I was listening to some writings on Marx by Lenin the other day and as far as I understood it: materialism is the idea that consciousness is a byproduct material interactions within reality as opposed to the idealist conception that reality only exists within and as a construct of consciousness. Marx extended the materialist conception in dialectical materialism to consider social interactions and structures as material conditions that are also required to produce consciousness. Lenin also writes of Marx’s belief that religion and theology is inherently idealist, and that ideas like agnosticism that tried reconcile religion and materialism were reactionary or a “shame-faced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world”.
the above paragraph is of course a gross oversimplification of idealism, materialism and dialectical materialism, and may be partially or entirely wrong. I found the original text to be quite difficult to comprehend and this is just how I understood it, so if I’m wrong about anything please correct me.
moving on, it seems to me that many Marxist-Leninists think that one of many contributing factors to the decline and collapse of the USSR was the suppression of religion, especially as it did not seem to be particularly effective given how quickly religion returned after the collapse. with all the aforementioned in mind, I have a few questions:
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do you think that religion is antithetical to dialectical materialism?
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was suppression of religion in the USSR enforced out of a belief by the party that it contradicted the principles of Marxism–Leninism?
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would a socialist state with a party that strictly adhered to Marxism–Leninism but allowed religious freedom among its citizenship be stable?
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would a hypothetical state be able to cultivate material conditions that lead people to willingly give up religion, if said state decided that religion was a threat to its sovereignty?
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have you personally experienced any cognitive dissonance from simultaneously holding religious and Marxist-Leninist beliefs?
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I haven’t read/listened to a whole lot of theory, what literature would you recommend to better understand dialectical materialism?
Lotta people have baffleingly wrongheaded views of Marx’s critique of religion, reducing it to m*taphysics
Marx criticises religion basically from the second he enters history; but he is basically silent on metaphysical stuff like “does God exist” because *he doesn’t care the point of materialism and revolutionary philosophy is specifically to drop useless metaphysical debates for e.g. the formation and organisation of the state or the restriction of peasant rights to forest wood. But if we must discuss useless metaphysical questions, Marx comes out swinging in favour of the existence of all gods in his doctoral dissertation: “Take for instance the ontological proof [of god]: “that which I conceive for myself in a real way is a real concept for me”, something that works on me. In this sense, all gods, the Pagan as well as the Christian ones, have possessed a real existence…If somebody imagines he has a hundred thalers…he will incur debts on the strength of his imagination, his imagination will work, in the same way as all humanity has incurred debts on its gods.”(MECWvol1p104 Marx’s emphasis)
In 1842 he points out: “And as for Rome! Read Cicero! The Epicurean, Stoic or Sceptic philosophies were the religions of cultured Romans when Rome had reached the zenith of its development. That with the downfall of the ancient states their religions also disappeared requires no further explanation, for the “true religion” of the ancients was the cult of “their nationality”, of their “state”.”(ibid p189); note the fluidity of Marx’s definition of ‘religion’ and its lack of relation to “they believe in invisible entities” and its deep connection to “they believe in reified alienated social relationships”.
Three other neat quotes (mostly early Marx because he drops metaphysical bullshit like this for important stuff like factory reports by the 50s):
(MECWvol3 p31)
(MECWvol3 p152)
(Capital, p165)
Marx’s critique is not “man in the sky silly”, is not “people just don’t know the truth and i must preach it”; it is that religion is the result of class society, of sanctification of oppressive social structures and the recognition of humans through an alienated structure. In more abstract terms, Marx believes religion is the result of social relations not being understood by humans except through abstract mystifications such as the gods, the state, the market.
It should be made very explicit that in capital, Marx shows that our society, the society in which the capitalist mode of production predominates, is deeply ‘religious’, believing in all manner of mystical and not-real things like value, interactions between commodities. Marx even argues that the market operates in such a way that it appears to basically everyone as an all powerful all present all knowing entity which exists as an independent subject outside of them. This is what religion is. It will not disappear when people profess their undying belief in Isaac Newton; it will disappear when they stop recognizing themselves and other humans as people through Jesus (‘christians’) or the state (‘citizens’) or the market (‘property-owners’).
Marx is also much more ambivalent on religion than most marxists seem to think (as the Capital bookclub on this website has been seeing through his Biblical references). Marx uses the Bible as both a historical source and for theoretical inspiration throughout his lifetime. There were multiple copies of the Bible in his library when he died. Why? Because “Religion is the opiate of the masses” is reduction of Marx’s ideas to absurdity. A fuller version of the quote reads:
(MECWvol3 p175)
I.e. “religion is a mixed bag”
In terms of Soviet policy, I haven’t studied their policy regarding the orthodox church and I refuse to have takes on stuff I haven’t investigated unless I need too. Regarding non-christian religions: the USSR did a colonialism and pissed off a ton of the marginalised peoples of Siberia and northern Russia with their r/atheism-bro nonsense, because they enforced this atheism even on local ‘grassroots’ practices, indigenous practices. Talismans were confiscated, sacred sites destroyed to prove that "the gods aren’t real. And like it’s gotta be re-iterated–many of these people supported the soviets and even integrated socialism into their religious practices (one example; some of the Buryats started revering the Paris commune matyrs as revolutionary spirits, others created ritual around fulfilling quotas) but this wasn’t good enough for the r/atheismbros so they squashed it and pissed the well intentioned people off.
Cuba allows Christians (even Catholics afaik) into the party, has for decades. Cuba has close ties to liberation theologists throughout latin america, because Cuba is thankfully not run by r/atheismbros. Cuba is the most stable ML state I am aware of.
Frank Black-Elk’s “Observations on Marxism and Lakota Tradition” in Marxism and Native Americans is amazing and short (and pirate-able on libgen). He (and a few other native folks) argues strongly that native knowledge systems (he argues specifically regarding the Lakota) are dialectically materialist because of their spirituality. Aikenhead & Michell’s Bridging Cultures is a good in depth examination by native scientists of the empirical basis of indigenous knowledge. If you must read something filled with Marxist buzzwords, Bertell Ollman’s Dance of the Dialectic is an absolute masterpiece despite his annoying takes on the USSR (which don’t come up much or at all in this book). This is also a good article: https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/02/karl-marx-and-radical-indigenous-critiques-of-capitalism/
I think the issue is mixing religions together as one homogeneous thing, with groups of people who only knew religion through oppression and never saw a religious preacher doing something other than stealing people’s money and diddling kids, and they can’t seem to comprehend when an another group holds on to their religion, like if your only experience with religion is the KKK crucifying black people you’d assume native tribal religions are similar if you didn’t do research on it.
An example I have to give from Algeria is that Algeria isn’t ruled by sharia and Algerians aren’t strict practicers of Islam, but people here are extremely anti-secular, why? Because of the “secular” French colonialism doing everything it can to destroy Islam and spread Christianity, they used to starve us then bring breads a crosses, they used to kidnap kids and convert them to Christianity, they turned our ancient mosques into horse barns, they made us work in wine plantations. For us this is what “secularism” means… And also whatever tf secularist Tunisia was doing, like they used to shove fanta bottles into islamist enemies of america as a torture method tf
I 100% agree, but it pisses me off a lot when marxists do it bc i have higher hopes
To quote
Out of curiosity, would you agree that Islam generally is more progressive, or has more potential for such, than many of the other Abrahamic religions?
That’s been my perspective, because of various things like the explicit anti-racism/supremacism (compared to some forms of Judaism for example, or Christianity of a particular period/form), the promise of eventual equality and elimination of poverty and a mandated redistributive method unlike Christianity’s looser ‘you should’ thing (kind of pie in the sky, but still), the avoidance of the ‘god king’ of Papacy, and also just how popular it seems - in its early times and also currrently, in terms of gaining converts (or returnees as I suppose they’d say) to Islam.
Not to say that it always is, or that particular forms or teachings aren’t regressive, but generally that seems the case to me. It seems to have a big draw for poor people in the west I think. And not to say that the others can’t be progressive, but they’re generally less so at least in their current forms.
I’d say Islam allows socialist relations more immediately, but I think we forget that many Christian and Jewish movements have been Socialist or Communist. Marx himself calls out the Diggers as the first flickering light of modern Socialism.
And the “God King of the Papacy” is not just ignoring the many breakaway sects, but maybe an oversimplification of Catholic history.
Revolts by Agrarian Socialist groups have often appealed to the Pope as protection against the feudal or early capitalist exploitation of the local Bishoprics or the Papal States nobility.
Finally I’d say Jesus’s “sell all you have to the poor and follow me” is a pretty direct method of redistribution, if not a popular one.
I’m not fully educated on islamic teachings and I am not fully educated on progressiveness.But what I noticed is that generally Islam is progressive except in current woman and queer rights which only got better in the west in the past century, which also aligns with the period most Muslims in the world fell under colonial and wahabbi hands.
I think islam is more popular with the oppressed because the story of Muhammad resonates better than other prophets, like Moses cut the sea and helped the jews escape oppression, Jesus in christianity got crucified and the oppressed people basically lost, but Muhammed was this outcast who even though was part of a rich ruling tribe choose to teach the poor and lead them to fight against his own tribe and own family, one of his closests was an African slave who got freed. And even after he took over Mecca he forced himself to only take what’s enough to eat, he used to tie a rock to his stomach so he wouldn’t feel hungry, there was zakat which was given to the poor. You don’t need a miracle to do what Muhammed did to help the oppressed it’s realistic and easy to resonate with.
I think material conditions are a factor here. Christianity was formalized as a tool of empire.
If you look at the Islam that was practiced in places where it was party of thr state hierarchy I am sure you would find it less liberatory than the Islam we see after centuries of them being marginalized by society
Great point. There was a lot of disinterest in actually learning about the societies of many of these minority populations. It gets annoying when I just casually look for writings on folks tales from Siberia or Central Asia and find the same note of “this researcher wrote a book collecting and studying these stories, but wasn’t allowed to publish it with the states reason being that it would encourage nationalism and anti-sovietism.”
Often the republic’s CP would ban things because they worried about being seen as encouraging nationalism and didn’t want the Union government to step in either in fear of a crackdown or just to maintain their own powerbase. Sometimes the Premier will personally get involved and allow something to be published, overriding the local party. Minority ethnic history and religion became used as an excuse during deportations, and well after those ended or in populations that never did get deported, the sense was that secularism was a threat.
I can’t find the quote, but maybe you can. In it Marx laments how capital robs the people of the ability to properly worship their gods/religions, and instead redirects that worship to capital itself.
They allow religious freedom and many Cubans are Catholics, but they do not allow the church to have freedom. That’s the important key. When the government was preparing to hold elections on constitution reform to be more inclusive of LGBT people wrt families, the Catholic Church was complaining that the government prohibited them from using the media to spread anti LGBT propaganda.
The formal hierarchy was, but a number of Catholic youth organisations actually spearheaded the law, and even the priesthood wasn’t remotely monolithic.
Cuba is in many ways an example of hpw Socialist relations can alter the material nature of a religion without eliminating it. Another of course is the Islamic majority states of the USSR.
thanks for the write up, this is really enlightening. if I’m understanding this right; religion is used as a way of conceptualizing the self as part of society (and their role within it), as is feudalism, as is capitalism, and that dialectical materialism is also a way of doing the same, with the largest difference being that they are not recognizing themselves or others through the lens of any sort of mysticism, but solely through material conditions? not sure if I comprehended the text.
Yeah you got it