People can have spiritual beliefs apart from the material world y’know. Hell the Global South, which is the most prone to revolution, is deeply religious. Shit like this is what prevents people like Gaddafi from further radicalization.
It’s okay to be religious, and this is coming from a non religious person.
Fuck off, do you know what is called in the phylosophical context “muh spirituality”? IDEALISM. THE OPPOSITE OF MATERIALISM. THEY ARE OPPOSITE. THEY ARE NOT ABLE TO MIX, BECAUSE MATERIALISM DENIES SPIRITUALITY, AKA, IDEALISM.
As idealist as dismissing fascism, whip I never said to dismiss, but to educate against as communism educates against monarchism, capitalism, feudalism… And THEOCRACIES. “But mu-” shut up, if religion held no political power, explain Vatican, Meka, Tibet, and all the theocracist power and states ruled in all of history.
“but muh spiri-” shut up.
Why is it something man made and not free from both materialism and dialectics, forced to be considered special and not be regarded as idealist reactionarism a la socdem, nazbol, etc?
Religion is not inherently bad. It can be a progressive cause in certain instances. Second Thought did a great video on that topic. Anti-theism on the other hand, is a reactionary position, as it ignores materialism, and dialectics.
And many feminists are also terfs or reactionary as fuck. Under your constant rule of three, sexism must be protected at all cost too. You’ve been called out already.
Hey man, you might wanna take a break and stop putting words in my mouth. I get you are emotionally invested but calm down, jesus christ (no pun intended)
Nice touch poisoning the well, but it was a rational thought what made me realize that religion are not to keep safe if we want to achieve communism.
But nothing to be impressed to use this sort of tactics against a crític when you’ve been also non stopped using soecial pleadings and ignoring fucking literally history to defend your point.
How does it feel to make you understand the gravity of what you are saying? Hitting the cognitive dissonance, or still not?
How the fuck is reactionary a concept labeled by Anarchists and continued by Marx and Lenin, which confronts worldviews that are the most contrary form of Dialectics and Materialism!? Nice poisoning the well to precisely protect at all costs the FIRST and OLDEST form of classism, idealism, and reaction since its bare conception as being the opposite of what it is! BRAVO! CHAPÓ!
Anti-theism is reactionary because most people who pose as anti-theists “MLs” (specifically Hoxhaists as Hoxha banned religion) don’t see that people are still religious. They also pose that the religion is always reactionary from the very start, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. (That second thought video). The existence of religion fits well within the dialectics of nature.
I would like to bring one counter-point which shows that religion would still exist in a socialist society. And one counter-point that not everything in religion is reactionary. Stalin allowed the autonomous region of Dagestan to adopt Sharia:
We are told that among the Daghestan peoples the Sharia is of great importance. We have also been informed that the enemies of Soviet power are spreading rumours that it has banned the Sharia. I have been authorized by the Government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic to state here that these rumours are false. The Government of Russia gives every people the full right to govern itself on the basis of its laws and customs. The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia, as common law, is as fully authorized as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia. If the Daghestan people desire to preserve their laws and customs, they should be preserved.
So, your only defense is that banning religion is bad because reactionaries will react. OH WOW AND STILL YOU CAN’T SEE IT. The only valid excuse is “if you outright bann this at the get go, reactionaries will react, it needs tact, like you discussed below”, or “think like the Communists + ROC in China when fighting against the Japanese”. Or something like that, but no, you still prefer to not understand why is it that Lenin condemned religion even more than I do.
Also, again, no.
Religion to be progressive needs and demands to rupture the three omnigod concept, to rupture “universal truths” and many, many more shit it has already.
Buddhism defends that women are inferior and that bad Karma will literally make you reincarnate in lower classes.
Abrahamism as a whole is… Have you ever fucking read any sacred text, to begin with?
Religion is by nature reactionary because it’s rooted in traditions and alleged eternal unmutable powers that must be continued or “humanity doomed”, and WILL ALWAYS BECOME REACTIONARY the same way Capitalism could be seen as progressive… COMPARED WITH FEUDALISM. But sure, some video has the universal truth, nice cultist behavior.
Third. “muh human nature”. Really? This is another argument?
The fact that we as an species developed a neurology from our primate ancestors THAT MAKES US SEE SHIT THAT IT ISN’T THERE?
You know what’s also “human nature”? Drug abuse, hormone abuse(being addict to serotonine, oxitocine, etc, nothing to do with transitioning), habits in general, like slacking off, or dangerous behavior. Is “muh human nature” excuse enough for letting drugs, sexual slavery, being lazy or a cheater, alcohol abuse, etc, etc, etc run wild without any control nor trying to eradicate problems derived from taking profit from this? Why not, bro? They will get angry too!
So, your only defense is that banning religion is bad because reactionaries will react.
I never said that. There can be reactionary people in religion. Those reactionary people must be purged. But not people who believe in religion as a whole. They can (and usually are) progressive.
you still prefer to not understand why is it that Lenin condemned religion even more than I do.
Source? Also Stalin clearly allowed religion within the USSR. Does that mean he’s a revisionist now?
Religion to be progressive needs and demands to rupture the three omnigod concept, to rupture “universal truths” and many, many more shit it has already.
For religion to be progressive, it must cause an advancement in some way towards a communist or Socialist mode of production. Religion definitely fits this category. You seem to have more a Liberal definition.
Religion is by nature reactionary because it’s rooted in traditions and alleged eternal unmutable powers that must be continued or “humanity doomed”
It looks like you never read the sacred texts yourself. Curious.
Also I don’t really care about your rambling at the end as it is nothing but strawmanning.
My guess is that their source is Lenin’s “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” but it would be much appreciated if @VictimOfReligion can verify. (This reply is also a response to VictimOfReligion)
"The most important thing — and it is this that is most frequently overlooked by those of our Communists who are supposedly Marxists, but who in fact mutilate Marxism — is to know how to awaken in the still undeveloped masses an intelligent attitude towards religious questions and an intelligent criticism of religions.
On the other hand, take a glance at modern scientific critics of religion. These educated bourgeois writers almost invariably “supplement” their own refutations of religious superstitions with arguments which immediately expose them as ideological slaves of the bourgeoisie, as “graduated flunkeys of clericalism”.
The summary goes that we should know how to get the masses to question religion (and especially its structural form) in an intelligent manner (as opposed to the Liberal’s form of militant atheism, which handles this issue in a more classist manner and has failed to address the ideological weaponry of the Church which is also used by the ruling class)
However, in his “The Attitude of the Worker’s Party to Religion” he denounces attempts at a “war on religion” (the active and forced suppression of religion) as this would only revive interest in religion and prevent it from really dying out.
“And in 1877, too, in his Anti-Dühring, while ruthlessly attacking the slightest concessions made by Dühring the philosopher to idealism and religion, Engels no less resolutely condemns Dühring’s pseudo-revolutionary idea that religion should be prohibited in socialist society. To declare such a war on religion, Engels says, is to “out-Bismarck Bismarck”, i. e., to repeat the folly of Bismarck’s struggle against the clericals (the notorious “Struggle for Culture”, Kulturkampf, i.e., the struggle Bismarck waged in the 1870s against the German Catholic party, the “Centre” party, by means of a police persecution of Catholicism). By this struggle Bismarck only stimulated the militant clericalism of the Catholics, and only injured the work of real culture, because he gave prominence to religious divisions rather than political divisions, and diverted the attention of some sections of the working class and of the other democratic elements away from the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to the most superficial and false bourgeois anti-clericalism. Accusing the would-be ultra-revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers’ party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion.”
[…]
“We must combat religion—that is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism. But Marxism is not a materialism which has stopped at the ABC. Marxism goes further. It says: We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion. Why does religion retain its hold on the backward sections of the town proletariat, on broad sections of the semi-proletariat, and on the mass of the peasantry? Because of the ignorance of the people, replies the bourgeois progressist, the radical or the bourgeois materialist. And so: “Down with religion and long live atheism; the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!” The Marxist says that this is not true, that it is a superficial view, the view of narrow bourgeois uplifters. It does not explain the roots of religion profoundly enough; it explains them, not in a materialist but in an idealist way.”
So yeah. From what I can tell going by what’s going on in these threads, the question of religion seems to be a very divisive topic within Left-wing discourse. (iirc these discussions also existed back in the GZD subreddit prior to its quarantine) I personally believe religion holds us back generally but that doesn’t mean we should immediately dismiss religious socialist movements (i.e. Sandinistas, Gaddafi, Ba’athism, etc.) as long as they are anti-imperialist. (Note: Patsocs, which are also religious “socialists,” are not anti-imperialist as they live in (and support) an imperialist country and thus they never experienced struggle against imperialism. Thus patsocs are undeserving of support)
Once Socialism wins, the decline of religion would be inevitable anyway, as more of the masses find less reason to take the Opium which is religion. Let a drug addict reform by providing them with basic necessities in life and they will no longer find need in the drugs which they used to fill that gap. Take their drugs forcefully instead and you only get an angry drug addict suffering from withdrawal.
ik this is a controversial topic by the looks of it so if I have made any errors and/or misinterpretations feel free to correct me.
You provided a more insightful answer than anything VictimOfReligion provided. This is one of the few arguments that I actually agree with. Thanks for your answer in the midst of a warzone, comrade.
I kind of answered this in another thread in this post, if you look further down, which is a condensed and simplofied version of this, but here people think I am for giving religious a taste of their own medicine without even having asked the right questions nor anything else than assumptions while I was speaking only of religions themselves.
Lmao yeah, theocracism is closer to socialism, and I’m using the liberal definiton.
And strawman? You dream, I’m demonstrating to you how your reasoning sounds, oh, by the way, I had to read the Bible four time as a theist, one as a questioning agnostic, and the fifth time was when I understood that the mere Bible is evidence AGAINST Abrahamism.
Not to mention the whole three timdza week of having to study Bible related stuff time and time again.
Now I see you hold not a bit of an idea about what you are trying to defend nor what I even say, since I never said “prosecute and kill believers” or whatever they had, are, and will do to unbelievers, even being other branches of theism.
“cUrIoUs”
"Noooooooooooooo! It doesn’t matter that religion is reactionary idealism!!! It has nothing to do with Dialectical Materialism!!! Marx and Lenin never said anything bad about religion!!! Noooooooo!!! I don’t know what history is!!! I am physically unable to study modern religions unless it is un a vacuum in the most liberal way to do shit noooooooooo!!! "
Going against religion is undialectical. It presupposes that religion has no inherent change, and that its base is always reactionary and unchanging. Religion has changed, and always will change. It can be progressive, or it can be inherited by reactionaries for the purpose of fulfilling their own reactionary ideology. This is what marxists should oppose. Reactionary people who utilise religion for their own benefit, but not religion itself.
Okay, why religion gets a free pass when literally socdem, nazol, patsoc, monsoc, etc also exists?
Isn’t it “aNtIdIaLeCtICaL” to want a change in the system when its obvious that capitalists ideologies ALSO change? For example, Carlists, (Spanish Imperialists, basically) also portray themselves as something “progressive teehee”, yet we know it can’t be.
Or even there are also Gustavo Buenismo, also called “Atheist Catholicism” (an incredibly reactionary bullshit about protecting traditions and cristofascism and whatnot). Isn’t it oximoronic too?
Let me tell you something so you get it:
To bent is to be the most reactionary. This is why “Socdem is the soft hand of Fascism” and “Scratch a Liberal and a Fascist bleeds”.
Hey, guess what!
The soctheo is the soft hand of Theofascism. And scratch a progressive theist, and a bigot fundamentalist bleeds.
why religion gets a free pass when literally socdem, nazol, patsoc, monsoc, etc also exists?
Religion is not an ideology. It is based on faith on a being with certain customs, not political ideas that a person must follow. Also monsoc is a joke ideology, with very few people actually supporting it.
Isn’t it “aNtIdIaLeCtICaL” to want a change in the system when its obvious that capitalists ideologies ALSO change?
Strawman, yet you accuse people of fallacies. Curious. Also you didn’t read anything I wrote. I know the laws of dialectics.
For example, Carlists, (Spanish Imperialists, basically) also portray themselves as something “progressive teehee”
Here’s a quote from Lenin:
Imperialism is as much our “mortal” enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism.
Progress isn’t about what you say. Your actions matter more than your intentions. Progress is about advancement. Reactionary is about regression. The spanish imperialists may have been progressive at one point, but they certainly are not nowadays especially since socialist nations exist. You congeal an idea that is based on the rigid structure, yet you concern yourself about dialectics. Curious.
scratch a progressive theist, and a bigot fundamentalist bleeds.
This is fundamentally not true. Let’s take LGBT people as an example. LGBT people are ‘clearly’ progressive according to your definition, so according to statistics, 42% of LGBT people belong in Christianity in the US. Are the LGBT christians now bigot fundamentalists? Some (a small minority) may be. But most of them certainly aren’t. Just because people identify with a religion does not mean it affects their lives on a daily basis. I identify as an atheist. I don’t see this affecting my life in a significant manner. And so many others will follow the same even if they follow a religion or not (for the most part).
That is literally the case though. Islamic Sharia for example is a political framework for how to run a state Islamically, it also tells individuals how to live their life down to the most minute details. It’s not a separate text, the rulings are compiled from the Quran and Hadith and collectively referred to as Sharia (it literally means law in Arabic). As far as I know, this kind of legal framework exists in some Jewish sects as well as the Old Testament for Christians (the sects that still recognize it as Christian text).
I’m not claiming that those three religions are the only ones to exist but Christianity and Islam are number 1 and 2 respectively on a global scale and they are followed by over 50 percent of the world population source.
So, a man made set of rules, that explain in dogmatic ways how the world and politics must be understood and run, isn’t in any sort an ideology.
Because it can be mixed with “actual ideologies”
Good thing people don’t mix ideologies, like Nazism and Socialism even if just trying, and ends being just Nazism with aesthetics… Oh, no, it happens. I wonder what happens with TheoSocialists… Oh no, theocracism with aesthetics.
Dude. Stop.
You’re just ignoring history since Mesopotamia while diving in echo chamber attitudes just to keep jerking off with the same people that ain’t able to get shit like why both Marx and Marxists and Anarchists were rabid Anti-Theist.
It’s like saying “oh, no, I know evolution real, but still it’s all creation, aleluya” and see no problem with that.
BTW peope is capable of holding contradictory beliefs, like being even black and a white supremacist, this argument of LGBT people holding to Christianity due to indoctrination says nothing. Christianity at its core is still bigoted, yes.
So, a man made set of rules, that explain in dogmatic ways how the world and politics must be understood and run, isn’t in any sort an ideology.
Religion isn’t an ideology. Religion (especially the larger ones) isn’t made by just one person, but usually a collective of people who have the same faith. They believe in God.
TheoSocialists… Oh no, theocracism with aesthetics.
Stop going to the polcompball political ideologies and actually think for a second. Does that ideology actually exist, if so, does a significant number of people uphold it? “TheoSoc” does not fit either of the categories.
the same people that ain’t able to get shit like why both Marx and Marxists and Anarchists were rabid Anti-Theist.
You think Marx is an anti-theist? Such “schoolboy behaviour” as Marx put it:
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.
Also anarchists are not marxists, and Anarchists are individualists who share nothing alike with Marxism. “MLs” who are anti-theist are not marxist at all, but rather revisionist. Enver Hoxha is one example. Same with the leaders Post-Stalin USSR which banned religion.
BTW peope is capable of holding contradictory beliefs
So every LGBT Christian is a bigot fundamentalist? Good to know that you despise Christianity so much it actually overshadows your opinions on the characteristics of the person because of what they believe in. Also you fallen into the trap of Identity Politics, which is exactly what I feared would happen.
Aren’t religions manmade? Really? Are you saying seriously this?
Or, if you refer to individual…
Oh, boy, you haven’t heard of Josiah’s reforms in Israel, the birth of the current notion of Abrahamic god…
Religions ARE ideologies, and it has been like this since ancient times.
You’re just special pleading nonsense. You have no argument regarding this, only “faith and God”. So? Fascism in Italy and Spain and Portugal was also “faith and god”, they just added patriotism to the equation, being even more similar to when theocracy was implemented in city states of the Crescent Fertile and many other regions.
“theosocialism doesn’t exist!!” well, they go by names such as “theology of liberation”, for example.
Also, nice quote from Marx describing Religions as a palliative drug that is given to people to stop complaining and make their miserable lifes a little more easy to handle, by calling it literally OPIUM, which, I hope you don’t go full apologetic and try to spin it to have a different meaning, which… Have you read the rest of it? About how only after getting rid off religion happens something?
Oh, and I see that Lenin was a revisionist by your own standards, nice bullshit you made there, “comrade”. I’m the revisionist for understanding that religions are manmade ideologies.
Then,you go crying because you ain’t capable of distinguish individuals from ideology, cried “Idpol” when we thought there was consensus on class reductionism, yada yada.
Frankly, it shows how literally you’re all brainwashed by religion to the point you’re doing their job for free.
Also, nice quote from Marx describing Religions as a palliative drug that is given to people to stop complaining and make their miserable lifes a little more easy to handle, by calling it literally OPIUM, which, I hope you don’t go full apologetic and try to spin it to have a different meaning, which…
You do realize that Marx was alive during the 1800’s and that yes in fact they did have a very different conception of opium. It should also be noted that Marx was a regular opium user.
Have you read the rest of it? About how only after getting rid off religion happens something?
Is your problem that you can’t find the “abolish religion immediately” button? Check next to the “communism now” button.
Oh, and I see that Lenin was a revisionist by your own standards, nice bullshit you made there, “comrade”.
How are they claiming Lenin was a revisionist? Have you even read Lenin?
"But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.
That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development."
Lenin
.
“We should remember that Social-Democracy’s strength lies in the unity of the broad masses of the proletariat, and that such unity, owing to the splitting, disuniting, and dulling conditions of capitalism, is not achieved with immediacy, but only at the cost of persistent effort and tremendous patience. We should remember the experiences of our European comrades, who consider it their duty to show an attitude of comradely concern even towards the workers who are members of the Catholic unions and try not to antagonise them by treating their religious and political prejudices with contempt, but persistently, tactfully, and patiently make use of every act of the political and economic struggle in order to enlighten them and bring them closer to the class conscious proletariat on the ground of common struggle.”
Lenin
.
“We shall have no difficulty in overcoming their inconsistency, for our views are supported by history itself, are supported at every step by reality. If our pamphlet has not taught them Social-Democracy, our revolution will. To be sure, those workers who remain Christians, who believe in God, and those intellectuals who defend mysticism (fie upon them!), are inconsistent too; but we shall not expel them from the Soviet or even from the Party, for it is our firm conviction that the actual struggle, and work within the ranks, will convince all elements possessing vitality that Marxism is the truth, and will cast aside all those who lack vitality.”
Lenin
.
“This is one of those current objections to Marxism which testify to a complete misunderstanding of Marxian dialectics. The contradiction which perplexes these objectors is a real contradiction in real life, i. e., a dialectical contradiction, and not a verbal or invented one. To draw a hard-and-fast line between the theoretical propaganda of atheism, i. e., the destruction of religious beliefs among certain sections of the proletariat, and the success, the progress and the conditions of the class struggle of these sections, is to reason undialectically, to transform a shifting and relative boundary into an absolute boundary; it is forcibly to disconnect what is indissolubly connected in real life. Let us take an example. The proletariat in a particular region and in a particular industry is divided, let us assume, into an advanced section of fairly class-conscious Social-Democrats, who are of course atheists, and rather backward workers who are still connected with the countryside and with the peasantry, and who believe in God, go to church, or are even under the direct influence of the local priest—who, let us suppose, is organising a Christian labour union. Let us assume furthermore that the economic struggle in this locality has resulted in a strike. It is the duty of a Marxist to place the success of the strike movement above everything else, vigorously to counteract the division of the workers in this struggle into atheists and Christians, vigorously to oppose any such division. Atheist propaganda in such circumstances may be both unnecessary and harmful—not from the philistine fear of scaring away the backward sections, of losing a seat in the elections, and so on, but out of consideration for the real progress of the class struggle, which in the conditions of modern capitalist society will convert Christian workers to Social-Democracy and to atheism a hundred times better than bald atheist propaganda. To preach atheism at such a moment and in such circumstances would only be playing into the hands of the priest and the priests, who desire nothing better than that the division of the workers according to their participation in the strike movement should be replaced by their division according to their belief in God. An anarchist who preached war against God at all costs would in effect be helping the priests and the bourgeoisie (as the anarchists always do help the bourgeoisie in practice). A Marxist must be a materialist, i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle which is going on in practice and is educating the masses more and better than anything else could. A Marxist must be able to view the concrete situation as a whole, he must always be able to find the boundary between anarchism and opportunism (this boundary is relative, shifting and changeable, but it exists). And he must not succumb either to the abstract, verbal, but in reality empty “revolutionism’˜ of the anarchist, or to the philistinism and opportunism of the petty bourgeois or liberal intellectual, who boggles at the struggle against religion, forgets that this is his duty, reconciles himself to belief in God, and is guided not by the interests of the class struggle but by the petty and mean consideration of offending nobody, repelling nobody and scaring nobody—by the sage rule: “live and let live”, etc., etc.”
Lenin
Real talk:
Religion is bad.
And I think communists shouldn’t be so tolerant of it; we concede too much to other communists who are religionists.
Did you really just say “religionists”?
People can have spiritual beliefs apart from the material world y’know. Hell the Global South, which is the most prone to revolution, is deeply religious. Shit like this is what prevents people like Gaddafi from further radicalization.
It’s okay to be religious, and this is coming from a non religious person.
I disagree.
Fuck off, do you know what is called in the phylosophical context “muh spirituality”? IDEALISM. THE OPPOSITE OF MATERIALISM. THEY ARE OPPOSITE. THEY ARE NOT ABLE TO MIX, BECAUSE MATERIALISM DENIES SPIRITUALITY, AKA, IDEALISM.
Is it not idealism to suggest that Communists can dismiss religion and religious people in a world where religion is so widespread?
As idealist as dismissing fascism, whip I never said to dismiss, but to educate against as communism educates against monarchism, capitalism, feudalism… And THEOCRACIES. “But mu-” shut up, if religion held no political power, explain Vatican, Meka, Tibet, and all the theocracist power and states ruled in all of history. “but muh spiri-” shut up. Why is it something man made and not free from both materialism and dialectics, forced to be considered special and not be regarded as idealist reactionarism a la socdem, nazbol, etc?
Religion is not inherently bad. It can be a progressive cause in certain instances. Second Thought did a great video on that topic. Anti-theism on the other hand, is a reactionary position, as it ignores materialism, and dialectics.
I am an atheist by the way, so don’t call me out.
Also the alt right is full of atheists, and they aren’t progressive in the slightest.
And many feminists are also terfs or reactionary as fuck. Under your constant rule of three, sexism must be protected at all cost too. You’ve been called out already.
Hey man, you might wanna take a break and stop putting words in my mouth. I get you are emotionally invested but calm down, jesus christ (no pun intended)
Nice touch poisoning the well, but it was a rational thought what made me realize that religion are not to keep safe if we want to achieve communism.
But nothing to be impressed to use this sort of tactics against a crític when you’ve been also non stopped using soecial pleadings and ignoring fucking literally history to defend your point. How does it feel to make you understand the gravity of what you are saying? Hitting the cognitive dissonance, or still not?
A YouTube link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same video on Invidious, which is a YouTube frontend that protects your privacy:
You know the thread is getting heated when the tankie reply bot is getting downvoted.
Lmao, innocent passing robot tank caught in crossfire
Lmao, even the poor bot!?
Second Thought’s video was pretty weak.
How the fuck is reactionary a concept labeled by Anarchists and continued by Marx and Lenin, which confronts worldviews that are the most contrary form of Dialectics and Materialism!? Nice poisoning the well to precisely protect at all costs the FIRST and OLDEST form of classism, idealism, and reaction since its bare conception as being the opposite of what it is! BRAVO! CHAPÓ!
Anti-theism is reactionary because most people who pose as anti-theists “MLs” (specifically Hoxhaists as Hoxha banned religion) don’t see that people are still religious. They also pose that the religion is always reactionary from the very start, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. (That second thought video). The existence of religion fits well within the dialectics of nature.
I would like to bring one counter-point which shows that religion would still exist in a socialist society. And one counter-point that not everything in religion is reactionary. Stalin allowed the autonomous region of Dagestan to adopt Sharia:
Source
So, your only defense is that banning religion is bad because reactionaries will react. OH WOW AND STILL YOU CAN’T SEE IT. The only valid excuse is “if you outright bann this at the get go, reactionaries will react, it needs tact, like you discussed below”, or “think like the Communists + ROC in China when fighting against the Japanese”. Or something like that, but no, you still prefer to not understand why is it that Lenin condemned religion even more than I do.
Also, again, no. Religion to be progressive needs and demands to rupture the three omnigod concept, to rupture “universal truths” and many, many more shit it has already. Buddhism defends that women are inferior and that bad Karma will literally make you reincarnate in lower classes. Abrahamism as a whole is… Have you ever fucking read any sacred text, to begin with? Religion is by nature reactionary because it’s rooted in traditions and alleged eternal unmutable powers that must be continued or “humanity doomed”, and WILL ALWAYS BECOME REACTIONARY the same way Capitalism could be seen as progressive… COMPARED WITH FEUDALISM. But sure, some video has the universal truth, nice cultist behavior.
Third. “muh human nature”. Really? This is another argument? The fact that we as an species developed a neurology from our primate ancestors THAT MAKES US SEE SHIT THAT IT ISN’T THERE?
You know what’s also “human nature”? Drug abuse, hormone abuse(being addict to serotonine, oxitocine, etc, nothing to do with transitioning), habits in general, like slacking off, or dangerous behavior. Is “muh human nature” excuse enough for letting drugs, sexual slavery, being lazy or a cheater, alcohol abuse, etc, etc, etc run wild without any control nor trying to eradicate problems derived from taking profit from this? Why not, bro? They will get angry too!
I never said that. There can be reactionary people in religion. Those reactionary people must be purged. But not people who believe in religion as a whole. They can (and usually are) progressive.
Source? Also Stalin clearly allowed religion within the USSR. Does that mean he’s a revisionist now?
For religion to be progressive, it must cause an advancement in some way towards a communist or Socialist mode of production. Religion definitely fits this category. You seem to have more a Liberal definition.
It looks like you never read the sacred texts yourself. Curious.
Also I don’t really care about your rambling at the end as it is nothing but strawmanning.
My guess is that their source is Lenin’s “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” but it would be much appreciated if @VictimOfReligion can verify. (This reply is also a response to VictimOfReligion)
The summary goes that we should know how to get the masses to question religion (and especially its structural form) in an intelligent manner (as opposed to the Liberal’s form of militant atheism, which handles this issue in a more classist manner and has failed to address the ideological weaponry of the Church which is also used by the ruling class)
However, in his “The Attitude of the Worker’s Party to Religion” he denounces attempts at a “war on religion” (the active and forced suppression of religion) as this would only revive interest in religion and prevent it from really dying out.
So yeah. From what I can tell going by what’s going on in these threads, the question of religion seems to be a very divisive topic within Left-wing discourse. (iirc these discussions also existed back in the GZD subreddit prior to its quarantine) I personally believe religion holds us back generally but that doesn’t mean we should immediately dismiss religious socialist movements (i.e. Sandinistas, Gaddafi, Ba’athism, etc.) as long as they are anti-imperialist. (Note: Patsocs, which are also religious “socialists,” are not anti-imperialist as they live in (and support) an imperialist country and thus they never experienced struggle against imperialism. Thus patsocs are undeserving of support)
Once Socialism wins, the decline of religion would be inevitable anyway, as more of the masses find less reason to take the Opium which is religion. Let a drug addict reform by providing them with basic necessities in life and they will no longer find need in the drugs which they used to fill that gap. Take their drugs forcefully instead and you only get an angry drug addict suffering from withdrawal.
ik this is a controversial topic by the looks of it so if I have made any errors and/or misinterpretations feel free to correct me.
You provided a more insightful answer than anything VictimOfReligion provided. This is one of the few arguments that I actually agree with. Thanks for your answer in the midst of a warzone, comrade.
This is how I see it.
I kind of answered this in another thread in this post, if you look further down, which is a condensed and simplofied version of this, but here people think I am for giving religious a taste of their own medicine without even having asked the right questions nor anything else than assumptions while I was speaking only of religions themselves.
Lmao yeah, theocracism is closer to socialism, and I’m using the liberal definiton.
And strawman? You dream, I’m demonstrating to you how your reasoning sounds, oh, by the way, I had to read the Bible four time as a theist, one as a questioning agnostic, and the fifth time was when I understood that the mere Bible is evidence AGAINST Abrahamism. Not to mention the whole three timdza week of having to study Bible related stuff time and time again. Now I see you hold not a bit of an idea about what you are trying to defend nor what I even say, since I never said “prosecute and kill believers” or whatever they had, are, and will do to unbelievers, even being other branches of theism. “cUrIoUs”
Thank you.
No prob!
"Noooooooooooooo! It doesn’t matter that religion is reactionary idealism!!! It has nothing to do with Dialectical Materialism!!! Marx and Lenin never said anything bad about religion!!! Noooooooo!!! I don’t know what history is!!! I am physically unable to study modern religions unless it is un a vacuum in the most liberal way to do shit noooooooooo!!! "
This alleged ML forum.
Going against religion is undialectical. It presupposes that religion has no inherent change, and that its base is always reactionary and unchanging. Religion has changed, and always will change. It can be progressive, or it can be inherited by reactionaries for the purpose of fulfilling their own reactionary ideology. This is what marxists should oppose. Reactionary people who utilise religion for their own benefit, but not religion itself.
Completely agree, comrade
Okay, why religion gets a free pass when literally socdem, nazol, patsoc, monsoc, etc also exists? Isn’t it “aNtIdIaLeCtICaL” to want a change in the system when its obvious that capitalists ideologies ALSO change? For example, Carlists, (Spanish Imperialists, basically) also portray themselves as something “progressive teehee”, yet we know it can’t be. Or even there are also Gustavo Buenismo, also called “Atheist Catholicism” (an incredibly reactionary bullshit about protecting traditions and cristofascism and whatnot). Isn’t it oximoronic too?
Let me tell you something so you get it: To bent is to be the most reactionary. This is why “Socdem is the soft hand of Fascism” and “Scratch a Liberal and a Fascist bleeds”. Hey, guess what! The soctheo is the soft hand of Theofascism. And scratch a progressive theist, and a bigot fundamentalist bleeds.
Religion is not an ideology. It is based on faith on a being with certain customs, not political ideas that a person must follow. Also monsoc is a joke ideology, with very few people actually supporting it.
Strawman, yet you accuse people of fallacies. Curious. Also you didn’t read anything I wrote. I know the laws of dialectics.
Here’s a quote from Lenin:
Source
Progress isn’t about what you say. Your actions matter more than your intentions. Progress is about advancement. Reactionary is about regression. The spanish imperialists may have been progressive at one point, but they certainly are not nowadays especially since socialist nations exist. You congeal an idea that is based on the rigid structure, yet you concern yourself about dialectics. Curious.
This is fundamentally not true. Let’s take LGBT people as an example. LGBT people are ‘clearly’ progressive according to your definition, so according to statistics, 42% of LGBT people belong in Christianity in the US. Are the LGBT christians now bigot fundamentalists? Some (a small minority) may be. But most of them certainly aren’t. Just because people identify with a religion does not mean it affects their lives on a daily basis. I identify as an atheist. I don’t see this affecting my life in a significant manner. And so many others will follow the same even if they follow a religion or not (for the most part).
That is literally the case though. Islamic Sharia for example is a political framework for how to run a state Islamically, it also tells individuals how to live their life down to the most minute details. It’s not a separate text, the rulings are compiled from the Quran and Hadith and collectively referred to as Sharia (it literally means law in Arabic). As far as I know, this kind of legal framework exists in some Jewish sects as well as the Old Testament for Christians (the sects that still recognize it as Christian text).
I’m not claiming that those three religions are the only ones to exist but Christianity and Islam are number 1 and 2 respectively on a global scale and they are followed by over 50 percent of the world population source.
So, a man made set of rules, that explain in dogmatic ways how the world and politics must be understood and run, isn’t in any sort an ideology.
Because it can be mixed with “actual ideologies” Good thing people don’t mix ideologies, like Nazism and Socialism even if just trying, and ends being just Nazism with aesthetics… Oh, no, it happens. I wonder what happens with TheoSocialists… Oh no, theocracism with aesthetics.
Dude. Stop. You’re just ignoring history since Mesopotamia while diving in echo chamber attitudes just to keep jerking off with the same people that ain’t able to get shit like why both Marx and Marxists and Anarchists were rabid Anti-Theist.
It’s like saying “oh, no, I know evolution real, but still it’s all creation, aleluya” and see no problem with that.
BTW peope is capable of holding contradictory beliefs, like being even black and a white supremacist, this argument of LGBT people holding to Christianity due to indoctrination says nothing. Christianity at its core is still bigoted, yes.
Religion isn’t an ideology. Religion (especially the larger ones) isn’t made by just one person, but usually a collective of people who have the same faith. They believe in God.
Stop going to the polcompball political ideologies and actually think for a second. Does that ideology actually exist, if so, does a significant number of people uphold it? “TheoSoc” does not fit either of the categories.
You think Marx is an anti-theist? Such “schoolboy behaviour” as Marx put it:
Source
Also anarchists are not marxists, and Anarchists are individualists who share nothing alike with Marxism. “MLs” who are anti-theist are not marxist at all, but rather revisionist. Enver Hoxha is one example. Same with the leaders Post-Stalin USSR which banned religion.
So every LGBT Christian is a bigot fundamentalist? Good to know that you despise Christianity so much it actually overshadows your opinions on the characteristics of the person because of what they believe in. Also you fallen into the trap of Identity Politics, which is exactly what I feared would happen.
Aren’t religions manmade? Really? Are you saying seriously this? Or, if you refer to individual… Oh, boy, you haven’t heard of Josiah’s reforms in Israel, the birth of the current notion of Abrahamic god…
Religions ARE ideologies, and it has been like this since ancient times. You’re just special pleading nonsense. You have no argument regarding this, only “faith and God”. So? Fascism in Italy and Spain and Portugal was also “faith and god”, they just added patriotism to the equation, being even more similar to when theocracy was implemented in city states of the Crescent Fertile and many other regions.
“theosocialism doesn’t exist!!” well, they go by names such as “theology of liberation”, for example.
Also, nice quote from Marx describing Religions as a palliative drug that is given to people to stop complaining and make their miserable lifes a little more easy to handle, by calling it literally OPIUM, which, I hope you don’t go full apologetic and try to spin it to have a different meaning, which… Have you read the rest of it? About how only after getting rid off religion happens something?
Oh, and I see that Lenin was a revisionist by your own standards, nice bullshit you made there, “comrade”. I’m the revisionist for understanding that religions are manmade ideologies.
Then,you go crying because you ain’t capable of distinguish individuals from ideology, cried “Idpol” when we thought there was consensus on class reductionism, yada yada.
Frankly, it shows how literally you’re all brainwashed by religion to the point you’re doing their job for free.
You do realize that Marx was alive during the 1800’s and that yes in fact they did have a very different conception of opium. It should also be noted that Marx was a regular opium user.
Is your problem that you can’t find the “abolish religion immediately” button? Check next to the “communism now” button.
How are they claiming Lenin was a revisionist? Have you even read Lenin?
"But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.
That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development." Lenin
.
“We should remember that Social-Democracy’s strength lies in the unity of the broad masses of the proletariat, and that such unity, owing to the splitting, disuniting, and dulling conditions of capitalism, is not achieved with immediacy, but only at the cost of persistent effort and tremendous patience. We should remember the experiences of our European comrades, who consider it their duty to show an attitude of comradely concern even towards the workers who are members of the Catholic unions and try not to antagonise them by treating their religious and political prejudices with contempt, but persistently, tactfully, and patiently make use of every act of the political and economic struggle in order to enlighten them and bring them closer to the class conscious proletariat on the ground of common struggle.” Lenin
.
“We shall have no difficulty in overcoming their inconsistency, for our views are supported by history itself, are supported at every step by reality. If our pamphlet has not taught them Social-Democracy, our revolution will. To be sure, those workers who remain Christians, who believe in God, and those intellectuals who defend mysticism (fie upon them!), are inconsistent too; but we shall not expel them from the Soviet or even from the Party, for it is our firm conviction that the actual struggle, and work within the ranks, will convince all elements possessing vitality that Marxism is the truth, and will cast aside all those who lack vitality.” Lenin
.
“This is one of those current objections to Marxism which testify to a complete misunderstanding of Marxian dialectics. The contradiction which perplexes these objectors is a real contradiction in real life, i. e., a dialectical contradiction, and not a verbal or invented one. To draw a hard-and-fast line between the theoretical propaganda of atheism, i. e., the destruction of religious beliefs among certain sections of the proletariat, and the success, the progress and the conditions of the class struggle of these sections, is to reason undialectically, to transform a shifting and relative boundary into an absolute boundary; it is forcibly to disconnect what is indissolubly connected in real life. Let us take an example. The proletariat in a particular region and in a particular industry is divided, let us assume, into an advanced section of fairly class-conscious Social-Democrats, who are of course atheists, and rather backward workers who are still connected with the countryside and with the peasantry, and who believe in God, go to church, or are even under the direct influence of the local priest—who, let us suppose, is organising a Christian labour union. Let us assume furthermore that the economic struggle in this locality has resulted in a strike. It is the duty of a Marxist to place the success of the strike movement above everything else, vigorously to counteract the division of the workers in this struggle into atheists and Christians, vigorously to oppose any such division. Atheist propaganda in such circumstances may be both unnecessary and harmful—not from the philistine fear of scaring away the backward sections, of losing a seat in the elections, and so on, but out of consideration for the real progress of the class struggle, which in the conditions of modern capitalist society will convert Christian workers to Social-Democracy and to atheism a hundred times better than bald atheist propaganda. To preach atheism at such a moment and in such circumstances would only be playing into the hands of the priest and the priests, who desire nothing better than that the division of the workers according to their participation in the strike movement should be replaced by their division according to their belief in God. An anarchist who preached war against God at all costs would in effect be helping the priests and the bourgeoisie (as the anarchists always do help the bourgeoisie in practice). A Marxist must be a materialist, i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle which is going on in practice and is educating the masses more and better than anything else could. A Marxist must be able to view the concrete situation as a whole, he must always be able to find the boundary between anarchism and opportunism (this boundary is relative, shifting and changeable, but it exists). And he must not succumb either to the abstract, verbal, but in reality empty “revolutionism’˜ of the anarchist, or to the philistinism and opportunism of the petty bourgeois or liberal intellectual, who boggles at the struggle against religion, forgets that this is his duty, reconciles himself to belief in God, and is guided not by the interests of the class struggle but by the petty and mean consideration of offending nobody, repelling nobody and scaring nobody—by the sage rule: “live and let live”, etc., etc.” Lenin
Yep