Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing tanks is... Actually a pretty bitchin' basis for a system of government.
If the Lady of the lake wasn't real, it would be necessary to create her.
It was corrupted by the capitalists, now god is the heavenly CEO, Jesus his CTO, angels the office managers, and dead people are the workers in the lyre music factory 24/7
I think the goal of socialism is to decouple religion with the state. People are free to believe whatever so long as it isn't reactionary and exploitative. The idea that religion will eventually wither away like the state is nice.
Gotta limit the power of religious institutions though. Wasn't the only reason but the Church played a big role in Poland's counter revolution.
Nitpick, but Cult of Reason was Hebert, Robespierre was the Deist "Cult of the Supreme Being".
Absolutely, that's why religious institutions =/= religion. Let the people believe in whatever tale they want as long as it doesn't make them do fucked up things; but scrutinize whoever wields power through that religion.
Yup. They can be a force for good sometimes, like in Nicaragua or El Salvador
Go read you Durkheim folks. The building blocks of religion are the social experience, more specifically when the whole of the group becomes greater than the sum of the individual pieces. It's why Matt won't shut up about a new spirituality being necessary for a global revolution in the cushvlogs. You need to reignite the shared social connection that capitalist alienation has killed to create a cohesive class politic. Spirituality will come along with it as an inevitable byproduct.
Or, if you're a lib who doesn't understand why Marx disagreed with Hegel's dialectics, the spirituality will create the environment for the proletariat to organize together.
You need to reignite the shared social connection that capitalist alienation has killed to create a cohesive class politic.
I think this is backwards. A cohesive class politic (whatever that may be exactly) will inevitably incorporate a spiritual dimension or never successfully emerge in the first place. Whether it he unions or parties, labour organising has always had that 'being part of something larger' aspect and will continue to do so. I think you can, in some sense, describe the political goal of communism as a secular religion without it being derogatory in meaning.
Maybe I phrased that poorly but I think you can see that I agree with you based on my last sentence. Social cohesion around a class formation will create its own spirituality. Not necessarily non-secular, but it will create a social effervescence (to steal Durkheim’s phrasing) that lets the individual understand themselves as part of something greater than themselves on a deeply spiritual level.
Some really great ideas on this in non-essentialist theology/philosophy from Spinoza and later Deleuze. Again, Matt will talk about this stuff in length on the cushvlogs but it’s funny because you can tell he’s not a “real” academic because he doesn’t name drop when discussing the ideas. Makes it slightly harder to connect the concepts between authors without the labels but if you know what you’re listening for he touches on all this shit
And the spirituality if you will is created from our material and social relations - that we have to form and create. So since we have created god once, so can we create moments of social connection.
Um I think I figured it out from some other post here:
It’s why Matt won’t shut up about a new spirituality being necessary for a global revolution in the cushvlogs.
lmao
It might be the start of some kind of chapo to hippie pipeline which is gonna be really dumb but whatever, we've seen so much weird shit happen I'm not phased any more.
The only time I see religion brought up is in posts saying we shouldn't discriminate based on religion.
Religion will wither away once people's material needs are met
Have you met a rich failson? Material needs met and then some, but they're just a walking, talking spiritual crisis
I get your point but would it be amiss to include mental healthcare IN material needs?
Organized religion, probably. Spirituality, no. It will only become stronger when people are more freely able to exist within the social world without needing to be pulled out into the “profane” world of rote economic necessity. Y’all really just shooting from the hip on this one
I'd say that organized religion, particularly in the US, is more of a culture than a genuine belief. It's used to keep the underclasses complacent, and give reason to the heiarchal order of capitalist society. Many rich people take part since it gives some justification and absolution for their material comforts, since anyone who is suffering is eligible for an afterlife anyway so they don't need to sweat the details.
Yeah. I am a very religious person, but the way I interact with scripture as a source of wisdom to interpret rather than an absolute to through around often brings me into conflict with other religious people. They also are astounded I act the same(ish) inside and outside of worship
Yes I used to go to church and genuinely wanted to study and learn more, but it got to be endlessly frustrating hearing (directly or secondhand) about how people are there for all the wrong reasons.
I hope you find a faith community you can connect to better some day. I've found constantly switching coversations to the importance of God's love can help, but it isn't always enough.
Being able to have points for socialism and equality through the lens of every religion is important, along with having logic of why it’s good without a particular framework.
Let people have religious stances if they want and aren’t having weird interpretations that give them excuses to attack other people for you know, existing while trans.
Lol I was just typing up a post in the pagan sub about how (some) religion can be used to grow the movement.. (https://hexbear.net/post/107098)
The main reason I try to promote Communism is because Capitalism never sounded like something Jesus would like.
I'm dumb but I'm pretty sure leftist should just stop giving a fuck about religion. Pretty sure the Soviet Union showed that religion will die off once you take away it's utility as a tool for a state to control it's population and give people a reason for optimism that isn't just getting to spend an afterlife with big sky daddy.
Uh that’s kinda like saying art will die out when you take away its utility as a tool for the state to control its population,
No one ever said that.
You can already see “lowbrow” religion in expressions like liberation theology, navayana, and other liberatory interpretations of religions, as well as localized versions of religion eg. Christianity melding with local beliefs in many countries of the global periphery
This is very old and doesn't have to do with socialism.
Yeah that was the point of saying what I said lol.
But why would you compare one argument with a completely different argument that no one ever argued for?
Socialism doesn’t have much to do with abolishing things like religion and art wholesale. It’s class conflict, which happens to express itself in things like religion and art, but those things are prior to class society. Socialism only seeks to abolish those things insofar that they perpetuate class society.
Religion is already in the process of being "abolished".
To show that the original argument is one no one should argue for
But it is not at all the same argument so...
but surely you know and can recognize analogical reasoning so idk why you’re busting my chops here lol
Because I don't really see why the analogy works.
Yeah sure bourgeois liberalism was revolutionary for its time, but we are socialists. We shouldn’t settle for those conceptions of freedom and progress.
I'm not just talking about something that happened once or whatever. This is happening, now. And it's happening in pretty much every developed country. The same process will also happen to the rest of the world as it develops. It's not like socialism has to do anything special.
Socialists shouldn’t just think religion is just some highbrow, organized, institutional thing.
I don't know what you mean by "highbrow"?? Religion isn't and wasn't "highbrow" in general, that doesn't mean much.
Yes it does lol. Religion is more than just the catholic church and the separation of church and state.
Umm yeah? Like, what does that have to do with the Catholic Church, I never brought up the catholics.
It’s very liberal to have tunnel vision pointed at developed countries, and to assume the rest of the world will follow in Europe’s footsteps, and that all this is inevitable…why would it be inevitable?
It's really not just Europe. It is Asia too, as well as the more developed countries in South America. Actually East Asia is probably less religious than most of Europe now. It almost always happens when countries move away from agriculture and more towards the cities, and as the state gets more secular and detached from feudal remnants.
You're saying that there isn't enough evidence that something which has almost always happened, is by now very well known and studied, and is literally happening right now, will actually happen. It doesn't have to start happening some time in the future, it is happening right now and it has been happening for a long time now with relatively minor fluctuations and there is no sign of stopping. Pretty much the only major increase in religiosity there was on a wide scale in slightly more developed (compared to say India or most places in Africa) countries these last few decades was the collapse of communist countries. And even that trend has mostly stopped now. Like, idk, look up any relevant chart on Google or whatever. It's a very clear trend.
I was talking about putting Europe on a pedestal and assuming the rest of the world must follow its path in history, or otherwise label them as something alien to “regular” humanity or whatever. But okay, cool, there’s trends and charts and other Steven Pinker bullshit. I’m not interested in that kinda dogmatism informing my understanding of the world though.
What are you talking about, this is historically documented for decades if not centuries, and in fact anticipated and correctly predicted by countless theorists. And again, it's not just Europe. I don't know why you keep bringing up Europe. East Asia is less religious than Europe. China is much less religious than Europe.
Why do you handwave at India and Africa though?
Because they're not even close to developed??? Like, that's kind of the whole argument, did you just miss that???
Also no. Religion is not in slow decline. It is in very, very rapid decline, except for countries which are not developed yet, and which have high birth rates (although even that is expected to level out in the coming decades), so yeah, as an aggregate, decline is slow. It is not unclear what the overall tendency is however. If you wanna dismiss it as "Steven Pinker shit" whatever, I don't care.
I don't know why you're now trying to spin my argument as "religion already doesn't exist" or "religion already isn't important everywhere".
You can’t just simply solve the social problems there by waiting for everyone to realize god is dead.
Which no one ever said. And I don't even know why it has to enter the conversation. Are you planning to solve the problems Cameroon is facing? The reality is that neither you nor anyone here unless they live in Cameroon can do anything much for Cameroon's problems, not now and possibly not ever. But like 90% of this place comes from the US and the rest are mostly from developed nations where religion is in sharp decline.
so all we need to do is just need to wait all this out for -70 years or so apparently
What does "waiting" have to do with it? It's a historical process, it doesn't care how much you want to wait or whatever. That's not the argument. I am telling you that abolition of religion is completely different from abolition of art, and it's probably gonna largely happen eventually regardless of what socialists do. It's not some shaky pie in the sky hypothetical, it's not dogmatism, it's very well documented and well studied by now. History is not a bunch of random shit happening, neither is it a flat circle.
religion doesnt need to be a part of a communist movement necessarily, but turning a blind eye to it is silly. Obv we need to give a fuck about religious fundamentalism and oppression
look, the most terminally online thing that leftists tend to not think consciously about is how much effort it takes to see enough current and past world history and materialist thought that you become some flavor of materialist anti-capitalist. it takes a ton of content to get there. most people accept a capitalist reality without understanding any of its internal logic, and they're constantly propagandized about it. the idea that the revolution of the proletariat is going to actually combat wreckers by just doing enough education is silly, at least in the post-revolutionary short-term. Figuring out how to slightly turn religious and spiritualist thought to be compatible with internationalist socialism is a lot more doable imo than trying to immediately give everyone an immediate and nonviolent shift in political perspective.
edit: i see a comment referring to matt's cushvlog posts, specifically an idea that we need to make a global socialist spiritual movement before revolution is possible. i'm not so sure about that, and it's probably not necessarily the case. however, i do think that if it isn't necessary for the movement to begin, it's certainly necessary to avoid lots of internal conflict. that religion has not been liberating is not inherent, but a product of oppressors. as we see now in late capitalism, where most of our capitalist reality is defined in terms of constant secular ideological propaganda, it was never the spiritual or eternal aspects of spirituality that are trapping and oppressive. it's just that it's something people believe in. in the west, the idea of fomenting a radical love for your neighbor, sounds like an odd thing to suggest. in the global south, such ideas have formed part of the basis of revolutionary action, since putting your neighbor at an equal level of moral value as yourself means fighting the oppressors.
Creating a global socialist spiritual movement before a revolution might lead to said movement just being co-opted by the ruling class like christianity was
yeah, that's a good point, and kind of what i'm thinking as well. the early christians were doing a proto-anarchism at least in some places before the romans decided to take it up. co-opted massively by every single western state, kingdom, and ruling entity since. but then, much of the global south is at least spiritual in some way, if not in terms of a colonizing religion then at least in their own indigenous beliefs. so movements will have to deal with it, and it doesn't seem like outright deleting the prevailing spiritual outright works super well. you get ideological enemies, not newly secularized comrades.
Literally the only people right now making a big fuss about how leftist movements really really need religion are terminally online, barring some movements in a few coutnries which have nothing to do with the countries said terminally online people live in. And they don't even make the same arguments, which of course makes sense because the people in these countries actually genuinely believe in these religions, they're not coming up with weird Jordan Peterson-esque postmodern fantasies about how they could maybe tweak religion so that they make it communist or whatever the fuck. No one gives much of a shit about religion any more in most developed countries and that's good. It was never needed in the first place and it was 90% of the time a hurdle, and 10% of the time it just happened to be helpful because of some specific features of these societies and religion in these societies.
