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?
You must log in or register to comment.
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 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
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.
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
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Do you think a religious
marxistweirdYes.
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.
