First, I don’t know where I have to put this kind of question on Lemmy so I’m asking it here. Marx viewed religion as a negative force, often referring to it as the ‘opiate of the masses.’ If someone is religious and also identifies as a Marxist, do you think that’s contradictory, or is it just a matter of mislabeling themselves? Would it be more accurate for them to call themselves a socialist instead of a Marxist?
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I think that really depends on how you define “religious” and “Marxist”.
When you say “religious”, do you just mean belief in a higher power, or dogmatic adherence to a specific church, or something in between?
When you say “Marxist”, do you mean someone who thinks his hypothesis of class struggle inevitably leading to a classless, stateless society is accurate, or someone who totally agrees with everything he ever said, or something in between?
My personal belief is, roughly, that every consciousness is a manifestation, or reflection, of a universe-spanning cosmic consciousness that you may as well call “God”. Not only does that not conflict with the end-state of Marxism, but I’d argue that it’s particularly synergetic. If we’re all aspects of the same “thing”, it only makes sense that we should aspire to cooperate freely. Even the teachings of Jesus center around mutual aid and cooperation, and there are claims that the early Christians operated under borderline communism.
On the other hand, the institutions that arise nominally under the pretense of divine mandate tend to be extremely hierarchical and exploitative. Those institutions pretty clearly prioritize adherence to church dogma over individual connection with the divine. There’s your opiate: people blindly following orders because some guy in an impressive hat told them God would punish them if they didn’t.
So yeah, you need to clearly define your terms, and confirm that the people claiming to be “religious” “Marxists” are using those terms the same way you are.
As an economic theory I don’t think there is any particularly pressing collision with religious beliefs.
In terms of the wider political philosophy of Marxism there are ways where its skepticism about top-down power structures are going to contradict the teachings of organized religion at least.
I guess you could say the economic version is softer and the political one is a harder view.
There’s nothing wrong with religion per se. If it helps someone deal with existential dread, all the power to them. Where it becomes wrong is when it’s being used as a tool of oppression, which is sadly very common.
There is something wrong with religion, it’s a rejection of reality.
Ideally society should be able to act rationally and make evidence based decisions. To reject such basic facets of existence and to substitute them with outlandish stories does not help, it only holds us back.
You should judge these things by their outcomes. If someone is a decent person, because they think it will please their invisible friend in the sky, I’ll take it.
But they only think of themselves as decent. Religious thought stunts one’s ability to make moral decisions in changing circumstances.
Sure, my pa is ‘decent’ and considered very kind by most, but he uses his religion to keep from having to learn to deal with his gay and trans offspring in a humane manner. His religion is explicitly harmful on those subjects even though he is otherwise mild mannered and ‘nice’.
Religion makes followers into lesser, less-flexible versions of themselves. This is not a good outcome.
From my perspective, organized religion predisposes people to being easily brainwashed.
Someone that is a decent person BECAUSE of their invisible friend in the sky will also do and permit evil things if they are convinced that it pleases invisible sky friend.
I’d honestly rather people that “need” religion to “be good” just be bad. Then we can weed them out easier.
There is something wrong with religion, it’s a rejection of reality.
Few of us are 100% absurdists, most of us reject reality in some way. Let the religious have their delusion, and you’ll have yours (that decisions should be based on most reliable evidence on what would most advance the utilitarian goal, probably?), and I’ll have mine (the same, except when it might have really interesting consequences).
Depends.
There are phenomena we can’t explain. So there is room in reality for things beyond our understanding, which traditionally are filled with myth and believe. However, I agree given that for basically every claim religion has put forth science has been able to demonstrate non-supernatural causes, it only seems logical to assume that this will still be the case further down the line.
About the things we can’t explain yet, we should be honest and the only moral thing is to say we just don’t know. Lying and pretending otherwise is immoral and wrong.
There is a difference between lying and believing.
We know that plants have evolved along every other living being on this planet. Yet for an ancient farmer sowing their field, asking “who or what sowed everything else around me”, the assumption of some godlike original farmer being is reasonable. So, believe in and of itself is not immoral. Believe contrary to better knowledge is.
There is quite a lot wrong with religion. It is inherently stultifying to follow it, regardless of flavor.
The purpose of a system is what it does. Religious systems make people easy to control and that control is used by charlatans, swindlers and perverts for personal enrichment.
They, all of them, use abusive child rearing techniques and punitive social controls to reduce the chances a person will break away later in life. There is nothing good about this. A few adherents may keep some independent moral judgment but that can be allowed as long as the mass is kept under control.
Not all religious people use abusive child rearing techniques and punitive social controls.
Even if you were more specific to say “all organized religion”, but even that would be purely speculative on your part, because it is literally impossible for you to know.
Definitively, your “all of them” statement is wrong. Evidence? My own upbringing where I was allowed to leave the church with basically no resistance.
Otherwise I agree with you. But don’t go tying weak speculation with strong arguments- you’re making your argument, and mine by extension, look less true.
All religions that do not use abusive child rearing and punitive social controls are dwindling in numbers of adherents.
A religion that does not use them will not last. Thus it is a feature of the phenomenon we call religion, it is as essential as reproduction to a biological species.
100% accurate!
There’s nothing wrong with religion per se. If it helps someone deal with existential dread, all the power to them.
i’d agree on this since i have no control over it. but do you think they’re will still be called as marxist? let me get this clear :D
There’s a whole tradition of Liberation Theology which brings together Christianity and Marxism. It was a big deal in the 1980s. I’m atheist myself, but there was some exciting thought and some wonderful people part of that movement.
Many people, including myself, reject Marxism because it’s a metanarritive just like Christianity.
Metanarritive just means one big story to explain history. Christians believe all of history is just a struggle between God and the Devil for souls, Marxism its a struggle for political power between haves and have nots. Metanarritive isn’t satisfied with explaining the past either, it also predicts the future. I can’t be the first to notice Marxists awaiting the revolution looks a lot like Christians awaiting rapture.
I feel like this is a misrepresentation of Marxs work either by misunderstanding his work or by not being familiar with his works. And not every Marxists waits for a revolution, it’s mostly orthodox Marxists (or Marxist-leninists) who are hoping for a revolution. Revisionist Marxists, such a democratic socialists, don’t necessarily believe in a revolution or even outright reject a revolution.
Being a Marxist doesn’t mean you need to agree with everything Marx wrote. I don’t agree with his revolutionary ideas, but I think his criticism of capitalism is accurate because I’ve yet to see any compelling counterarguments to his fundamental points. Me not agreeing with his inevitable revolution doesn’t mean I’m not a Marxist, it means I’m not an orthodox Marxist.
Being a Marxist doesn’t mean you need to agree with everything Marx wrote.
comments like this one is what i’m looking for
Not particularly. Christianity in particular, if one reads the New Testament strictly, is quite socialist. In one of the Pauline epistles, Paul talks about all of the members of a congregation holding all things in common.
Marx assumes that addressing the material conditions would eliminate religion, and i think he’s only partially correct. Yes, religion eases the pain of injustices now, but socialism can’t address ideas of purpose within the universe, and life after death. Economic theory has nothing to say about whether or not any given deity is real.
OTOH, I’m an atheistic Satanist; I largely oppose theistic religions because I see them used to control people, rather than to comfort or help.
if one reads the New Testament strictly, is quite socialist.
This is a popular take on Christianity that I’ve most often encountered on Reddit but isn’t quite true. Else one would have to wonder why the early church didn’t evolve into a socialist state. The reason is that people are frequently urged to be charitable, but this is ultimately voluntary and led by ones conscience. But this is consistent with being a moral voice in capitalist societies.
Jesus told specific wealthy people to give away various portions of their wealth, but he told his poorer followers to leave everything. The impracticalities of his ethic were oriented around the end of the world being imminent (Mat 24:34), not an enduring way of ordering society as they evidentally weren’t self sustaining: his ministry depended on donations from wealthy women (Luke 8:3). Paul told his church when asking for aid for another church that he wanted to see “equality” (2 Cor 8:13). But, again, it was voluntary (2 Cor 8:8).
In one of the Pauline epistles, Paul talks about all of the members of a congregation holding all things in common.
This was Luke writing in Acts
When the first believers met in the temple courts they voluntarily (from time to time) donated money to the apostles care and they saw to everyone’s need (Acts 2:44). But then this is never heard from again. And instead what you see in the years following is people like Paul appealing to people’s conscience to give from their private possessions.
Because ultimately, right from the start, private property and private control prevailed (for example: Joseph of Arimathea was allowed to remain wealthy, Peter escaping from jail he goes to John Mark’s mother who not only owns a house but also a servant girl - Acts 12:12-13 etc). And while it’s certainly true church leadership urged people to be generous to those less well off, this was never compulsory (never instituted as a tax). The church in the bible did not even institute the old Jewish law of tithing (compulsory donation of 10%) despite what modern pastors would like people to believe. Instead not only was the giving voluntary but the amount was up to the giver.
Which is probably why Christianity has melded into the various systems of government seen in the West, from dictatorships to market driven social democracies. It’s quite a chameleon. Because it tells individuals how they ought to behave but says very little (if anything) about how a state or market ought to behave.
but this is ultimately voluntary and led by ones conscience.
Voluntary association is one of the defining traits of anarchist collectives though. None are compelled to participate, they do so willingly. The same was true with the early Christian church that existed within the Roman empire.
It is true that we see discrepancies between what Jesus supposedly said, and how the early church was organized. The church was certainly a product of its own time, much like Jesus’ teachings about the position of slaves.
This was Luke writing in Acts
My apologies; it’s been 30-odd years since I believed in a theistic religion, and I misremembered that.
[it] says very little (if anything) about how a state or market ought to behave.
True. Christianity is less concerned with material conditions than with eternal questions. But it seems fairly clear that valuing wealth and power more than spiritual matters is very antithetical to the teachings of Christ or his apostles. Wealth isn’t seen as inherently bad; it depends on what you do with it.
I was raised in a very conservative home, both economically and socially. Even as a young person, it was clear to me that there were some pretty serious discrepancies between what Jesus and his disciples said about wealth, and how my own family and church viewed wealth.
You’ve gotten a bunch of solid answers already, but I just want to chime in with some food for thought.
In my view, Marxism is itself a form of religion. Instead of having faith in a higher power, a Marxist chooses to have faith in an ideological system that lacks definitive evidence of its accuracy or applicability to human societies. It certainly sounds much more plausible and rational to our ears than traditional religions with their paradoxical and seemingly arbitrary assertions, but it nonetheless requires some degree of faith.
The specific interpretation of historical events and human social behavior that Marx asserts is by no means certain, and requires that you have faith that Marx was correct in a majority of his arguments.
The doctrine of Marxism was famously critiqued by Karl Popper due to his belief that it was unfalsifiable, and thus unfit to be described as a scientific theory. I’ll quote a relevant passage from the Wikipedia article here
In his early years Popper was impressed by Marxism, whether of Communists or socialists. An event that happened in 1919 had a profound effect on him: During a riot, caused by the Communists, the police shot several unarmed people, including some of Popper’s friends, when they tried to free party comrades from prison. The riot had, in fact, been part of a plan by which leaders of the Communist party with connections to Béla Kun tried to take power by a coup; Popper did not know about this at that time. However, he knew that the riot instigators were swayed by the Marxist doctrine that class struggle would produce vastly more dead men than the inevitable revolution brought about as quickly as possible, and so had no scruples to put the life of the rioters at risk to achieve their selfish goal of becoming the future leaders of the working class. This was the start of his later criticism of historicism. Popper began to reject Marxist historicism, which he associated with questionable means, and later socialism, which he associated with placing equality before freedom (to the possible disadvantage of equality).
I must admit that my Marxist and socialist leanings have been significantly shaken during my time on Lemmy, where it appears that the tankie servers tend to reproduce the very same flaws that have been evident in the majority of communist and socialist nation states that have existed thus far. Namely, a lack of free discourse, a refusal to question and debate, and a blind focus on ideological purity to the extent that truth and pragmatism become secondary or entirely irrelevant concerns. One begins to question whether such tendencies are not in fact a perversion, as they are so often framed, but instead an inevitable outcome of strict adherence to Marxist doctrine.
I realize that many will probably argue that tankies do not represent Marxist beliefs accurately, but it seems to me that as Marxist thought becomes more dominant within any particular group or society, that specific brand of Marxism seems to overwhelm and outcompete more libertarian varieties.
Circling back to the original question, this is perhaps not dissimilar to the discrepancy between Christianity as originally conceived in the New Testament and the subsequent manifestation of Christianity as an organized religion in the real world, which seems to bear little resemblance to the teachings of Christ.
It’s almost like no matter how noble the abstract thoughts and philosophies might be, human beings will find a way to misinterpret them and repurpose them in service of horrific and selfish actions.
Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.
On the subject of drift from “ideal” belief systems to corrupt ones, I would argue that what we’re seeing is actually evolutionary pressure.
If we think of ideas as living things, and we place them in an ecosystem of other ideas, they inevitably have to adapt to keep reproducing. (Spreading to another person’s mind)
So generally they have to be the sort of idea one would feel compelled to transmit, and then be transmittable. They have to be understood, received.
I think many people have received a transmission of ideas that is very different from the one that was sent. And then the various pressures of life transform those ideas more.
That can be bad as we’ve seen in cases of Christianity, Marxism and more. It can also be good, because then the belief system becomes sustainable. I’m thinking of certain religions which were batshit when they started, but in order to live on they moderated. Not that they’re entirely reasonable now, but they’re able to live on and wouldn’t have in their original form.
That’s a very interesting take, I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before but I think you’re onto something. I definitely agree that people have a limited capacity to receive/understand abstract ideas, and therefore each transmission from human to human loses some of the original meaning, and also gets mixed together with some other meanings imparted by each individual in the chain. The analogy of ideas to living organisms facing evolutionary pressure to reproduce is very cool.
I also see what you’re saying about crazy religions that have moderated with time, but I’m not entirely sure about drawing a distinction between bad ideas that tend to moderate for the better and good ideas that tend to moderate for the worse. Intuitively, I do agree that ideas such as Christianity and Marxism are better than phony religions such as Mormonism and Scientology. But that requires a whole bunch of other arguments to support conclusively.
I feel like it’s really the same process going on with all abstract ideas as they spread among human societies, and it would be somewhat reductive to describe them as changing according to any firm law, or getting better or worse. Rather, it’s probably more accurate to say that they change and adapt according to the specific chain of humans through which they are transmitted, which causes them to become more moderate and simpler in the vast majority of cases, but also has the possibility of augmenting or intensifying them in some ways, albeit rarely.
This allows you to take into account that some bad or irrational or wrong ideas can also be transmuted and reframed into good ideas in an instant, and vice versa. I am thinking about the work of great artists who are able to evoke a certain perspective such that a wrong idea might actually help us to understand something true or beneficial, and conversely of the despot or authoritarian who fancies themself as following a noble ideal, but ends up causing immense suffering in service of that good idea.
communism is a socioeconomic ideology, it doesn’t discuss the existence of a god.
Marxism is an inherently materialist concept. Religion is not compatible with materialism.
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No more than science and religion. Loads of religious scientists.
Many people don’t take things to extremes.
I maintain that any scientist that claims they are religious are either bad at science, or bad at religion.
Most people are bad at religion (don’t know what their holy book or profits said). Some scientists are bad at science (fake papers).
I’m hoping someone who has read more theory can answer this question. Because I don’t see why religious affiliation should conflict with class solidarity and the abolition of private property.
Not anymore than if you revere God and are anything else. Marx’s point of view is seen as one of an atheist, yet if he himself had a kind of spirituality, it’s not as if you couldn’t still hear him saying those words. In this scenario, he, perhaps not unlike any other scenario, wouldn’t have any reason to see himself as one of the “wrong ones”, and that is who he applies his words to. If God came down tomorrow, and Marx was still around, he might, for example, still say “ah, look at all you people of other creeds, enjoying that opium.”
I wouldn’t say I couldn’t be called religious, I honor God the best I can, yet it doesn’t put me outside a realm of thought many may call socialist. Marx, I’ve read, even mentioned in his works that Jesus could be considered a socialist, as Jesus’ teachings often overlap with his favored communal values. All of the civilizations Marx pointed to as providing insight to Communism were also all spiritual places.
I wouldn’t say I couldn’t be called religious, I honor God the best I can
Of course your are religious if you “honor god the best you can”.
Perhaps we have different definitions of the word “religious,” but this statement is just nonsensical to atheists. It would be like saying, “I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I honor Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer the best I can.” It’s just nonsense.
It’s the term “religious”/“religion” that messes up the exchange. It’s not an “unironic” term. Strictly speaking, it implies there is a willingness to deviate when an individual applies it. It would be comparable to talking about calling oneself “weird”; in most places, doing that would make people think “so are you that way on purpose”. I was trying to swerve it because I do genuinely adhere to God and it gives vibes like I’m not who I am based on experience.
Marx saw religion as bad, but that doesn’t mean communism and religion are mutually exclusive.
You may share socialist views, but the path of Marxism is the path of materialism. Studying the works of the classics one will inevitably encounter a materialist dialectic that is incompatible neither with religions (a form of idealism) nor with agnosticism.
I wouldn’t say Marxism is incompatible with dualism for example, yes Marx heavily focuses on the material struggle, but interpreting the theory in a dualist sense doesn’t really change its implications. Wealth really matters because of the way it makes us feel, the experiences it enables, not because of some inherent value. If being poor didn’t feel bad, nobody would have a problem with it.
A religious Marxist is a contradiction as Marxism seeks to do away with religion entirely
this is what i was thinking about exactly
Although, you may still be a communist without necessarily being a Marxist. Marxism is the ideas of Marx (which can be anything) while communism is the economic aspect.
Do you think a religious
marxistweirdYes.
