I always believed religion was incompatible with a society rooted in addressing material reality, although I know we have have religious users and wanted to hear people’s takes.
GNU/Linux for sure.
I’m bracing for people to say Buddhism but tbh Buddhism has a strong inclination towards not helping out others because “it’s their karma” as well as the catholic church version of Buddhism, namely Vajrayana, being culpable for lots of criticisms that people level against the Catholic church.
Islam gets an honourable mention because of their fairly strict prohibition on riba, which is like usury except a souped-up version of it (which is more or less enforced in Islam, unlike most forms of Christianity) and a genuine, enforced commitment to actual charity and not just tithing. Islam is often pretty hostile towards communism but that’s mostly because of material conditions and the fact that their version of Liberation Theology-type leaders mostly get killed.
I also think that Sikhism gets an honourable mention because it’s quite radical, abolishing caste and demanding that justice be upheld, even if it requires violence or putting one’s life on the line to defend it. I know in India there was a split in the communist movements in the north, where Sikhism is most prevalent, over whether the revolution would be fought with modern weapons or with the traditional weapons of Sikhism (the kirpan, the khanda, the katar, the chakram etc.) I get why they are of central religious significance to Sikhs but idk why it’s cause for a split though; the last human Sikh guru owned a musket.
It’s probably due to being culturally adjacent as much as anything but I’d say that Christianity, specifically Liberation Theology, is the most compatible with communism especially given the Colombian ELN and the FSLN (Sandinistas) in Nicaragua.
Personally I think that religion requires a foundation of idealism that is inherently incompatible with materialism and I would like to see the gradual erosion of religion such that it exits the political and ideological spheres and gets relegated to cultural practice, like what you see with something like Shintoism as practiced by most Japanese people or ancestor worship in East Asia; lots of people build shrines to their ancestors and celebrate relevant days of observance but plenty of people don’t actually pray to their ancestors or believe that the heavens have influence on the world. This is a lot like how westerners visit graves and do things like talk to the deceased or write letters to them or leave flowers, alcohol, and mementos (*gasp!* almost as “offerings” except that only the Orientals leave offerings - westerners are above such superstitious practices, right??) If the world can reach a stage where religious rites and observances are performed due to cultural habit rather than belief in the supernatural then I think we would be on the right track.
Islam gets an honourable mention because of their fairly strict prohibition on riba, which is like usury except a souped-up version of it (which is more or less enforced in Islam, unlike most forms of Christianity)
With how Islamic banking/finance is currently widely being practiced, can you really say that prohibition of riba is being strictly, or even “more or less”, enforced in contemporary Islamic practice? I think the best that can be said is that the prohibition is observed in form, but not in spirit. In my very limited experience (please take all this jabbering with a ton of salt; I’m neither Muslim myself nor any sort of specialist in Islamic finance) with Islamic financing on the legal side, it largely seems to involve private or sometimes state-owned financial institutions using profit-sharing, joint-venture, and/or commodity sale contracts to imitate the practical effects and consequences of conventional fixed or variable interest financing instruments while still formally complying with the riba prohibition. Essentially, the bank’s technically not earning any interest off the principal; just “profit” from commodity sales/company shares. Seems to me that what’s been done is just a thousand convoluted and fancy ways of ensuring that the surplus value reaped by the bank is not vulgar “interest”, but some other technically non-prohibited form of (or names for) extracting value from the labour of others, thus reducing the practice to basically a matter of formal compliance without any application of its underlying or originally intended principles - i.e., the moral idea that any financial exploitation of others (in other words, capitalism) inherently corrodes your soul.
I also can’t see any real difference in material interests between Islamic and non-Islamic financial institutions: both are typically just extreme concentrations of financial capital, privately owned, within capitalist societies motivated by their own reproduction/perpetuation/expansion through systemic extraction of surplus value through investment in market commodities and productive concerns. In the worst case scenario, I can see how leftists fixating on riba as a theoretical concept leads to idealist mystification of productive/property relations, frustrating the materialist analysis of that which is central to Marxism.
Basically, it’s all like this mostly because of (like you said) the destruction of pretty much all 20th century efforts towards socialism in Muslim-majority countries (except Libya? But I’m not aware whether Gaddafi promoted Islamic financial principles), resulting in those Muslim-majority countries being dominated by reactionary politics, leading to this utterly debased version of Islamic finance being the global industry norm.
I don’t disagree with what you have said here but I was also intentionally avoiding getting into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application of Sharia because it’s super complex.
Of course Riba has been one of those things that has always been hotly debated in Islam and it’s something that an Islamic jurist could spend a lifetime debating and you’d be able to split a denomination in two over your take on it.
Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn’t exist. Speaking as an outsider, I think that some of the basic problems were identified in trading and finance but the root of the economic problem was not fully ascertained until much later; if you can’t diagnose a complex societal problem accurately then you’re almost certainly not going to be able to fix it. At best you’re going to be taking a stab in the dark, which is what I think Islamic jurisprudence was doing with Riba or with edicts about charity or what shape a caliphate should take or what have you. So my sympathy for the prohibition on Riba is limited because it lacked a material basis (and I think this is where religious jurisprudence more broadly tends to fall down - the inherent idealism at the core makes it critically flawed.)
A+ for effort, but as for execution? Ehh, not so great.
I also think that this is where other things fall down like religious decrees on not turning away the needy from your door - is that in a literal sense? What implications does it have for refugees in the modern world where your government can effectively maintain its borders very strictly? What implications does today’s ability for transporting masses of people anywhere around the world in a matter of hours have? Obviously back in Muhammad’s era, refugees would almost always travel within their local region and it was extremely rare to have vast masses of people or entire populations fleeing from one part of the world to somewhere entirely different. Also the economic implications are very complex - in Muhammad’s day constructing housing was a much simpler affair and if people needed extra food or work then they’d be able to utilise the commons or to work the untended land on the outskirts of a town or village. These sorts of things options rarely exist in the developed world today. So while it probably worked quite well for the time it existed in, the world is a very different place today and shit is so much more complex than it was.
And you’re absolutely right about the creation of infinite loopholes to arrive at roughly the same destination in a way that circumvents the spirit of the law while technically adhering to the letter of the law (more or less). This is exactly why Ikea is a non-profit organisation lol.
And there’s no doubt in my mind that probably every Islamic financial institution that exists today bends the rules to the breaking point by charging things like “administrative” fees and stuff like that.
And really, if we look at this from a broad perspective, I think that the prohibition on Riba could be grouped in with all sorts of socialist utopian and reformist efforts as being guilty of the same general attempts to fix the system by tweaking at the dials rather than rebuilding it from the ground up.
This is why I give it an honourable mention - it was a good attempt. Flawed, insufficient, poorly articulated, vulnerable to exploitation, yes, but it was a good attempt all the same.
I think that a serious discussion on Riba would be a really good angle to agitate for socialism with a Muslim though and tbh as an atheist Marixst, it’s those kinds of pressure points that I’m most interested in; I’d be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn’t just be like “Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don’t jack the rents up too high, okay?”
Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn’t exist.
More precisely, it’s that the Quran and the hadiths - the written sources - that were a product of their time. Jurisprudence - if understood as the legal theorising and interpretation being done upon prior texts - is a continuing process that’s still ongoing today, and it’s definitely here where modern forces of global capitalism have influenced modern Muslim legal theorists into moulding the orignial texts into the current industry/academic edifice that’s labelled as “Islamic finance”. So yeah, technically speaking, it’s not that “Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time”, but “is a product of its time”: that time being present-day global capitalist hegemony. (Sorry, I’m probably nitpicking here; I know you said you want to avoid going into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application. I think I would agree generally with most of what you’ve written above; just taking the opportunity to air out and give some structure to a few thoughts that had been jangling around my head for some time.)
I’d be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn’t just be like “Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don’t jack the rents up too high, okay?”
True, and I’m aware that there is some existing discourse/scholarship by Muslims on the Islam’s compatibility with socialism as a political movement. Syed Hussein Alatas’s Islam and Socialism provides a good overview, I think. One bit I think is particularly relevant to the concept of riba is where Alatas outlines the position argued for by Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, who was a nationalist figure in pre-independence Indonesia; Alatas suggests that Tjokroaminoto, in trying to prevent a spilt between the Islamic moderates and radical Marxists in his party (which eventually happened and led to the the radicals joining the Communist Party of Indonesia) attempted a theoretical reconciliation of the contradictions between Islam and socialism (pg. 62-4):-
In 1924, Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam, then the biggest political party in Indonesia, published a monograph (113 pages) on Islam and socialism. (…) It arose out of the need to counteract communist propaganda. Tjokroaminoto’s party, the Sarekat Islam, was seriously infiltrated by communist elements which led to a split in 1923.
(…)
Regarding state ownership of the means of production, Tjokroaminoto suggested that this was Islamic. In the time of the Prophet, the state owned and acquired land. It is interesting how Tjokroaminoto linked Marx’s theory of surplus value and its expropriation by the capitalists to Islam. The Islamic prohibition of usury, according to Tjokroaminoto, is the same as a prohibition against the immoral capitalist expropriation of surplus value.’ The reforms carried out by the Prophet were thoroughly in the spirit of socialism. The instances cited by Tjokroaminoto are the following, in his own words:
“With the law of zakat Islam intended to make it obligatory for the rich to spend on behalf of the poor. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) land was the greatest source of livelihood for the working class, and as I have explained earlier, land was owned by the state. Small industry from pre-Islamic times was run by the poor or the slave for the sole profit and welfare of the owners, most of whom were harsh and oppressive. Before the advent of Islam, those who worked in industry were extremely looked down upon by the aristocracy, while the slaves who functioned as labourers were treated as animals by their capitalist masters. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) immediately raised the status of labour and workers. Though he descended from the highest Arab aristocracy, he worked as a trader before his preoccupation as a Prophet took up his entire time. As a recognized prophet he became ‘the spiritual and worldly ruler over Arabs and the Muslim territory, but he mended his own clothes and shoes. The biggest step he took in the direction of industrial socialism was when he raised the status of the slave to that of the free man. The slaves were given rights which they never had before. The slaves were made fellow workers; they were given positions of command in the army, or to become heads of other undertakings, while in yet other spheres as in the family, they became members of the family who treated them as animals before the coming of Islam. That being the case, the slaves took part in sharing the welfare and the profit of their masters. Truly, the step taken by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to improve the condition of the working class during his time, was unsurpassed in greatness in the economic history of the world.”
Tjokroaminoto was not blind to the fact that during the last thirteen centuries, despotism, autocracy and egoistic materialism had chiselled at the foundation of Islam. As long as the Qur’an is still with us, the ideal of democracy and socialism in Islam shall remain alive. He said: “If we Muslims truly understand and practise the teachings of Islam, we cannot avoid becoming a true democrat and a true socialist.
Damn, that’s fascinating thanks so much for the reply. I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know nearly enough about Indonesia as I should so I hadn’t come across Tjokroaminoto before. Good point on the nitpick - I was seriously sleep deprived when I wrote that last reply.
Obviously my angle on this is matter really clear but I know that if I sat down with a reasonably devout Muslim and we had at least an hour to chat about Riba, its nature and the intent of its prohibition, and to really hash it out we’d come to an understanding about how my position on the extraction of surplus value under capitalism is actually in line with a legitimate interpretation of the islamic prohibition on Riba.
Am I confident that I’d be able to get the other person to the point of being convinced my position is the right one? Nope lol.
But to walk away from a conversation really deeply analysing the economic circumstances we face from a Marxist perspective and having had one person make a solid case for why this is in line with the spirit of Islamic law would be a major victory imo.
Hey I’m glad that you find this interesting! I’m not really subject area expert on Islam or Islamic finance; just picked up a few things here and there from studies and from work. Honestly a bit surprised that I have this much to say about it, especially from the angle of Marxism.
And don’t worry about convincing your hypothetical Muslim interlocutor about the truth of the immortal science or whatever; even if they’re not convinced into immediately converting to secular communism, if they truly are arguing in good faith and with intellectual curiousity, they’ll probably arrive at some general position about their own religious belief and practice that would lead them to do some good in the world.
Go get some sleep!
In 1924, Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam, then the biggest political party in Indonesia, published a monograph (113 pages) on Islam and socialism.
Is there any chance you can point me to an English translation of this text? I seem to be getting texts of the same title by other authors
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s ever been a full translation of Tjokroaminoto’s Islam dan Sosialisme into English. :-(
In my English copy of Syed Hussen Alatas’s Islam and Socialism (which is itself a translation from Malay to English) from which I copied the above extracts, the footnotes say that the English translation of Tjokroaminoto’s words being quoted are Alatas’s own translation. In fact, I think the only extant full translation of Tjokroaminoto’s book is from the original Indonesian to Malay.
Check out the writings of BR Ambedkar, who was a contemporary of Gandhi. He rewrote a lot of Buddhist stories to give them a very socialist bent, with the aim of converting millions of low-caste Indians from Hinduism (which kept them down) to Buddhism which would give them greater representation in India’s parliamentary system.
Yeah, some of those Reddit-Atheist takes were painful to read on one of the other recent posts. There’s a whole tradition of religious individuals being pushed towards anarchist and communist ideologies. Some Catholic priests have even had an about-face, getting so involved in liberation theology as to be excommunicated. Still making painfully slow progress in the Quran, but there’s a lot of stuff about supporting the poor, hungry, and sick. I’ve worked with a lot of (non-Evangelical) Christians on praxis. You can also say a lot about stuff like Wicca and its dogshit creator, but I’ve known a few witches to also get involved in stuff. If religious people couldn’t be revolutionary, then the government wouldn’t have killed people like Malcolm X, MLK, John Brown, and the preachers behind so many peasant riots in England back in the day.
Majority of Cubans are religious and they’ve accomplished more than militantly atheist European and American communists ever have.
You can also say a lot about stuff like Wicca and its dogshit creator, but I’ve known a few witches to also get involved in stuff.
As a Wiccan, I can confirm, Gerald Gardner was a weirdo little freak who sucked major ass. He gets credited with codifying the thing we now call Wicca, but his contributions tend to get overblown, since tons of that stuff was done by other people, especially women, who were a part of that movement. Women who were, by and large, cooler than he was.
Also, one of the more important primary source texts that influenced Wicca’s development was Aradia, The Gospel of the Witches, wherein the Goddess Diana gives birth to a messianic figure named Aradia, who teaches oppressed peasants how to do magicsl class Warfare, which basically boils down to sabotaging crop yeilds, and poisoning priests and lords. It’s incredibly cool and based.
and the preachers behind so many peasant riots in England back in the day.
Could you elaborate on this subject?
So to the top of my mind there’s Levelers and Diggers, as well as a couple other groups, but struggling to recall at the top of my mind. The German Peasants War was also cool. Naturally the fascists tried to claim Müntzer for their own, but obviously they just did that because the guy was a folk hero.
Cathars and Hussites are maybe the most famous examples (Though, from France and Bohemia rather than England), they had multiple crusades called against them. In the Albigensian Crusade alone some estimated 200,000 to 1,000,000 Cathars (Albigensians) were killed by the Church.
As a dumb dumb who knows nothing about this period of history, why did the church go on a crusade against other Christians? What heresy were they supposedly committing, and what material factors drove the Albigensian Crusade?
Lol this is a big ask, there’s quite alot here to go through and tbh it’s not my strongest period of history but I’ll give it a shot.
spoiler to save space
around this time period (11th-12th century) the Roman Catholic Church started getting ideas about Papacy being the embodiment of Christianity, as opposed to a more apostolic approach. This leads to Crusades, generally as a concept, for a big mess of social, theological, and political reasons. Crusades against “Infidels” in the “Holy Land” (~1000 - ~1700), against Pagan and Eastern Orthodox Slavs in the Northern Crusades (~1100 - 1400), against schismatics and heretics (what we’re talking about here ~1200 - ~1400), Reconquista of course (~700 - ~1500), and “popular” crusades (“unsanctioned” by the church, basically powerful zealots taking it upon themselves.)
Talking about why various crusades were waged you really gotta look at the specific events tbh.
What heresy were they supposedly committing
So broadly speaking, heterodoxy. Like I said the catholic church got the idea that it embodied and defined Christianity, so deviation from that party line undermines their position as the arbiter of all things spiritual. Obviously, there are going to be alot of people over time with differing theological ideas, so you get many reformist movements over time.
So, specifically speaking of the Cathars they most famous for being anti-clerical (opposition to religious authority) and quasi-dualist. Getting into dualism and gnosticism broadly is something I’m not sure is worth going into in detail here. To be extremely vulgar about it Catharism has two opposing deities. Good God, (New Testament) creator of the spirit, and Evil God, (Old Testament) creator of matter and the physical world. Good and Evil gets worked out as the two forces keep each other in check. Real East meets West stuff. They reject Christ’s resurrection and the cross iconography because they believe in reincarnation instead, view Baptism as a false sacrament (going so far as to say John the Baptist was an agent of evil), are big fans of vows of poverty, among many other things.
and what material factors drove the Albigensian Crusade?
So like I said earlier Crusades as a concept have their own driving factors but IRT the Cathars specifically it is largely accepted that it was about pacification of the Languedoc or Occitania in what we think of today as Southern France. Again, this in itself is its own big topic.
The name “Albigensian” comes from the city most associated with the Cathars, Albi. The region was culturally closer to Catalans than French, and the most powerful noble in the area the count of Toulousse was politically closer to the Angevin (Plantagenet) who ruled Aquitaine to the West than the French Capets in the North. Nominally the crusade was about eradicating the Cathars but the regions Catharism flourished in were ruled by minor nobles who embraced the religion (if not actually practicing the Cathar lifestyle, remember those vows of poverty?) as one part of remaining independent from France.
There’s a ton of stuff I didn’t mention, these are very interesting topics and each worth looking into in their own right.
All religions are compatible with communism except for american [and by extension western] protestantism
ngl catholic and protestant Christianity are both on the fash watchlist. you can’t enable mass genocide and multiple wars in the middle east and keep your commie card.
You’re clearly forgetting that Catholics can be absolved of all wrongdoing by going into a little box and telling a priest that they did a bad thing and then saying a handful of ritualized prayers.
That’s not actually how confession works, but that doesn’t stop most Catholics from believing it is.
You gotta buy those indulgences
Add Russian Orthodox Church to that. The exiled parts of the ROC literally worked for the German government during WW2 and were given conquered land to manage.
Also, let’s not forget the Christian justification for chattel slavery and for why killing Muslim people is a-okay.
Catholicism is genuinely the least-compatible religious formation with communism, and one need only look at their having their own state with a theocratic master of policy and a vast amount of wealth to understand why. If you want to imagine a non-papal Catholicism, knock yourself out, but what exists now is in opposition to communist organization.
So I’m an Atheist but here’s a hot take: most if not all religions are kind of equally compatible and incompatible with communism in the same way they’re equally compatible and incompatible with capitalism. The concept of Diagetic Existentialism is largely concerned with realities that are understood to be fictional in nature but I also think it goes a long way towards explaining how you can simultaneous have the American religious right as well as people unironically proclaiming that “JESUS WAS A SOCIALIST” in the same timeline. They’re both working with the same material and sources but at the end of the day its all kinda in what you choose to take away from it.
religions that come from communal cultures (that’s most of them) are compatible with communism. religions that develop under the material conditions that promote the development of fascism and capitalism, not so much.
Which is funny you say that because the most modern liberalized religion, Mormons, is also one of thr best at creating a dual power mass line system or whatever.
Don’t they believe specifically and only in “communism” theocratically administered by Jesus Christ personally? I’m pretty sure they’re the same as conservative Christians otherwise. Its not like they have meaningfully distinct views
and they’re practically the recruiting branch of the CIA and FBI
at the risk of being called a reddit atheist, i have to say it’s frustrating that this discourse keeps abstracted to ‘is religion compatible with communist ideology’ and not ‘is being reactionary compatible with communist ideology’
because that’s what it ultimately comes down to - a lot of the issues people have with religion stem from reactionary thinking and actions, which on a surface level seems like it can be separated from religion as a whole, but I would argue that the two functionally can not be unlinked. At the end of the day, at it’s very core many religious beliefs rely on, and encourage, reactionary behaviour - and while some are better and more communal minded/liberation adjacent than others, I would say that this is by coincidence and we cannot make the mistake of trying to make reactionary ideologies ‘work for us’. You need only look at stupidpol to see what happens when you throw people under the bus in order to not turn away what you might see as potential comrades - you will not drag them left with you, you’ll only poison your own well and create yet another avenue for reactionary ideology to bolster itself.
This is not to say that no religious person can be a revolutionary, or that religious people cannot be our comrades - but they would have to be communist first and religious second or else I’d be wary that at some point some oppressed group is going to be thrown to the grinder, and I’ll be honest - anecdotally, not a lot of religious people are like that, nor a lot of religions encourage such a relationship with their faith, no matter what denomination.
From an intro to a book on modern druids (what I consider my self)
“We (Druids) therefore recognize that our individuality is only an illusion, or a temporary state while we are in physical bodies. We are therefore not subordinate to anyone or anything, but rather interdependent upon each other. We recognize that if one person hurts, everyone hurts, if one person is homeless, everyone is affected by that state, that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. So certain political philosophies, such as libertarianism, are anathema to us. Selfishness is the greatest evil there is. We really are our brothers keeper as he is ours."
I think that quote probably captures how a lot of us feel. Capitalism is in direct contradiction to that way of thinking. If we feel that all people are equals, all deserving of respect and compassion then the exploitation and suffering caused by the capitalist class must be opposed by us. And if you believe that you’re connected to all living things then seeing your self as part of a collective is natural. Druidism is basically green anarchy with extra steps.
Fuck yeah, druids
Seems a lot better than the one intro book I read that had a lot of liberal ideology infused into it. Something like taking a fully passive approach to a worldview and not doing harm to others. To be fair, I think it was the one written by the founder of AODA.
I never had much interest in those guys, way to organized and uptight.
Just looking at their website repels me immediately. They seem to have a structure that is like a variant of christianity and I just want nothing to do with them. Right now I’m taking courses from OBOD. Not too far into the bardic grade, but I am working on it. They don’t seem like that thus far. Seem more or less like “Here’s what we do, do what you want” sort of ordeal from what I’ve seen so far.
thats really cool. I’ve thought about taking some of their courses. No real interest in joining but I am sure I have a lot to learn.
Don’t we all? I’m not certain the learning ever ceases.
Out of curiosity, what book is it that you read? I’m trying to absorb as much Druidry as possible as that’s the path I believe is right for me. There’s never a such thing as too much info either imo.
I can’t remember what book it was. I just thought the quote was perfect enough I saved it but since I’m not ejimakated I forgot to save the source. I do really like my Druid animal oracle It has a lot of good stuff in the book and I never really learned taro but I like the way this deck works.
I’m always down to talk druid and pagan stuff, I’m on discord (ithorianpriest) if you ever want to hit me up.
Aww hell yeah. I’ll add you and send a message your way once I get better.
Can I ask what the book is? I’d love to read more
My dumb ass saved the quote but didn’t bother writing down the name of the book…
Posadism
No I will not elaborate
Lots of religions have principles that align with a love for mankind and communal sharing of resources.
How many of them have the understanding of material conditions needed to organize people into a force capable of meaningfully fighting against capitalism?
None, all religions are cope and lies and thus impede human and societal development. (Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of humans who have either not yet won through to themselves, or have already lost themselves again.)
Religious values and officials should not be seriously considered and should be always be excluded from important political decisions, and if they dare to insist on holding political power they should be suppressed until they learn to play along or stay quiet. But if people just want to pray or whatever because it makes them feel better then who cares, that’s not a political matter. In a fully developed communist society religion will wither away anyway as self-actualization become universally available and exploitation is abolished.
Edit: Thought that is not to say that certain religious movements couldn’t be hijacked and co-opted to serve a revolutionary movement seeking the construction of scientific socialism, but that’s probably not what you or most people mean by “compatible” with communism. (Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.)
Good luck with that vast multiplication of irreconcilable enemies.
To at least give a slightly novel answer relative to the usual ones: Cheondoism was famously defended by Kim Il-Sung as being a “progressive” religion that should not disqualify someone from Party membership because it’s fundamentally oriented around the liberation of the masses.
Also, I’m going to be That Guy and say that Theravada Buddhism is relatively compatible, as it was almost-inconceivably progressive for its time and still compares positively to many religions, including the more popular sects. It has its own issues, but in general I think the Buddha of the Pali Canon, the one who said there is no soul and risked his life to save a goat, is someone worth emulating from a communist perspective. I also think he bears little resemblance, for hopefully obvious reasons, to the Buddhas who have celestial empires and believe that those who suffer should be left to suffer because of Karma.
Also shout-out to Chan/Zen Buddhism with the major caveat that it has probably the worst co-opting by westerners into reactionary bullshit.
Isn’t Chan/Zen Buddhism a Mahayana (i.e. not Theravada) tradition?
It is (and I was trying to express it as a tangent to my talking about Theravada, not as a subset). I must give it credit compared to more popular Mahayana sects though for not being oriented around celestial empires and contempt for the suffering, but rather focusing on the mundane and, if not totally benevolent, at least therapeutic. In those regards, I find it much more grounded and pro-social than many religions and hence better-suited to communism.
Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t mean to correct you, but I noticed you implicitly judged Mahayana in general as incompatible, so I was curious what sets Chan/Zen Buddhism (as a subset) apart from what you dislike.
Religions are not static, they also are subject to dialectical and historical materialism. The rooting out of feudalistic and capitalistic institutional structures from the religious world, and the solving of more material problems by the secular world under socialism, will change people’s relationship to religion, which in turn will change religion further.
I don’t see any essential reason communists and religious entities have to step on each other’s toes, but in the present a lot of incumbent reactionary power rides on existing religious institutions and formats. We can look to the histories of the socialist experiments to see examples both of the initial crushing of the reactionary religious elements, and later of more nuanced handling so that religious elements that pose little or no threat to the proletarian state are let be.
Communists have the soundest and best demonstrated methods of resolving class struggle that I know of, and I also think the changed relationship to work and leisure under socialism goes a long way to healing the lingering wounds of class society. I really don’t know if a niche for spirituality will be left open by a communist society, or if the questions that become religious ones will be addressed satisfactorily before they can grow into aches.
For my part in the present, I use spiritual practice because my class enemies are still supplying me with plentiful wounds and aches, and my local communists are far from big or totalizing enough to have subsumed matters presently understood as spiritual. I’m working with the tools I’ve got.
I feel like the religions with high levels of non-theism are compatible. Quakers, Unitarian-Universalist, etc.
I’m inclined to agree with this take and, although I can’t speak for the tech-using Mennonites and their level of non-theism, I can say that they are very often at the forefront of social justice movements and also in Ukraine during the civil war, a proportion of the Mennonite community there took up arms and joined the Bolsheviks which speaks to their compatibility with communism (although these were Mennonites as defined by an ethno-religious group and not necessarily strictly devout as per the Mennonite faith - details are extremely scanty, unfortunately, and you’d probably need to speak to an American Mennonite historian to find out if there’s any more information about the Bolshevik Mennonites) so I would find it convincing if someone threw the progressive Mennonites into this group although personally it wouldn’t be my first answer.
Most actually believing modern Mennonites are still fundamentally theists, but in my country almost everyone on the young side of millenial and younger is no longer an actual believer nor a churchgoer. Most of them have a sort of cultural attachment to the identity though and don’t really have a better one to replace it with, and I’ve found it still informs their (usually) progressive or outright leftist politics.
It doesn’t answer your question, but I think this publication from the CPC Central Committee is worth reading: https://redsails.org/on-the-question-of-religion/
