or was it because more reliable agricultural techniques and surpluses were developed?
So changing minds in general doesn't come before changing the material reality. The alternative is a Sisyphean struggle to "out-talk" bible-thumpers or "out-reason" ideas that are specifically based on faith (non-reason)! It won't happen - anyone who's tried debating a proselytizer should realize what a loosing proposition this approach would be. The other alternative is to force people to stop practicing... which is anti-Marxist and anti-communist if we are interested in SELF-emancipation.
As for the comparison of religion and nationalism or racism, there's just no comparison. For one thing, reactionary ideologies which are organized around a religion are what? Double-racism? If a church is making homophobic statements, then we shouldn't consider that abstract "religious freedom" but we also shouldn't attack them for believing in an imaginary sky-person when the real political issue is their support of repression against real people here on earth! The problem with Fred Phelps isn't that he believes that "God Hates Fags", the problem is that HE hates LGBT folks and is trying to harass and intimidate people and reinforce a 2nd class social status for people!
But homophobia or any reactionary idea related to organized religions doesn't exist only within those religious ideologies... in most modern states that aren't theocracies, it exists just as much in secular settings. So the religious idea isn't the issue, the support for specific reactionary ideas IS the issue.
What is so unique about religion that we must attack it specifically? Idealism is rampant in our society regardless of it being in religious or just pseudo-scientific form. Reactionary ideas take religious as well as secular form. So what is so unique?
Who told "minorities" to do what?
The leadership and aims of the early civil rights movement were pretty-bourgois (liberal) in scope. Even in these terms they were modest at first. But as the struggle began winning, who supported these struggles? Large portions of the working class. Why? Because SOMEONE was at least standing up to a kind of oppression that impacted the vast majority of blacks (who by the Civil Rights era were workers mostly).
So specific oppression creates a natural cross-class identification because while black workers and black business owners may experience anti-black racism differently, they are being restricted not specifically on a class-basis, but specifically on a racial basis. On the whole though this system of control "racism" isn't aimed at controlling the tiny percentage of rich black people, but controlling that vast majority of farming (in the South) and working (in the cities) black folks. And on an even larger scale this system of control against specific groups is in order to maintain the whole class system and keep people set against each-other.
But what happened as the movement developed? Were blacks in the urban north happy to settle for people they didn't know hundreds of miles away getting to drink in drinking fountains, were they happy to settle with the end of Jim Crow, which they were repeatedly assured by Northern White Liberal polticians "didn't exist in the North"?
No, they began to organize along their concerns, specifically black, but black-working class concerns. The first sign is increased combativity in the North, the popularity in New York and Detroit for the militant (and often class-rooted) arguments of Malcolm X, a more vocal dissatisfaction with the limitations of the liberal southern movement for more access by middle-class blacks to colleges and white institutions. Then by Malcolm's assassination, he was beginning to draw parallels to Cuba and other National Liberation struggles... still not working class politics, but militant and opposed to Liberalism. And a year later urban black populations begin rebelling in major riots... Harlem in 64, Watts 65 and then each Summer other cities exploded in mass-anger by working class people. The complains? Was it "wanting to go to white colleges?" No. It was over police violence and repression, against slumloards, against limited access to jobs and urban infrastructure: working class demands. And around this time is when the concept of Black power emerged - it was mixed because Black Power meant revolutionary liberation to some and "black-business/politicians" to others. But this atmosphere created the Black Panther movement as well as black anti-racist struggles in unions. And this in turn helped give confidence to women and gay liberation movement, to Latino and Asian movements. Again the politics were mixed and the movements eventually were defeated and went into retreat, but I think it shows the potential. Had there been an influential revolutionary organization with some trust before all this developed, they could have rallied the working class side of the struggle against oppression on a class basis which not only would have strengthened the revolutionaries, but it would have strengthened the fight against reforms because it would be rooted in actual class, rather than confused by (often opposing) cross-class interests.
Strawman=/=Good Argument.
I'm with Luxembourg on this. If you support a fight against oppression in order to win equality under the law, then your aims are reformist and you will tend to draw all sorts of incorrect conclusions and engage in forms of struggle which don't help the class struggle (such as court battles which put specialists and Lawyers, not workers in the protagonist role of struggle... leading to bureaucracy in the movement and middle class politics and all sorts of other things). If you engage in struggles for reforms in order to ORGANIZE workers and help workers win gains and confidence through class struggle - in order to help the class learn how to defend itself from the repression of our rulers in order to eventually overthrow the present order and rule themselves... then that's not reformism, that's revolutionary politics and strategy.
Because they are an illiberal country. They may have some "limited freedom of religion" but their dress code is not liberal. I was making a point about the OP's rejection of anything at all remotely "liberal", not anything specific about their religious freedom (although they hardly have a great deal of religious freedom either, even if they allow some people to attend various sects.)
Socialist Party of Outer Space
This is economic reductionism. The struggle for socialism is a political and social struggle as well. To limit the struggle to economic demands is implicit reformism.Originally Posted by campesino
Your conclusion presumes an absolutist dichotomy, as if idealism and opportunism were the only choices.
