I was listening to some writings on Marx by Lenin the other day and as far as I understood it: materialism is the idea that consciousness is a byproduct material interactions within reality as opposed to the idealist conception that reality only exists within and as a construct of consciousness. Marx extended the materialist conception in dialectical materialism to consider social interactions and structures as material conditions that are also required to produce consciousness. Lenin also writes of Marx's belief that religion and theology is inherently idealist, and that ideas like agnosticism that tried reconcile religion and materialism were reactionary or a "shame-faced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world".
the above paragraph is of course a gross oversimplification of idealism, materialism and dialectical materialism, and may be partially or entirely wrong. I found the original text to be quite difficult to comprehend and this is just how I understood it, so if I'm wrong about anything please correct me.
moving on, it seems to me that many Marxist-Leninists think that one of many contributing factors to the decline and collapse of the USSR was the suppression of religion, especially as it did not seem to be particularly effective given how quickly religion returned after the collapse. with all the aforementioned in mind, I have a few questions:
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do you think that religion is antithetical to dialectical materialism?
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was suppression of religion in the USSR enforced out of a belief by the party that it contradicted the principles of Marxism–Leninism?
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would a socialist state with a party that strictly adhered to Marxism–Leninism but allowed religious freedom among its citizenship be stable?
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would a hypothetical state be able to cultivate material conditions that lead people to willingly give up religion, if said state decided that religion was a threat to its sovereignty?
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have you personally experienced any cognitive dissonance from simultaneously holding religious and Marxist-Leninist beliefs?
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I haven't read/listened to a whole lot of theory, what literature would you recommend to better understand dialectical materialism?
Religion is, first and foremost, a set of practices. In other words, you don't believe a religion, but you practice a religion. Protestantism has twisted the definition so that some dude who never goes to church but "has a personal relationship with Jesus" is considered a practitioner of the religion Christianity when that goes completely contradictory with almost every other religious tradition throughout history. Likewise, Zeus, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, the Jade Emperor, Buddha, and Vishnu don't give a shit whether you actually belief in them as long as you respect their holy sites and observe religious ceremonies that sanctify them. Zeus will reward you if your sacrifice is good and thunderbolt your ass if your sacrifice is shitty. Belief in Zeus himself is irrelevant within the framework of the religion.
Since belief is secondary to religion compared with practice and dialectical materialism is more concerned with practice as it relates to human belief through a dialectic than the specific set of practice itself, there are absolutely reconcilable. We already have atheist religions like Scientology, so materialist religions aren't a contradiction either. In fact, many Indigenous religious practices are fairly materialist. They will say something like how water is sacred or water is a relative. It's not that they think water itself is imbued with supernatural powers, which was the mistake I've initially made. I made that mistake because I incorrectly approached religion as a set of beliefs first. But if you approach religion as a set of practices first, then "water is sacred" translates to "what religious rites, ceremonies, and acts are conducted to sanctify water." The details vary, but every Indigenous people who think water is sacred treat even a drop of water with a sense of reverence and gravitas. This sense of reverence and gravitas translates to not wasting water on pointless shit like golf courses or even non-native plants that guzzle more water than native ones. It means treating the lake or stream or any other source of drinking water with care so it won't get polluted. It means not overfishing a lake or a stream because other animals are entitled to use of water as well. This isn't new age mumbo jumbo, but a completely grounded understanding of their environment.
However, I see possible conflict between the Abrahamic religions and dialectical materialism because unlike the vast majority of religions, Abrahamic religions require the practitioner to profess sincere belief in a particular god with particular characteristics. It's not enough that someone prays 5 times a day and fasts during Ramadan, but they have to sincerely belief in the shahada as well in order to be considered a Muslim. Within the theology itself, the God of Abraham is said to be unchanging and perfect, which conflicts with the idea of everything having their own internal contradictions that through negation of the negation leads to qualitative change which begets even more internal contradictions in a neverending cycle. In other words, the Abrahamic God is static and eternal while dialectical materialism implies a reality that is dynamic and everchanging. I do not know how one would square this circle.