Socialist Studies
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Reconstituted Socialist Party of Great Britain Pamphlet: Socialism versus Religion, War, Capitalism
Preface
In
one respect religion has tended to be a neglected subject. The Party
has not dealt with it in pamphlet form since 1910. However that publication
- SOCIALISM AND RELIGION- went through three editions running into
the mid-1920's.
There
have also been many excellent articles condemning religion in our
monthly journal over the years and speakers have always explained
the conflict between Socialism and religion from our platform; this
has included a few debates against parsons. More recently the Reconstituted Socialist Party of Great Britain has carried articles showing the anti-working-class nature
of religion as an obstacle to understanding Socialism, both historically
and at the present time.
In
November 2002 we debated with the so-called Christian Socialist Movement.
It had been intended to write this up for publication but other things,
such as the war in Iraq, intervened. |
The
Socialist opposition to religion has not in any way changed. The case
for Socialism is built upon a materialist understanding of history,
the fact that men make history through class struggles which are the
motor of change from one system of society to another. Socialism is
scientific in that the evidence of mans' experience in social production
supports it. The relationships entered into to produce the wherewithal
of life show that social production must be harmonised with social
ownership and class antagonism abolished. Socialism is sustained by
knowledge and the instability bred of conflicting class interests
under capitalism.
Religion,
on the contrary, has no basis in knowledge or science; it is built
upon myths and superstition, and sustained by poverty, fear and ignorance.
The study of religion reveals more than anything the seemingly infinite
capacity of the human mind to fantasise and to believe the unbelievable.
The
sheer diversity of religion both historically and currently throughout
the world really goes full cycle and cancels itself out. They cannot
all be right but they can certainly all be wrong. The myths of creation,
of almighty spirits, the immortality of the soul and the efficacy
of prayer have trapped believers in the grip of predatory ruling classes
whose interest it is to perpetuate their submission and servility.
The appeal of Socialism is of such a fundamentally different order
that, when it is asked why, after a hundred years of SPGB and Socialist propaganda, so little progress has been made, a major part of the answer is that the lack of progress has been on the part of those who live on their knees.
Before
Socialism can be established a majority of the working class must
reject the pernicious ideology of capitalism which includes religion
and nationalism. To look at the persistence of religious myths and
primitive superstitions gives us a sobering realisation of the distance
we have yet to travel before the exploited class of capitalism prioritise
their emancipation.
In
this pamphlet we have dealt with religions other than Christianity
including Islam, Judaism and Buddhism as the 21st century suffers
from an upsurge in their negative activities. There is also a chapter
on religion in Bolshevik Russia which was falsely passed off as godless.
We have included the words "War and Capitalism" in the title
of our pamphlet because religion is universally used by capitalism
to "justify" its wars.
Poverty
and religion have always been bedfellows. Capitalism guarantees the
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and deprivation for
the class that sells its labour-power for wages.
It
is as futile to yearn for a form of capitalism without religion as
it is to imagine capitalism without war. They are an integral part
of the same degenerate society. When the world's workers abolish capitalism,
religion and war - together with the other ill effects of that system
- will be consigned to the past.
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Preface to 2nd Edtiton
In this second edition of this pamphlet, we have extended the section dealing with Islam by bringing in some details of more recent orgies of killings, mostly of Muslims against each other. We are aware that these outrages are ongoing and it is impossible to catalogue them all.
We condemn religion and the uses made of it by rival rulers. We appeal to working class victims on all sides to abandon myths that set them at enmity with each other and to make the little effort necessary to understand Socialism so that we can have a sane and happy society in place of wars, rival religions and hatred.
We have also added a brief section on Marx and religion, which shows the scientific basis for understanding society and how to change it. To do this, the Socialist Party of Great Britain needs your help.
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Socialism
versus Religion, War and Capitalism
All
the religions practised in the world today, including numerous spin-offs,
divisions and breakaways, have their origins in the remote past of
mankind's primitive, tribal, superstition-ridden emergence. In a world
with no recorded learning, no libraries, museums, schools or the mass
communication of ideas, crude concepts about the world, nature and
man's part in the scheme of things were handed on through experience
as it was understood from generation to generation.
Where
no rational or scientific explanations for natural phenomena existed,
everything was endowed with spirits that might act to the good or
detriment of savage people who were at the mercy of nature. Thunderstorms,
volcanic eruptions, falling trees and the human life cycle ending
in death were all awesome, fear-inspiring phenomena as were the light
and warmth-giving sun and moon in the sky above.
Means
of influencing the 'spirits' responsible for natural events,
led to the growth of rituals and myths.
With
the development of the idea of the 'soul' arising from savage tribesmen
dreaming of deceased comrades, the foundation was complete and ready
for the emergence of a sect of specialist keepers of the rituals to
fasten themselves on the back of suffering humanity. These are, of
course, the priests. From witch doctors and holy-men, they had expanded
their role from the dissolution of primitive society through all the
stages of class society, to become the agents who bestowed gods' blessings
on successive classes of plunderers, war-lords and exploiters. Today
they stand as the self-appointed intermediaries between the ignorant
faithful and the god or gods who remain as the few modern survivors
from primitive spiritualism.
Belief
in the idea of the soul took hold in the minds of savages. It endowed
the natural world with spirits and led to ancestor worship, the earliest
form of tribal deification of the dead that provides the key to the
fear, control and escapism of modern religions.
Without
this man-made phantom the soul, the idea of life in another world
after death could not have existed, and the priests would have been
denied their most potent lever for fear, control and manipulation.
In
their self-appointed role as mediators between believers and their
gods, Christian priests have found the fear of eternal damnation a
powerful weapon. The promise of eternal bliss after a life of submission
and obedience on earth has placed great power in the hands of those
believed to be instrumental in deciding such matters.
Thus
resurrection and reincarnation, in one form or another, are central
features of modern religions.
"He
who believeth in me shall not perish but have ever-lasting life"
is a self-evident piece of nonsense, the perpetuation of which has
paid dividends to successive centuries of ruling class parasites by
keeping the exploited on their knees. Ever-ready with a helping of
pie-in-the-sky, the priests have been party to and beneficiaries of
the exploitation of the toiling masses. They and their churches owe
their survival to being the ready hirelings of ruling classes.
Among
the more sinister aspects of religion is the lack of any scruple about
infecting the minds of children. As soon as they start school the
process of mind- poisoning begins.
This
amply demonstrates the value of religion to the ruling class whose
over-riding concern is for profits. A docile and compliant working
class is vital to the success of the modern capitalist class as it
rapes and plunders the world while exploiting wage-labour for profits.
The
wars that the system of cut-throat competition engenders involve workers
being called upon to slaughter each other in conflicts which have
no interest of theirs at stake. The part played by religions in appealing
to the "just" causes of the gods to sanction the
bloodletting has been an invaluable asset to the rival capitalists
of the world.
In
perpetuating the myths of resurrection and life after death, they
promote belief in a better life cut short by war in the real world.
For workers, who lose their lives in the wars of capitalism, such
wars are made more acceptable if the finality of death can be removed
from their minds.
This
belief was a creation which took hold in the minds of savages. For
them it endowed the natural world with spirits and led to ancestor
worship, the earliest form of tribal deification of the dead, a belief
that provides the key to the fear, control and escapism of modern
religions.
When
The Socialist Party of Great Britain first published the pamphlet
SOCIALISM AND RELIGION nearly a hundred years ago, it was only necessary
to expose the Christian religion as the agent of the capitalist class,
and it is true that the Socialist case against Christianity can be,
by extrapolation, seen to apply to all religions.
In fact, the forthright
statement of Marxian Historical Materialism - that man must
first produce in order to feed, clothe and shelter himself before
he develops ideologies - shows that religion has no existence independent
of man: if one religion is demolished they are all exposed as empty
myths created by man.
It
is now nearly a century since the SOCIALISM AND RELIGION pamphlet
first appeared, and it is an indication of how the world of capitalism
has opened up since then that nearly 10% of the people now living
in the UK are from parts of the former British Empire. In the national
census of 2001, over three million people registered as Muslims, making
Islam the second largest religion in Britain.
Where
church attendances in Britain were declining, Hindu temples and Muslim
mosques now thrive, and yet more brands of Christianity have become
evident as black former colonials have brought their white man's indoctrination
with them.
These
black people from the West Indies and the southern United States are
descendants from ancestors who were abducted from Africa, and bought
and sold as slaves to work on the sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations
of the Christians who owned them. These people have nothing for which
to be grateful to Christianity. For more than a hundred years, since
the abolition of slavery in 1865, black people have suffered the most
brutal prejudice and discrimination at the hands of white Christians.
Both
Christianity and Islam engaged in slavery. In embracing these religions,
black workers are denying their own dignity as people. Like their
white fellow workers, they have become wage-slaves. Religion sanctions
this degradation also.
None
of this has necessarily increased the amount of religious activity
in the world but it has certainly moved it around.
What has intensified is religious extremism and bigotry. For instance,
in the breaking up of India into two vast countries threatening each
other, we now have two nation states confronting each other, with
the nuclear technology of modern capitalist warfare, over the disputed
territory of Kashmir. Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan both have nuclear
weapons, and religion is used by both as a pretext for killing each
other.
The
Socialist case applies. As workers the Indians and Pakistanis have
no country so which of their ruling classes gains control over Kashmir
is not their concern. They should abandon the religious and nationalist
nonsense used by their masters to set them apart and gain an understanding
of Socialism so that, in harmony with their fellow workers world-wide,
they can rid the world of war, hatred and religion.
The
same argument must also be applied to the Jewish State of Israel which,
as the client-state of America, uses religious bigotry to "justify"
decades of hi-tech militarism against Palestinian Arabs. God, as always,
is on the side of the big battalions.
The
'chosen people' myth is not far removed from the 'master race' concept.
The aim of territorial expansion and many of the methods are much
the same. Destruction of poor people's homes and the killing of their
children is a shabby role for religion to play and exposes its promoters
for the capitalists and adventurers they in fact are..
The
gods of Judaism and Islam are merely a reflex that provide a cover
for America and its client state in their struggle for control of
Middle East oil on the one hand and incipient Arab nationalism, striving
for independent existence, on the other. Yet Jewish workers and their
Palestinian counterparts have no interest in being duped by religion
and nationalism into killing each other for the ambitions of their
rival ruling classes.
The
same interplay of forces can be seen everywhere, from Chechnya to
Ireland. In Northern Ireland, the same ugly twins of religion and capitalism coexisted with poverty, hatred, misery and war. Nationalism everywhere reflects ruling class power-struggles. Religion is used to lend 'divine' sanction to property interests.
The
alienation and degradation of the working class, as wage-slaves in
the system of commodity production, was something Marx observed very
early in his writing.
In
his ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS OF 1844, written when he
was 26, he wrote:
The
more man puts into god, the less he retains in himself. The worker
puts his life into the object, but now his life no longer belongs
to him but to the object (p 70).
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Religion
and Alienation Continues
Capitalism
has developed and extended in many other ways since the early years
of the 20th century, not least in the development of arms technology
and its many applications to death and destruction. Christian capitalism
having used atom bombs on human targets towards the end of the first
half of that century has, over the second half, accumulated vast arsenals
of nuclear weapons capable of eliminating life on earth.
In
the early 21st century, we now have a world situation in which Hindu,
Islamic and Jewish as well as Christian states have nuclear weapons
with which to express their "love of humanity". What
lies behind this is the continuing expansion of predatory capitalism,
which expresses in religious and nationalist terms its lust for territory,
markets and natural resources, in pursuit of profit. The gods, as
always, speak through the ruling class and say what is required of
them.
While
the lives of ordinary people are threatened and insecure, while they
have no control over the production of wealth and political power
is in the hands of class enemies who control the coercive state on
behalf of the capitalist class; while the world is full of violence
and despair, it is likely that people will turn to imaginary agencies
for comfort and salvation.
That
no salvation is forthcoming must become another factor turning workers
against capitalism and its failing gods.
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Ethical
Weapons and Moral Wars
The
so-called ethics and morality of Christian capitalism have never been
more damningly exposed for the hollow sham they are than in the years
since 1997 with a Labour government mouthing commitment to an "ethical
dimension" to foreign policy.
Their
devoutly Christian leader, Mr Blair, supported by the likes of Jack
Straw, Geoff Hoon, David Blunkett and the rest have not shrunk from
bombing the former Yugoslavia (a largely Christian country). Nor did
they hesitate to join the Americans again in bombing Afghanistan,
probably the poorest country on earth. This included the use of cluster-bombs,
which demonstrated their ruthless determination to gain control over
central Asian oil.
Having
continued the previous, Tory, government's policy of repeatedly bombing
Iraq and helping to enforce sanctions which cost the lives of half
a million Iraqi children, the same Labour government, while repeating
President Bush's gramophone record about Iraq's "weapons of
mass destruction" being in breach of UN Resolutions, helped
support the Israeli state with bomber parts for its war against its
neighbours, also in breach of UN Resolutions.
Mr
Blair, as a Christian, found a moral case in favour of the renewed
full-scale war against Iraq, a thinly veiled cover for gaining control
of the region's oil reserves.
Of
those Christians who would indignantly reject the idea that such policies
and conduct reflect their view of Christian ethics, we would ask what
were 37 million people who put themselves down as Christians in the
2001 census doing all this time? The same question might also be asked
of the 60 million Catholics in the US./p>
The
ethics and morality of Christianity had no effect on Christians killing
each other with all the refinement of modern science throughout the
20th century, any more than in centuries past when they burned and
decapitated each other during the power struggles between an emerging
commercial industrial class and a moribund system of serfdom and landed
aristocracy.
That
the leadership of the Catholic Church and the Church of England opposed
the second war on Iraq is a strange inconsistency, since both churches
have supported wars through the centuries.There is no Christian opposition
to war as such. Blair and Bush dropped their bombs and launched their
rockets, and the overwhelming majority of Christians, both in Britain
and America, either acquiesced or supported the war.
It
has been left to a tiny minority of Socialists in the SPGB, without
the need of supernatural agencies, but armed with the knowledge of
Marx and Engels's MATERIALIST
CONCEPTION OF HISTORY, to propound the case for Socialism. It is Socialists
who explain and argue that it is the way in which society is organised
for the production of the wherewithal of life and the relationships
entered into, primarily those of wage-labour and capital, that determines
there will be competition instead of co-operation, starvation instead
of plenty, exploitation and profits instead of production for use,
and war instead of peace.
The
hostility of The Socialist Party of Great Britain to all religion
remains as implacable as it is to all forms of ignorance that help
to perpetuate the inhumanity of capitalism.
The
one great advantage of religion having no basis in reality and being
founded entirely on myths and superstition is that interpretation
is wide open, and the faithful, or rather, those who manipulate them,
can accept or reject what suits them. This has produced the situation
where scores of rival Christian organisations are mutually exclusive
of each other, while peddling what they claim to be the word of the
same saviour.
That
struggles for ascendancy in economic and political terms are the real
substance of class struggles, however much they may be disguised by
ideology and myths, is undeniable.
While
modern Christians may refuse to recognise their lineage and seek to
disown what they are unable to defend, which includes much of the
bible, particularly the fairy tales about creation in the Book of
Genesis, the fact remains that to disown such rubbish used to cost
people their lives. Christians may seek to avoid embarrassment by
not drawing attention to Exodus 22-18: "Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live". Or to Matthew, 10-34: "Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
a sword".The mental contortions of believers are such as
not to be bothered by such trifles. But if there is no god the father
of creation as in the Old Testament, there is no god the son as in
the New Testament.
It
is revealing to consider Yahweh, the god of the bible held by the
Jews to have created everyone, in relation to the stories in Exodus
about how he treated the Egyptians.
The
BBC screened a television documentary on Moses presented by Jeremy
Bowen which, with the aid of archaeologists and biblical historians,
examined the stories about the ten plagues supposedly unleashed by
god through Moses against the Egyptians. They found natural explanations
and historical parallels for nine of them. The tenth was the killing
of every first-born Egyptian.
Yahweh
is shown to have been a mere tribal god of the Israelites and not
recognised by the Egyptians, who had their own brand of polytheism
- a collection of intriguing deities mostly with heads of birds and
animals.
Moses
was 80 when he is supposed to have seen a burning bush out of which
came the voice of Yahweh. With this mythical piece of nonsense began
the religious "justification" for the state of Israel.
Hershel
Shanks, editor of THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW, who has access
to early archives, said "we have no direct evidence for Moses".
Of
the Ten Commandments it was made clear: "we don't know when
or where they were written and we don't have any idea who wrote them".
Fittingly, the programme ended with Jeremy Bowen saying: "Perhaps
all we can hope for is that one day the best known commandment 'thou
shalt not kill' will become a reality in Moses' tortured promised
land".
To
which the Socialist has to say this pious wish is unlikely to become
a reality so long as capitalism with its competition and conflicts
continues.
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Islam
All
religion is reactionary, a retarding force against social change.
In all its many varieties and creeds it is the kindred agent of the
capitalist class and therefore the enemy of the world's workers, an
obstacle to their struggle for emancipation and Socialism.
As
a refuge from poverty, Islam, like religion generally, presents no
cure but helps ensure the continuation of the disease. It is part
of the oppression of class society.
The
term Islam means "submission". In submitting to Allah,
its practitioners are submitting to the rule of the clerics and those
who control political power
In
those countries such as Afghanistan and Iran where Islam has set up
'fundamentalist' states, and in single-family despotisms (monarchies)
like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, extreme barbarity and repression have
been the order of things.
Their
treatment of women, which includes female circumcision and the wearing
of veils, is an affront to humanity. In 2003 Channel 4 News reported
an incident in Saudi Arabia where a fire in a girls' school killed
15 girls who were prevented from leaving the building by the Religious
Police because they were not wearing head covers.
Decapitation
and dismemberment - common forms of punishment - are described as
"Koranic Rule". The Koran means in practice what
those with power say it means.
Nobody
appears to know where the Koran (or Qur'an) came from. This is part
of the mysticism which seems to captivate the devotees. The story
is that the Prophet Muhammad, who is said to have been illiterate,
was made to read from a book by the archangel Gabriel. "At
other times the prophet felt certain words in his heart which he took
to be revealed by god" (Ninian Smart, THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS,
p 288). The Koran is regarded by believers as the word of god. "Of
course, recitation or written copies of the Qur'an are all created
but as divine speech what lies behind and within the Qur'an is eternal
" (ibid., p 289). Muhammad died in the year 632 AD so the Koran
has existed only since the early 7th century. Where was this "eternal"
word before that? It was perhaps a fortunate coincidence that Allah
spoke Arabic.
Muhammad
himself was something of an adventurer who engaged in a number of
battles. He gained political power in Medina and took Mecca by armed
force after the battle of Badr in 624AD. "A battle shortly
thereafter, at Hunayn, disposed of some of the outlying tribes and
Muhammed was master of a large slice of Arabia" (ibid., pp287/8).
His
expansionist plans were continued after his death. The power struggle
that followed led to assassination and the first civil war within
Islam. "THE DICTIONARY OF WARS", by George Childs Kohn,
records eight other Islamic civil wars ranging through to the 12th
century.
Muslims have a duty to pray five times a day at predetermined times.
Nobody seems to wonder what all this praying to a set formula has
ever achieved. Observed as a form of social coercion, its only purpose
is the control of a subject class.
In
February 2003, a Muslim cleric appeared before the Old Bailey charged
with inciting people to kill Americans, Hindus and Jews. He had used
texts from the Koran as his authority. The fact that when the Koran
first appeared the only Americans were the North American 'Indians',
who were later virtually exterminated to make way for capitalism to
take over America, was not dwelt upon either by the court or by the
accused.
As for Muslims being incited to kill today's Americans, Hindus
and Jews, not a word was uttered about the reality of America's bombing
of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, or of the United States' policy
of support for Pakistan against - Hindu - India. Just as the open
season on Palestinian Muslims as victims of Israeli barbarity was
somehow overlooked, so too was the constant stream of reports about
Hindus and Muslims killing each other in India and Pakistan.
No
incitement seems to have been necessary for Shiite and Sunni Muslims
to slaughter an estimated million, fighting each other for eight years
in the war of 1980-1988. In Iran Ayatollah Khomeini used religious
extremism and nationalism to consolidate his power but the disputed
control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway remained unchanged by the Iran-Iraq
war.
The
specific background to the incitement of terrorist activity and religious
extremism can clearly be seen in the impasse to which capitalism has
brought the world. Religion is irrelevant except as a rallying call
for setting one group of workers at the throats of another.
Islamic Violence and Hindu Poverty
Since the first edition of this pamphlet appeared, the aggressive activities of world Islam, as a front for power-struggles, have greatly intensified. Throughout recorded history, religion has been a means in the hands of ruling classes, to gain control of territories and ignorant mass populations.
Pakistan, for example, is an Islamic country which is seldom out of the news for incidents of Muslims killing Hindus, or for setting up car-bomb training camps for the purpose of killing those they regard as enemies: these are invariably other workers.
With a picture of two Muslim women completely shrouded in black, the SUNDAY TIMES (29 April 2007) carried a full page of stories detailing the barbarity of 'modern' Islam. The latest pastime for Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims [in Iraq] is killing each other for 'mixed' marrying. A total of 89 such killings was recorded in the five days before publication of that article. In detailing a case where a father (a Sunni) , who had been lecturing in Australia and returned to Iraq to see his wife (a Shi'ite) and their newly born child, and was gunned down by Shi'ites, a footnote in the SUNDAY TIMES said:
Sixty people were killed and 160 wounded in a car bomb attack in Kerbala yesterday.
Reports from Iraq of car and truck bomb killings of similar numbers of victims are published almost every day.
Amnesty International were reported to be calling for Iran to stop the execution of children. In a recent report, 71 people were currently facing death, 24 having been executed since 1990 - eleven while still children. Iran is the only country in the world that executes child offenders - people convicted of crimes before they are eighteen (TELETEXT, 27 June 2007).
In early July 2007, the Pakistan government forces stormed a mosque in Islamabad and a hundred were reported killed (BBC CEEFAX). The thousands of students in the mosque, plus a pro-Taleban cleric, were all Muslims, as were the troops who fired on them. The Pakistan government's fear of so-called Muslim fundamentalists is in reality part of a power-struggle. When reporting another Pakistan car-bombing in clashes between soldiers and 'militants', CEEFAX (4 August 2007), said there had been a sharp rise in violence since the previous month's Red Mosque battle in the capital. On the same day (26 July 2007) that yet another Muslim car bomb - this time in Iraq - killed at least 50 people, all Muslims, it was reported by Pakistani officials that they had successfully test-fired a cruise missile capable of delivering nuclear war-heads deep into India.
It is obvious that capitalism with its conflicting quests for power and territorial expansion lies behind all this insane barbarity. Religion serves as a cover to keep the faithful on side.
India, of course, has its own nuclear arsenal, no doubt capable of reaching deep into Pakistan, but while Muslims in Pakistan and Iraq were busy killing each other, Hindus in Britain were distracted by a bullock suffering from bovine tuberculosis which vets put down. This animal was said to be "sacred" to Hindus throughout the world so, while the Indian (Hindu) government can kill perhaps many millions of people and destroy a huge area of the earth, religion has their masses worrying about a "sacred" bull.
India's Finance Minister was reported as saying that 250 million Indians - 25% of the population - live in "abject poverty" (his words), earning less than $1 a day (CEEFAX, 3 February 2007): the historic co-existence of religion and poverty pitilessly exemplified.
Muslims prostrate themselves in daily rituals of worship but what are they bowing down to? In common with other religions, they have an imaginary figure in their minds - one which was planted there at an early age by their elders. It is the clerics and behind them the ruling class who control such images. In reality they are bowing to a ruling clique that lives on their backs. Unquestioning devotion enables Islam to exist without any rational foundation, a medieval hangover in a nuclear age. The same is true of all religions - it is merely a matter of degree.
Workers must come to see religion as a class instrument preaching superstition, conformity and obedience. When they realise that the dominance of the capitalist class is made "righteous" by the agents of religion and that the churches, mosques and temples are part of the parasite hierarchy for keeping the masses docile, they will withdraw their support from their masters' system.
Religion has no independent existence outside the system of riches and poverty. A minority class owns the means of production , while the workers are taught to accept life on their knees and to believe that poverty prepares them for a better life to come.
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Buddhism
Buddhism
is supposed to follow the teaching of Saddhattha Gotoma - the Buddha.
The myths associated with Buddhism are many and varied. Gotoma's birth
date varies by a factor of 200 years, from the 6th to the 4th century
BC. As with all religions, there are only absurd fantasies to be found
- nothing of any substance worthy of working class attention.
The
idea of being born, dying and being reborn with the aim of breaking
the cycle to reach Nibbana or Nirvana, the end of suffering, is manifest
nonsense.
Dying
ends the suffering of the individuals who die but the suffering of
the living is socially generated by capitalism. It consists of poverty,
wars and starvation - all of which can be ended by changing society.
Gotoma
as the fable goes was an Indian prince who left his wife and palace,
shaving his head, and became a "holy man". Whatever
that is?> He
found that starving himself did not answer his problems so he packed
it in and found himself a fig tree. At that time fig trees were "sacred"
in India. He sat under the tree and meditated for 46 days. At the
end of that time he gained what Buddhists called enlightenment,
the meaning of life. The birth, death, rebirth cycle idea was taken
from India's main religion now known as Hinduism.
There
are three universal truths and four noble truths. The first of these
holds that nothing lasts - everything changes. There is no rest except
Nibbana. So the first truth is a contradiction since Nibbana lasts
and does not change.
The
second is Dukkha, which means suffering. Life is Dukkha, no one can
escape it. Yet Buddhist teaching is, it is claimed, a way to overcome
it. Another contradiction!
When
Buddhists reach enlightenment, "they can break free of the
endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth.. When they have done this
they can enter Nibbana" (BUDDHISM by Sue Penney, p10).
Buddhists
hold that it is impossible to describe Nibbana. How long Gotoma (the
Buddha) lived after gaining "enlightenment" we
do not know but he died at the age of 80 and was cremated. What state
he was in when he entered Nibbana or how his entry can be confirmed
it is impossible to say. A perfectly natural death aged 80 followed
by cremation is quite final: beyond that lie only the fables of faith
and superstition.
CHANNEL
4 News on 2 April 2003 showed Buddhist monks in Hong Kong praying
for protection against the SARS virus. They all want to reach Nibbana,
but none of them wanted to die.That the religious behaviour of Buddhists
is closely similar to that of other religions is undeniable. Mysticism
acts like a magnet on the minds of believers.
In
December 2002 King Sihanouk of Cambodia led a million people in a
procession to relocate the fabled remains of Buddha (TELETEXT, 19
December 2002)
There
are still pilgrimages to the burial mounds where his ashes are supposed
to have been placed. A special temple was built in the city of Kandy
in Sri Lanka to house a relic, one of the Buddha's teeth, and a ten
day-festival is held every year in its honour. There are other such
festivals in other parts of the Buddhist world.
When
Sue Penney wrote her book in 1988, there were about 100,000 Buddhists
in Britain and an estimated 600 million world-wide. The submissive
minds of people who engage in relic-worship are a long way from the
revolutionary consciousness that will prepare the working class for
emancipation.
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Orthodox
Soviet Gods
Another
major issue bearing upon the religious question was the seizure of
power by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917.
This
obviously could not be dealt with at the time of THE SPGB's pamphlet
on religion (1910) but The Socialist Party of Great Britain was alone
among political parties in identifying that seizure of power as the
completion of Russia's industrial capitalist revolution. We rejected
all along the false claims that this was a "workers' state"
or an example of "Socialism in one country".
The
capitalist class's propaganda supported Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks
in the lie that state capitalism meant Socialism. They also helped
promote the further lie that the Soviet Union was an example of "godless
Communism". In fact, it was neither godless nor Communist.
Lenin's
main concern was to gain power and, through murder and terror, to
hang on to it.
In
1917 the population of Russia was about 60% illiterate peasants steeped
in religion. The question of educating the minority of industrial
wage-workers never arose.
In
a backward country, Lenin knew they had to "catch up"
with capitalism, which implies that he knew that capitalism was coming
to Russia. How did such massive misrepresentations as Russia under
the Bolsheviks being Communist and godless come to be generally believed?
Given
that the overwhelming majority of the world's workers do not regard
wage-labour and production for sale as basic features of capitalism,
it is not difficult to stick misleading labels on systems and parties,
names which do not properly identify them.
From
the Marxist standpoint, the state is itself the political apparatus
of class rule. Another fact that Lenin twisted into its opposite.
With the demise of the so-called 'Soviet' Union in 1991 and the introduction
of a multi-party regime closer to western-style capitalism, we were
now expected to believe yet more fantasies.
Instead
of the history of human society evolving through the agency of class
struggles from lower forms of slavery and feudalism to modern industrial
capitalism and ultimately through the final class revolution to classless
Socialism, are we now to accept that society can first leap from feudalism
into Socialism as Lenin pretended and then, after three quarters of
a century, evolve backwards into capitalism?
Such
an absurd series of propositions provides a clear parallel with the
survival of myths and religion in general. What comes to be commonly
believed suits the prevailing ruling class interest. In this case
there was the creation of a bogyman by the West in case of war, and
the creation of a fifth column for the other side. With the meagre
resources available to expound Socialism and debunk capitalism, it
is not surprising that such myths are still in place.
In
his little wartime pamphlet, SOVIET MILLIONAIRES, Reg Bishop praised
the way the Christian Church in Russia had supported Stalin's 'war
effort' financially:/p>
As
is well-known, in the latter half of 1942 the Bishops of the Orthodox
Church and the leading figures of other denominations vied as to which
could make the most generous contribution ...
Typical
of many others is Vladimir Stefanov, priest of the Moscow Church of
the Assumption, who donated his life savings, 73,000 roubles, to the
Defence Fund last year.
This
priest, in a letter to Stalin, described himself as a "Shepherd
of Souls". Clearly religion was flourishing in Stalin's Russia,
performing the same function as in any other capitalist country, namely
that of promoting nationalism, supporting the war and filling the
heads of workers with myths.
The
above-named pamphlet was published by THE RUSSIA TODAY SOCIETY, and
was strongly supportive of Soviet state capitalism. Its purpose was
to explain away and applaud, in the context of Russia's wartime alliance
with the capitalist West, the emergence of millionaires in Soviet
Russia
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Stalin
and Lenin
Stalin
had studied for the priesthood in Georgia. His mother was devoutly
religious and, having lost three children in infancy, prayed for a
boy whom she would name after Saint Joseph (Yossif) dedicating him
to the service of god. With the aid of his priest, his mother enrolled
Yossif Vissarionovich Djugashvili at the age of 11 in an ecclesiastical
school, and when he was 14 she obtained a scholarship for him to enter
the Seminary of Tiflis (Tibilisi).
Stalin
learned to detest the Russians.
He knew that Georgian culture was older and greater than Russian,
and shared his mother's pride in the fact that Georgia had been Christian
during centuries when the barbarian Slavs up north were still pagans
(Eugene Lyons, STALIN, CSAR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS, p27).
Eugene Lyons points out that for nearly a century the Czars had tried
to Russianise "the Georgians, Tartars, Armenians, Kurds, Jews
and the dozen other races who held onto their own languages and ancient
ways".
Stalin
spent five years in the Seminary and although Christianity didn't
make Stalin its own, becoming a Bolshevik did not mean he became a
Communist in his thinking or politics, or that he understood or cared
anything about Marxism except as a front for holding power.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain rejected Lenin's pretences and fought
to expose Stalin's reign of terror throughout its ugly existence,
and this against the idol-worshippers of the so-called Communist Party.
Eugene
Lyons soundly argues that:
Bolshevism
was basically a conspiracy with a rigid hierarchy of power, and it
dismissed sentimental nonsense about idealism. It was an instrument
made to order for a man like Stalin (p56).
In
Stalin's case, his police-state power was so absolute that fear and
submission were universal through his vast domain. This is the very
essence of religion.
Promoting conventional religion may not have been Bolshevik policy,
except in wartime when Stalin called on the Orthodox priests to pray
for God's help, but Stalin was himself deified. This fact is relevant
to showing how gods are made by men.
Compare
one of many fulsome hymns of praise to Stalin published in PRAVDA,
the official organ of the Communist Party, with one from the Christian
hymn book.
O
great Stalin, O leader of the peoples;
Thou who broughtest Men to birth;
Thou who fructifiest the earth;
Thou who restorest the centuries;
Thou who makest bloom the spring;
Thou who makest vibrate the musical cords;
Thou splendour of my spring, O thou sun reflected by millions of hearts.
STALIN, CZAR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS, p190
A Christian equivalent is the hymn PRAISE MY SOUL :
Angels,
help us to adore him;
Ye behold him face to face;
Son and Moon bow down before him;
Dwellers all in time and space;
Praise him! Praise him! Praise with us the God of Grace.
The
same meaningless sterility is common to both. The self-effacing submission
to a higher power betrays the same intensity of ignorance and fear
in both cases. The mental state of submission to imaginary heavenly
rulers co-exists with submission to earthly masters. Both are incompatible
with being a Socialist.
That
Bolshevism became a faith, with infallible leaders and sacred texts,
is clear to any serious student of Soviet history.
Eugene
Lyons says that it was Stalin:
…
who conceived the notion of embalming the body of Lenin turning
it into a "sacred relic" and his tomb into a Bolshevik 'shrine'.
On the eve of Lenin's funeral in January 1924, Stalin spoke to
the Congress of the Soviets. The speech has the authentic flavour
of priesthood about it.
"In leaving us Comrade Lenin ordered us to maintain and strengthen
the dictatorship of the proletariat. We swear to thee, Comrade Lenin
to exert our full strength to honour Thy command" … on and
on in this liturgical style (pp40-41).
The
millions who starved to death with the failure of the first five-year
plan in 1928-32 and the millions more who perished in slave-labour
camps would have found little to celebrate in Stalin's strengthening
of his dictatorship over the proletariat.
That
Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in the vast underdeveloped country
still emerging from feudalism, the Czar having abdicated only in March
1917, the country dominated by the medieval religion of the Orthodox
Church, is the surest proof that for them power was an end in itself.
That
they were a conspiratorial party with a hierarchical structure and
dominated by a Central Committee under the control of one man, proves
that, for them, Socialism had to be brought to the working class by
leaders.
Lenin
said as much in "WHAT IS TO BE DONE?"
We
have said that there could not have been social democratic consciousness
among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without.
The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively
by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness.
He argued that Socialist theory was to be"… elaborated
by educated representatives of the propertied classes"(p31-32,
emphasis in original).
The
theme of Marx and Engels and the reconstituted Socialist Party of Great Britain that: "the emancipation
of the working class must be the act of the working class itself
(see Engels' 1888 Preface to THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, also CLAUSE
5 of our DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES): pre-supposing the development
of class consciousness in the industrial system of capitalism, this
had to be ignored in conditions which did not exist in backward Russia.
That
there was a struggle between Lenin and the Bolsheviks on the one hand
and the various Orthodox Church factions and their leaders on the
other is not denied. This was a power struggle over the control of
the masses, where divided loyalty could not be accepted.
The
fact that Lenin stripped the church of its possessions, closed monasteries
and executed resisters has nothing to do with communism or Marx. By
this criterion Henry VIII was a communist.
Referring
to the church as the foundation of Russia's political and economic
system, Rene Fullop Miller says:
In
this respect, too, conditions in Russia before the revolution were
almost like those of medieval Europe, when the church was identical
with the state and was the true ideal foundation of temporal power.
Thus the revolution if it wished to make a really clean sweep of the
old regime, had to reckon with the church.
THE MIND AND FACE OF BOLSHEVISM, 1927, p245
The
Orthodox Church was itself factionalised with some struggling to retain
monastic theological dominance against others who welcomed the break
from the state as an opportunity to develop religion independently.
This is detailed by Fullop Miller, as is the fact that the Catholic
Church was ready to fill any vacuum that arose in order to fulfil
their dream of reuniting the Orthodox and Catholic churches which
had split in 1054.
Lenin
is quoted saying:
With
regard to our own party, we observe that religion should be a private
affair. The State should not concern itself with it, and religious
societies should have no connection with the political authorities
( ibid., p246).
This
cop-out further demonstrates the lack of conditions for Socialism
and that the Russian people were far from rejecting religion. That
these events happened seven years after Lenin's coming to power underscores
the point. It is also clear that "an accommodation"
was reached as 17 years later the leaders of these same churches were
donating handsomely to Stalin's war effort.
It
is illuminating to note some of the "elevating" issues being
earnestly debated by rival sects within the Orthodox Church at this
time (1924).
The
Imiaslavia Movement draws its strength from a mystical branch of the
Byzantine faith. They were concerned about "… the being
of god and its relation to the word", concluding that the
name of god must be worshipped as such (THE MIND AND FACE OF BOLSHEVISM
(p258). This finds its echo in the words of the so-called Lord's Prayer:
"… hallowed be thy name".
The
monks of the hesychiast faction debated the light from the hill of
Tabor:
whether
this light is God himself and betokens his presence, or whether it
is not a light created by god and thus neither god himself nor his
energy ( Ibid., p259).
These,
and many similar matters of world-shattering unimportance which had
occupied the "thinking" of the Orthodox Church at
least since the 14th century, were given a revival by the new religious
movements in the Russia of the 1920's. The absurd obsession with light
is nothing but a survival from sun-worship and shows the evolutionary
process that all modern religion has undergone. Once the evolution
of religion is admitted, its origins in some divine, eternal, unchanging,
supernatural entity becomes untenable. Superstition and ignorance
are all that is left.
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More
Absurd Myths and Rituals
The
Eucharist, now regarded as only symbolic cannibalism had once been
accepted as the flesh and blood of Christ. Just how a small piece
of wafer and sip of cheap wine becomes transubstantiated into flesh
and blood is a minor feat of magic that says more about human gullibility
than anything else.
The
LITTLE OXFORD DICTIONARY (1988 ed.) still gives the meaning of the
word transubstantiated as: "conversion of Eucharistic elements
wholly into the body and blood of Christ". A recent report
of vampirism in the UK and Germany about people drinking blood would,
no doubt, be regarded as degenerate by Christians who participate
in the Eucharist.
To
consecrate is to make or declare anything to be "sacred"
for religious purposes. It is perfectly obvious that men can and do
consecrate just about anything, for example land, trees, slabs of
stone, pieces of wood and metal, and a bewildering array of idols.
What
is deemed "sacred" to one religion or in one era
is not so to another. Even within the same religion (Christianity)
bitter battles were fought over idol worship. There is no tangible
attribute that identifies anything as intrinsically sacred. It is
a condition existing only in the mind.
Over
many centuries Christianity created a culture wherein, instead of
new knowledge being eagerly sought and welcomed, it was felt that
God's eternal scheme was threatened and they saw only dangerous heresy.
In the early 17th century people refused to look through Galileo's
telescope for fear of what they might see. In 1616, "Galileo
was forbidden to express his opinions any more either in books or
lectures". Copernicus's book CONCERNING THE REVOLUTIONS OF
HEAVENLY BODIES was also suppressed (John Langdon Davies, MAN AND
HIS UNIVERSE, p78).
In
his introduction to THE LAROUSSE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF MYTHOLOGY, Robert
Graves identifies the two main functions of myths. The first is to
answer awkward questions such as "where do souls go to after
death"? He notes the enormous power conferred "on
the various deities credited with the creation and care of souls -
and incidentally on their priesthoods".
The
second function of myths is to justify an existing social system.
Robert Graves also observes: "One constant rule of mythology
is that whatever happens among the gods above reflects the events
on earth".
Karl
Marx makes the same point :"the religious world is but the
reflex of the real world". Marx goes on to argue that Protestantism
is "the most fitting form of religion" under the
capitalist system of commodity production:
...
for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which
the producers in general enter into social relations with one another
by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they
reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous
human labour - for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of
abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism,
Deism, etc., is the most fitting form of religion.
CAPITAL VOLUME I chap.I, section 4
THE
LAROUSSE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF MYTHOLOGY gives very detailed accounts from
every part of the world showing the development of such beliefs from
early primitive societies to modern times and, with a wealth of information,
illustrates how countless thousands of tribal gods, many originating
as the objects of ancestor worship, became absorbed into larger units
as tribal societies emerged into City States and federations of City
States. Though fewer the still numerous gods tended always to take
over the rituals and supposed powers of those which were absorbed.
A
recurring theme is sun and moon worship and the relation of such cults
as reflections of power struggles on earth. When the Akan tribe of
Ghana was ruled by a queen, descent was reckoned in the female line,
and the moon-goddess, Ngame, was all powerful. When the Sudanese invaded
they forced the Akans to accept a male creator and the myths were
modified.
New myths appeared when the Akan accepted the patriarchal principle
and Sun-worship was brought in. They began tracing succession through
the father and mothers ceased to be the spiritual heads of households
LAROUSSE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF MYTHOLOGY, INTRODUCTION, pvi
Similar
power-struggles between men represented as struggles between the gods
were common in ancient Egypt. The sun god, Ra, was challenged by the
moon goddess, Isis, as city rulers vied for power when city-states
were federating. The history of these and countless earlier gods predates
Christianity by thousands of years.
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Free
Will and Class Oppression
Another
more significant example of what happens among the gods reflecting
conditions and events on earth is to be seen in the concept of reward
and punishment. To become a sinner by breaking God's laws is to invite
eternal damnation. But be obedient and submissive and accept the power
of God and his priests, and eternal bliss will be your reward.
This
control of the masses by fear and ignorance rests upon the convenient
idea of Free Will. Man in society can choose Good or Evil as determined
by the ruling class and their legal and religious agents. Applied
to life on earth, this means respecting private property and doing
as you are told as wage-slaves producing wealth for the profit of
a few.
The
law stands ready to punish offenders, defending the privileges of
the capitalist class and, helping to extend their domain, particularly
in war situations, brings the "reward" of being "elevated"
to the status of "hero".
How
Free Will can be exercised in choosing the class into which you are
born, the kind of environment in which you live, and whether at any
time you are made unemployed is never explained. What Free Will the
men, women and children who are on the receiving end of American and
British bombing have as to whether they are maimed, murdered, tortured
or have their homes destroyed is also something about which the Sin
and Virtue hypocrites of Christianity have nothing to say.The doctrine
of Free Will, applied to millions of starving people in Africa, where
3 million people, many of them children, die from AIDS each year,
while the Roman Catholic Church forbids contraception and popularises
the lie that condoms are porous, either challenges the sanity of people
who "choose" such horrors or it condemns the barbarity of
Christianity at both the theoretical and the practical level.
Primitive
men built their myths about life and nature out of fear of things
they had no other way of explaining. There was no ulterior motive
of a privileged class with a vested interest in keeping ignorance
in being to preserve their dominance.
It
is impossible to escape the conclusion that all the gods and all the
myths of all the religions are the inventions of men and women. They
have all undergone a long process of adaptations and merging as society
has changed.
While
the world has classes, one owning the means of life and therefore
dominant, the other, a non-owning class of employees and therefore
servile, the dominant ideas in society will tend to be those of the
ruling class. Their gods and their myths will continue to be accepted
by those among the servile majority who believe leaders and gods are
needed to control their lives.
Workers
are not only robbed of what they produce, but of any independent identity.
This, more than anything, is what makes revolutionary ideas difficult
to accept. Religion has served to shroud the debasement of mankind
in a halo of righteousness. There is no solution to nor any real escape
from poverty, alienation and war to be found in the collective burying
of heads in the shifting sand of religion. Many centuries of prayer
and other senseless rituals have only left the religions' devotees
in the control of priests and the ruling class.
The
Archbishop of Canterbury, alarmed by declining church attendances,
is resorting to the use of videos. Weekly church attendances average
1.2 million. This has to be set against such television programmes
as My Favourite Hymns and Songs of Praise which, in
effect, turn viewers' homes into mini-churches. In America the retarding
forces of religion have their own TV and Radio Channels, but all the
effects of capitalism, including massive drugs and alcohol problems,
remain.
At
every level religion fails. Even as a refuge for frightened and oppressed
victims of an alienating society, there is just a void from which
nothing is forthcoming. Religion as a reflex of the real world, is
the theological equivalent of reformism. Instead of a political patchwork
programme for treating the effect of capitalism with piecemeal reforms,
divine intervention is sought to relieve poverty, end violence and
bring happiness.
The
lack of any control over their own lives on the part of the working
class is as clear as the futility of both reforms and religion.
Since
it is capitalism that causes the major social problems of the world
with its exploitation of wage-labour and those ceaseless conflicts
over markets and profits, it is this system that must be abolished.
With
the establishment of world Socialism, socially equal human beings
will for the first time be in conscious control of society. The aim
of gaining political power to bring this about must become the top
priority of the world's workers.
A
final word from Marx:
The
life-process of society, which is based on the process of material
production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated
as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated
by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands
for society a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of
existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long
and painful process of development.
CAPITAL VOLUME I, chap.I, Section 4
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Marx and Religion
Marx made his hostility to religion clear not by writing a book or a thesis making a detailed attack on it, but by way of expounding his and Engels's Materialist Conception of History. This concept sees men in historically changing relations of production. This is a developmental process wherein men and women become conscious of the universe through the process of controlling nature in producing and reproducing the means of living. There is room only for man and nature, nothing supernatural.
In volume I of CAPITAL, Marx used the technique of making analogies between some absurd contradictions in capitalist political economy and religious ideas. This was very effective. In the Author's Preface to volume I (Kerr edition, p 15), in laying the foundation of political economy, Marx made his famous swipe at the property-conscious Church of England:
The English Established Church... will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income.
In explaining the equivalent [exchange] value[s] of a coat and a given amount of linen, Marx says:
Thus the linen acquires a value form different from its physical form. The fact that it is value is made manifest by its equality with the coat, just as the sheep's nature of a Christian is shown in his resemblance to the Lamb of God (p 60).
An even more dismissive sweeping aside of religious nonsense is to be found on another page:
There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race (p 83).
Marx also quoted from something he had written some twenty years earlier, in THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY, in reply to Proudhon. Here we will reproduce that quotation, and then go back to pages 91 and 92 which have a more fitting conclusion to Marx's references to religion in volume I of CAPITAL.
The economists have a singular manner of proceeding. There are for them only two kinds of institutions, those of art and those of nature. Feudal institutions are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this they resemble the theologians, who establish two kinds of religion. Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is an emanation from God (p 93).
And on page 91:
The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogenous human labour - for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments (Protestantism, Deism etc.), is the most fitting religion.
And then, after dealing with the ancient and primitive tribal origins of bourgeois religion, Marx concludes:
The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to nature.
The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan (pp 91- 92).
This is a superb application of the Materialist Conception of History: man developing consciousness in the social process of production, abandoning obsolete myths and finally changing society. The case for Socialism in a nutshell.
In 1859, in his Preface to THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, Marx formally outlined the Materialist Conception of History which, as he explained, once arrived at, served as the leading thread in his studies.
He argued that:
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production...
... Then comes the period of revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of a natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic - in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out (p 12).
Twelve years earlier, in the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, Marx and Engels made another excellent application of their Materialist Conception. Of the several references to religion, the following will serve to show their consistent rejection of religious ideas. Referring to the workers' subjection to capital, they wrote:
Law, morality, religion are to [the workers] so many bourgeois prejudices behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
AND:
The charges against Communism made from a religious, philosophical, and generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
NB It must be understood that Communism as used by Marx and Engels has absolutely nothing to do with the former Soviet dictatorship which was state- capitalist. It means what the SPGB means by Socialism, i.e. a classless world-system of common ownership of the means of production and distribution.
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Appendix
[Extracts
from 2nd edition, 1911, of the reconstituted Socialist Party of Great Britain pamphlet Socialism and Religion, first
published 1910, 3rd edition 1925]
The
Socialist View of Religion
The
Socialist case against religion differs widely from the usual Freethought
position. ... Religion was not the wicked invention of charlatans,
nor is the passing of superstition simply to be explained by the "triumph
of Reason". [Socialists arugue that] the "march of mind",
the development of science, and the decay of religion, are themselves
ultimately explicable only from the evolution of economic conditions.
Ideas play a secondary part in social development. They are the effects
of the material environment upon human beings, and are not the creative
motive force of social evolution. Consequently, in his worship of
the "idea" the bourgeois freethinker is, like the Christian,
attributing miraculous powers to the figments of men's brains.
Preface, p.3
The
Need for Frankness
Is
Socialism antagonistic to religion? Can a Socialist be a Christian?...
It is urged [by others] that such discussion is unnecessary, and that
it will retard the cause by prejudicing people against it. But it
must be recognised that the policy of hiding the truth and avoiding
discussion is precisely the most likely way to injure the cause
(p.7).
The
Genesis of Religion
Primitive
man's knowledge and experience were not sufficiently extensive to
give him the idea of an inviolable natural order. He believed that
all things were swayed by the ghosts of the dead, and consequently
the "miracle" was his explanation of a normal happening.
So the whole of man's early religious beliefs were due to the limitations
of his knowledge and experience. Religion, therefore, has a natural,
not a supernatural, genesis (p.11).
The
Reflex of Tribal Life
How
completely religion was the outcome of material conditions may be
gathered, not only from the character of the ideas connected with
it, but also from the exactness with which it reflected the kinship
and social forms of tribal society (pp11-12).
As a belief ... religion was the outcome of man's ignorance of Nature's
working, and of the mastery which awful and uncomprehended natural
forces had over him, while as rites and ceremonies it reflected the
forms, customs, and unchanging nature of primitive society. Thus the
obscurity of material conditions is the source of religion; God did
not create man, man created God in his own image.
By
the "inertia of the mind", religion tends to persist, even
through vast changes in the environment, in so far as it serves some
interest and does not directly conflict with the new conditions. But
in spite of this tendency to independent existence, religion has been
modified continuously as the result of changing conditions and interests;
while, notwithstanding repeated endeavours to adapt the ancient legends
to modern requirements, its influence has waned. Nevertheless, in
the degree that it survives, religion reacts upon society; it is the
paralysing hand of the dead past upon the living present
(pp.14-15).
The
Rise of Christianity
...
the spread of "universal" religions was the consequence
and accompaniment of the development of a new social system. Kinship
ceased to be the social bond; its place was taken by an expanding
military or feudal power. The older religion ceased to be in harmony
with the social order; it gave place to a religion whose principle
was not exclusiveness, but universality; and the ethic associated
with the new religion was necessarily that of submission, in order
to encourage the obedience to government that was essential to the
security of the political State (p.19).
The
Reformation
Much
might be written regarding the economic basis of Protestantism in
all its phases, but it is sufficient here to lay stress on the fundamental
part played throughout by the change in material aims and interests
engendered by the development of the new methods of gaining the material
living ...
... instead of the vast social and political changes that accompanied
the great Protestant movements being caused by the new religious ideas,
these ideas are themselves only explicable as the outcome of the rise
of capitalist farming, industry, and commerce, and the advance of
a new class to political domination (pp.22-23).
The
Exodus of Religion
In
contrast with science, which grows in volume, complexity, interdependence,
and definiteness, religion decreases in volume, cohesion, and definiteness,
and is now in process of evolution - if such it can truly be called
- into nothingness. It is, in fact, more accurately an evaporation
than an evolution (p.23).
It is the development of industrial forces, and mankind's consequent
growing control over Nature and increasing knowledge of her working,
that provide a wider and firmer basis for science and leave less room
for superstition in the minds of working men.
...
This indifference of the workers is fostered by the fact that religion,
when put to the test, is ever found on the side of their oppressors
(pp.24-25).
...
so long as the anarchy of modern competitive society exists, the
accompanying obscurity and confusion in social life will continue
to shelter superstition. ...
...if
religion exists it is because of a defective social organisation,
of which it is necessary to seek the cause in the very essence of
the State (Marx).
Class
domination is the essence of the modern State. It is based on competitive
anarchy and parasitism - the evidences of a defective social organisation.
It still leaves room for religion, because it maintains ignorance
and confusion by its structure and contradictions, and because religion
is fostered as a handmaiden of class rule (p.26).
It
is, therefore, a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy
of religion. Through Socialism alone will the relations between men
in society, and their relations to Nature, become reasonable, orderly,
and completely intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition.
The entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion
(p.27).
The
Socialist Philosophy -
The Materialist Explanation of Society
Intellectual
changes are made and stimulated by material change. That ideas have
an important reflex action on social conditions in no way alters the
fact that material conditions form the base, origin, and material
of all intellectual life (p.29).
...the
contradiction in terms known as the Christian Socialist is inevitably
antagonistic to working-class interests and the waging of the class
struggle. His policy is the conciliation of classes, the fraternity
of robber and robbed, not the end of classes. His avowed object, indeed,
is usually to purge the Socialist movement of its materialism, and
this, as we have seen, means to purge it of its Socialism and to divert
it from its material aims to the fruitless chasing of spiritual Will-o'-the'
wisps. A Christian Socialist is, in fact, an anti-Socialist (p.31).
Socialism
is consistent only with that monistic view which regards all phenomena
as expressions of the underlying matter-force reality and as parts
of the unity of Nature
which interact according to inviolable laws. It is the application
of science, the arch-enemy of religion, to human social relationships;
and just as the basic principle of the philosophy of Socialism finds
itself in conflict with religion, so does it, as a propagandist movement,
find religion acting against it... (p.32).
Was Jesus a Socialist?
...
the Christian doctrine means submission - and slavery. So the asceticism,
self-abnegation, and professed other-worldliness of Christian teaching,
which regards this earth as a vale of tears and a painful preparation
for a life in the clouds, is an ethic of slavish degradation; and
when taught to the workers it admirably reflects the narrowest self-interest
of the exploiting class. It is an ethic that runs counter to working-class
interests at every point (p38).
Socialism and Ethics
Only
when the influence of religion has been so weakened by social advance
that it ceases to be useful as an instrument of government will the
master class institute purely secular instruction. The poison will
nevertheless continue to be administered. The religion known as patriotism,
with its superstitions, its miraculous lying legends, its symbols,
music, vestments, pomp, and ceremony, is even to-day more useful than
Christianity as a means of stupefying the workers and will continue
to be used.
...
An ethic, indeed, can be no more than a class ethic, because society
is divided into antagonistic classes ... The pressing need is therefore
not ethics, but an end to the categories of wage-slave and capitalist.
...
The worker's guide to-day must be no capitalist code, but the class
struggle; and this entails loyalty and co-operation between members
of the working class, and implacable hostility to capitalism and those
who uphold it
(pp40-41).
Socialists
and the Religious Conflict
No
man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. It must
be either the Socialist or the religious principle that is supreme,
for the attempt to couple them equally betrays charlatanism or lack
of thought (p46).
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