“Marx on Religion” edited by John Raines, 2002
Raines thinks Marx was the ultimate humanist – and this book of reprints of Marx partly reflects that idea. Raines also knows the relation of class to religion is unexplored by standard surveys. Marx understood religion as both a refuge of sorts for suffering workers and a club against the working class. Marx wrote about this first point: “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness … the criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.” As capital and society have developed, religion is more and more not a refuge but a club. It has been a theoretical and practical ally of political power and still is for many ruling classes. Let's see what else Marx says or Raines' interprets.
Raines seems to be a Christian socialist of some kind who tries to combine Marx and Liberation Theology or progressive African-American preacher activism together. The obvious clash between these views is not new, nor is the idea that practical joint work is possible. The two most prominent Christian socialists in the U.S. today are soul man Cornel West and Pastor Chris Hedges. The former went on to endorse Biden; the latter the Green Party and pacifism. Neither of these is a class position, yet both are partial allies of socialism.
STATE RELIGION
A young Marx opposed the German state religion yet wrote that the greatest men are those who work for the 'universal' – which he said is similar to a religious ideal. As a 'young Hegelian' he supported the division of church and state and opposed press censorship of anti-religious views. The censors contended that society would collapse without religion, as did Greece; and that Christianity was true because it had lasted. For Marx, theocracy was the real religious state, a condition Germany had passed into by 1842 when he wrote this. Christianity was the state religion in Germany at the time.
Like Zizek, Marx abolishes the conflict between Jews, Christians and Muslims by first abolishing state religion. The state abandons any connection to any religion, which leads to political emancipation for all, including minorities like Jews, and makes religion a private matter. Unfortunately, under capitalism, pogroms, attacks and slurs go on even in so-called 'secular' states, as history has shown. So secularism alone does not end the conflict.
In a somewhat confusing section in 1843s 'On the Jewish Question' Marx declares that a secular state is only the first step. What must happen after that is the “destruction of religion,” for 'self-liberation,' to free people from personal superstition, injury, abuse and fear, as “the revolution is permanent.” Then he says all the old crap will reappear. (Pg. 53) This sequence, if I am reading it right, doesn't make sense. Perhaps, 'otherwise' the old crap will reappear.
Marx says the “perfected Christian state” is ”the atheist state, the democratic state.” This is because any state religion distorts religion. The young Marx here splits Christianity as a religion and Christianity as an expression of humanity. In this same article, Marx associates Judaism with 'the market.' He does it in order to show the material base of religion – if the market disappears, Judaism's material basis disappear. This has been said about the origins of Islam in 'the bazaar,' as Muhammad was first a trader. Marx understood religion to be an expression of the productive, material 'base' of society. I'd say this association is flawed or a bit anti-Semitic and stereotyped, as it assumes all present Jews are businessmen. They are not. He might have been exaggerating to make a point?
Marx later became a communist in 1844 in Paris after contacting the various socialist workers' groupings there and finding out about the mass Silesian weavers' strike in Germany. He had assumed all German workers were passive.
IDEALISM
In refuting Hegel's idealism, Marx makes fun of the aristocratic day of judgment intended for 'the rabble.' He calls man a 'natural being' who is limited and suffers. Like the Christians, he knows suffering is built into human existence, but it does not come from sin, but from existing as a sensuous, biological and emotional being. Which means all animals suffer too. He asserts that a 'philosophy of religion' only ascribes religion to ideas, which opposes a materialist view, as it says: “I therefore deny real religiosity and the really religious man.” Here again in 1844 Marx splits the idea of religion from the actions of certain religious people.
Marx says Hegel supported “sober philosophy” as opposed to “drunken speculation.” As he puts it, just as infinity is not perceptible, “Nothing is known of the existence of God” either. Marx: “Deism is no more than a convenient and easy way of getting rid of religion.” Note, most of the founders of the U.S. were deists. As he developed, Marx slowly left philosophic and theological speculation for economic and political analysis, leaving drunkenness even farther behind. The further analysis of religion would be its role in the class struggle.
CLASS STRUGGLE
Marx felt that the onerous conditions of labor, whether in a factory or field, produced suffering. Under capital, religion is meant to salve that condition; socialism is the actual, real salve. Theological criticism is a re-doing of idealism and religious estrangement and Marx had no interest in that. Instead in 1844 he said “Communism begins with atheism'” but that is only a philosophic start, as communism is real and bends towards action. Simple atheism is inadequate.
In The Communist Manifesto of 1848 Marx and Engels hint that even religion will be undermined by money relations, material developments and the science of capital. Money and credit becomes like gods. Marx later said in Capital: “The religious world is but a reflex of the real world... Christianity, for its cult of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments...is the most fitting form of religion.”
Marx was observing the religiosity among oppressed workers in Germany, France, Belgium and England at the time. In 1844 while appraising Hegel, he started the essay with this: “...the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.” He continued: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” To Marx the final role of religion was as an illusory and useless tool to end suffering, which is why he opposed it.
 |
| UAW workers on strike and praying. Did they win? |
TODAY
Raines says that slave owners slept quietly after hearing slaves talk of the rewards of heaven, only to be frightened when 'heaven' suddenly descended to earth in a slave revolt or Union armies. Elites use religion to legitimate and protect their rule and as a form of psychic escape for their minions. Religion in the U.S. and many other countries has become a political battering ram and ideology - not by the oppressed - but by Christian Nationalists, some neo-fascists and by elite, reactionary politicians and state actors. It has changed since Marx's time and become more backward in a world-context.
The most reactionary states or rulers in the world still rely on a formal or informal state religion, for instance: India's Hinduvta-inspired Modi, Israeli Zionism, Catholicism under Bolsonaro and Orban, Russia's Orthodox Church, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan's Islamic theocracies, the Buddhist reign in Myanmar, the fundamentalist evangelicals of the U.S. South. Even the present Democratic mayor of New York opposes the separation of church and state. Theocracies and semi-theocracies still exist today, as if 'God' had given the rulers a privilege to rule. All are profound roadblocks to changing the lives of the working classes.
Their barely existing religious oppositions – liberal Protestants, liberation theology and Dorothy Day Catholics, secular Jews and the invisible, secular Muslims – have almost no political clout whatsoever over their reactionary counterparts. As Marx said in 1847 when a Christian advocated the 'social principles of Christianity' in order to sideline communists: “The social principles of Christianity have now had eighteen hundred years to develop, and need no further development by the Prussian consistorial councilors.” Marx goes on to point out that Christian 'social principles' had justified slavery, feudal serfdom, the oppression of the proletariat and hypocrisy. Yet we still hear this kind of 'optimism' from liberal Christians more than 175 years later.
The book goes on to poke fun at Luther, the Pope, the English Anglicans, various Saints, Sundays, the Reformation and Protestant parsons. It notes that the religious wars were also class wars. Engels' look at the peasant war in Germany led by Munzer shows it was directed against landlords and priests and embraced religious 'heresy.' Engels wrote that the early history of Christianity had elements of a working-class movement. One of Marx's 1881 letters hints that the original Christian revolt against Rome inspired Millenarian religions and is similar to the socialist movement. So they paid attention to the class content of religious inspiration. Of course Christianity was officially adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 313 and that changed the nature of Christianity.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Nonverts,” “Rise of the Nones,” “FGM,” “God is Not Great” (Hitchens); “Violence” (Zizek), “Libertarian Atheism and Liberal Religionism,” “Annihilation of Caste” (Ambedkar); “Jude the Obscure” (Hardy); “Spiritual Snake Oil” "The Dark Side of Christian History," “The Great Evil” (Nunpa); “Godless – 150 Years of Unbelief” and “Astrology – (both by Bufe); American Theocracy” (Phillips);“The God Market,” “Religulous” (Maher); “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (Baldwin); “The Da Vinci Code” (Brown); “To Serve God and Walmart,” “Marx and Human Nature,” "The Jesus Comics."
The Cultural Marxist
March 2, 2023
No comments:
Post a Comment