the "parapsychology" thread got nuked but the discussion reminded me of a Return of the Repressed podcast episode I had listened to in December
it was a Q&A episode and in his typical style, the host Marcus went deep on a question posed by fan/collaborator Reid (@seriations on twitter) regarding the role of magical-religious (i.e. non-materialist) beliefs in proletarian revolution. We're all familiar with the ways the bourgeoisie promote and exploit these sorts of beliefs to their own ends (ex. Filipino aswang vampire psyops vs the Huk guerillas, Indonesian anticommunist "witch hunting" vs Gerwani feminists, Operation Wandering Soul trying to freak out Vietcong with "ghosts", etc etc etc, up to Qanon and the UFO-cult of today) -- and of course, how their own worldviews are often propped up by these sorts of beliefs (ex. social hierarchies are in fact justified by genetic blood-destiny) -- but what about the inverse? How might we use them, too?
(note with respect to the aforementioned "parapsychology" thread, this is not a question of whether some such belief might be substantiated, proven "real" or not, but rather of strategy)
Marcus explained his first intuition was to look at the history of accusations of vampirism lobbed at feudal European aristocracy (ex. Elizabeth Bathory), but abandoned this line of inquiry when his research suggested that these accusations actually tended to reflect intra-class conflict between rulers/institutions of the time, i.e. factional power jockeying.
Changing tack, Marcus then offers a long exploration of the contentious historical relationship between Chinese secret societies, magical-religious beliefs, martial arts, and rebellion.
To anyone curious about how these things might intersect (short version: it gets messy), I would recommend the episode and I'll drop some other related links below
https://podbay.fm/p/the-return-of-the-repressed/e/1703245745
SHOW NOTES
In these dark times its difficult to find reason for making believe, this will all change once you hit play. Answering Reid for almost two hours I will do my outmost to lift you spirits to unknown heights. Counterintuitively by taking a deep dive in to Chinese secret societies, covering thousands of years, culminating in a communist community exorcism by the black and red Dao.
We are talking apotropaic magic, the swallowing of protective charms, anti-fascist Kung Fu fighting, mystic mind-control and brain washing in the Tang dynasty, social tech of the Henan peasantry and the socialist Shaolin monks who would liberate Beijing from the compradors, the war and drug lords as well as imperialist invaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lanterns_(Boxer_Uprising)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Spear_Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Spears%27_uprising_in_Shandong_(1928%E2%80%931929)
➡️ The Red Spears, 1916–1949 Tai Hsüan-chih translated by Ronald Suleski https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.19970
➡️ The Red Spears Reconsidered: An Introduction Elizabeth J. Perry https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/166/oa_edited_volume/chapter/2707255
➡️ Secret Societies Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia by David Ownby (Author), Mary F. Somers Heidhues (Author) https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781315288055/secret-societies-reconsidered-perspectives-social-history-early-modern-south-china-southeast-asia-mary-somers-heidhues-david-ownby
➡️ "Secret Societies" Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia (review) Scott Lowe https://muse.jhu.edu/article/396407/pdf
That thread was really unfair and rude to comrades who hold spiritual beliefs and I didn't like how the mods handled it.
Some people were being nasty, yeah, but I don't think its constructive for the movement to embrace fantasy. Not that all spiritual beliefs are fantasy, but they do not have an effect on real life.
If someone wants to believe they can talk to the dead or receive the holy spirit through bread or there’s a heaven after death, but otherwise all their activities and interactions with real suffering people are grounded in this realm of existence, why should I give a shit?
but they do not have an effect on real life.
Sure. But the beliefs themselves have an effect in real life. If all these controversies with pedophilia and mega churches and cults haven’t convinced people to drop their religions, then it’s pretty clear that we have to work with these systems.
The socialist movements that try to eradicate religion because they don’t care or misinterpret Marx’s ideas have failed at doing so. Cubans and Vietnamese prohibit religious institutions from gaining too much influence, but that’s much more reasonable than demanding that no one participate in them. You can only do that by uplifting them from their miseries.
The west has exploited religions of the people they’ve oppressed to their advantage greatly. Look into the build up to the Soviet Afghan War if you want to see WASP politicians talking to Muslim extremists about “God” as if they share the same religion
If you can’t even acknowledge that these “fantasies” can create or destroy entire movements regardless of what their god and books say, then I don’t know what to tell you
You shouldn't, but those beliefs have nothing to do with leftism. In fact they are often used to suppress it, which I think is where the general hostility comes from.
You're right, it doesnt have anything to do with the left... that's the point. OP is talking about the intersection between supernatural shit and material reality. My point is, if you ARE a leftist and do all this weird shit, who cares as long as you're advocating for food and medicine and not prayers and crystals?
In fact they are often used to suppress it, which I think is where the general hostility comes from.
I understand. In fact I hate religion. But I'm also disciplined enough to not walk around with a spaghetti monster shirt and pretending that I can convince people of the science of marxism leninsim just because I'm correct.
In my original comment all I said was it wasn't constructive.
I think you're thinking I was even involved in the original post. I didn't post in there or insult anybody's beliefs.
I don't even know what post you're referring to. I'm referring to this post that we're commenting and replying on right now
https://hexbear.net/post/2197425
The one SorosFootSoldier is referring to in his comment above
It’s one of the most confusing things about Western leftists. Aren’t most of the working class religious? You’re only isolating yourself further from them and continuing to keep leftism as almost exclusively academic with most leftists coming out of college campuses than workplaces.
With all due respect this is pretty much a solved problem, and untill there is sufficient reason to revisit it it should be treated as such. I quote from here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/may/13.htm
"The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism, which has fully taken over the historical traditions of eighteenth-century materialism in France and of Feuerbach (first half of the nineteenth century) in Germany—a materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion."
[And yet...]
"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" (ibid.)
Let me put it this way: As dialectical materialists we must never settle into mere empericism as what appears before us must be understood in the historical relations that produce such a phenomenon. Therefore, when we talk of religion it isn't so much a discussion of particular religious ideas and how we can tactically intervene in them to better our goals, but rather a wuestion of where religious thinking comes from, what are its conditions, what is it an expression of. Another quote: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form[...]. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion."
Indeed today we do see very little reflection of our ideas in the world, and it is understandable that in a desparate effort to remedy this one would try and popularize as much as possible. But at the cost of the very foundation of Marxism. That we see the fantastical mish-mash of half digested ideas upheld as a virtue of the diversity of thought speaks to the overwhelming lack of principle among so-called "leftists." The answer to the disorder of our camp is not to abandon it, but instead to rise to the occasion.
it was, and I don't like it. esp. since like I have some of my own beliefs and like. have had weird experiences and done some stuff like made a sleep charm in the past to help with sleep. because I got desperate to a point with how much lack of sleep has been hurting my health. like at best it helps, at worst, nothing. but I don't think it's right for someone to be harsh.
esp. when considering like. at least for me I resort to this stuff to help me get through the day. especially with the things im constantly dealing on a daily basis. it just hurts. like I do try to be critical about what I believe in and try to like. have a skeptical mind along with like a spiritual belief sort of mind? or parts of me and work that together? like I dunno.
just like. I dunno. especially since like some of this stuff helps me cope with things like and helps manage like the suicidal parts of me.
Okay glad I wasn’t the only one. I kind of just noped out of there after seeing how rude everyone was.
I just found out about that when browsing through the mod log and it really didn't sit right with me either...
I honestly spit on the mod that pulled that bullshit like. I want that mod to pull up right here so I know who they are and know to avoid they ass.
Honestly, just feels very rude and inappropriate from the mods here.
Show
It’s funny because I do agree with the mod, but it seems silly to remove the entire thread when there’s been like 500 threads asking “is socialism compatible with religion?” and most of the answers are “yes. Marx was not a redditor.” I’m not gonna be one of those people who invoke non white cultures that believe in that shit while still kicking ass, but I mean it seems to be the primary way to convince white people of things
It is very rude and inappropriate. Especially with like calling those who believe in magic "deeply unserious" or calling Vampire a "putz". Meanwhile like Vampire is the reason I'm even reading Das Kapital since they manage/started that bookclub for that.
god forbid an online communist community acknowledge that humans actually don't know everything about the universe. completely unacceptable mod behavior.
just to push back against the redditor atheists, here's a basic explanation of why i believe what i do, and how i see the concepts involved:
physicalist realism: your consciousness simply doesn't exist. your experiences? not real. its an illusion. and what is perceiving this illusion? nothing, since experiences are not real, nothing can be experiencing them. Doesn't that seem logically inconsistent? illusions are real in themselves, and something has to be experiencing the illusion right? well that's because you are too beholden to language or something, the universe doesn't have to make sense to your idiot meat brain and it's stupid monkey '''''logic'''''. What's going on inside your head then? nothing but matter bumping into other matter, your experience and perspective probably boil down to math somehow, don't ask how exactly but we will definitely totally find out sometime in The FutureTM. in short, the Hard Problem of Consciousness isn't real.
the primary implication of physicalist realism: people, including yourself, literally don't exist as conscious beings, and are merely flesh-robots deterministically reacting to their environment according to physical rules. anyone's perceptions of pain, or literally anything else, are nonexistent. illusory and meaningless in any real sense. The only contents of reality are physical phenomena, measured quantities of particles and 'energy' bouncing around deterministically until the heat death of the universe.
physicalist realism and its ramifications for ethics and politics: since people aren't real, none of their opinions or desires matter or mean anything. it doesn't matter in any real sense whether you kill or abuse or steal or maim or harass anyone, or if anyone does the same to you, as it is only matter interacting with matter according to deterministic physical rules. there is no reason to fight for a better world, not even if you can expect short term improvements in your own personal quality of life, because neither you nor others exist, and your desires and ideas and pain are similarly illusory/nonexistent and meaningless. whatever happens happens and thats it, any feelings about reality don't matter in an objective sense and were pre-determined at the Big Bang or whatever other start of Time or The Universe like clockwork, and you do not exist enough to actually make meaningful choices, only playing out your Program. you might as well be a selfish asshole and hoard wealth and comfort, since this illusory experience is all you can (not) exist in, or you might as well cause yourself to die, since your consciousness already does not exist. your impact on others literally cannot matter in a meaningful way, since no ones consciousness is real to be victim to your actions, and you literally could not have chosen any other course of action in this physics-based deterministic universe. It would not matter if humanity were to be wiped out by an astronomical event, since life's value is equivalent to lifeless matter as our consciousness does not exist.
anti-physicalist-realism: your consciousness exists in some sense and has yet to be explained by physics, in even a hypothetical sense. the Hard Problem of Consciousness persists. Physics as it currently stands does not fully and accurately describe every aspect of reality or the universe.
the primary implication of anti-physicalist-realism: Your consciousness is the only thing you can ever have access to in terms of epistemology, and therefore it must be considered the primary grounds of existence, as the reality of consciousness itself is impossible for consciousness to seriously doubt, unlike any particular contents of it. Whatever you are experiencing, whether illusion or not, it is being experienced in some sense, there is a perspective to be experiencing from, even if that perspective's specific nature is mysterious. It stands to reason then, that the ideas, images, and even people in your consciousness are real in some sense, and not entirely illusory or nonexistent even if their true nature is obscured, and may even have their own internal consciousness perspective, which is as real to them as yours is to you. this means that not only do your ideas and pains and desires matter, since they really exist, but those of others do as well.
anti-physicalist-realism and its ramifications for ethics and politics: since consciousness exists in some sense, its contents are worthy of some consideration. other people like you have their own internal experiences, desires, pains, and ideas, which all really exist in a meaningful sense and warrant consideration. therefore, there may be reasons to consider avoiding harassing, abusing, or hurting others. additionally, regardless of the existence of any 'afterlife' or 'soul', your actions will at least live on in the real consciousnesses of other people who will come after you, whose Actually Existing Sensations will be affected in some way, meaning that it is necessary to consider your impact on those around you, and even work together for everyone's benefit even if you personally get no physical reward - your feelings can be reward enough. It would be tragic if humanity were wiped out, since our consciousness and pain and hopes were all real, non-illusory phenomena that distinguished us from inanimate matter or automatic mindless biological reflex
i'm going to keep believing that the hard problem of cosciousness hasn't been solved or handwaved away successfully, i'm going to keep believing that humanity has yet to discover everything in the universe, i'm going to keep believing that worker ownership of the means of production are necessary to creating a more just society, and that democratic centralism is a good way to accomplish that goal, and i'm going to keep calling myself a Communist, even if i might have specific philosophical/epistemological/ontological differences with certain interpretations of some of it's ideological founders.
people, including yourself, literally don't exist as conscious beings, and are merely flesh-robots deterministically reacting to their environment according to physical rules. anyone's perceptions of pain, or literally anything else, are nonexistent.
If we're all just quantum interactions inevitably leading to the appearance of consciousness, that still makes us real. Whatever we think, even if there is no truly free willed "consciousness" powering it, those thoughts are still happening. They are physical processes that can be measured and have an observable effect on the universe. Even if it's because of particle interactions preordained since the big bang, we still feel the pain. There might ultimately be no point to our existence and no real choices that we can make, but that only makes our choices illusory, not our experiences. There is still a point to improving your quality of life, and it's simply that you like that. There is a point to improving other's quality of life, and it's simply that they like that. You may not have ever truly had a choice about it, but those processes definitely still happen. You can declare that it's all pointless because you were destined to never do anything, or you can loudly declare that it was preordained by the natural processes of the universe when people ask why you're sticking googly eyes on all the door handles.
It's honestly weird that we always talk about people being a product of their conditions but as soon as it comes to metaphysics people start going "but what if we're special and not really a product of our conditions".
I think the threads are super annoying and Vamp was being especially annoying in them, but banning him over this rather than having some kind of intervention is really childish and irresponsible
I question why we have so many "accepted" religious comms, but then the mod staff can be this dismissive toward pagans. Like, why shouldn't I be reporting every single religious comm I see from here forward like "this comm is genuinely an embarrasment to all involved, if you pray to a magical Abrahamic sky-daddy you're deeply unserious and deserve disfellowship" like nah, I'd be RIGHTFULLY called sectarian and wrecking over it! But y'know, it's okay when it's paracausality because that's the accepted whipping dog for Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, and all that to still propagate, right?
Shit was disgusting and I had to FIERCELY fight a wave of petty over that.
Yea that's overly harsh, else better x out all those religious subs quick.
My issue was with my phrasing but whatever, magic is a bit too simple of an approach but I wouldn't go with damn full on censor. There's a lot we still don't know and I'm not going around gaslighting what did or didn't happen in people's experiences since perception is fly, knowledge is gated, and we've all probably had one weird thing happen to us at one time or another, or even multiple. In our 21st century knowledge we can easily dismiss visions and 'dancing' of medieval peasants being caused by ergot poisoning, but in their collectively held social experience, there was some mystical thing going on and I bet even if you were to somehow implant all the information about bad rye and fungi into them they'd still hold the event in a degree of awe.
There's a lot of cases through history of liberation movements drawing from religion or spirituality since its the only refuge allowed to the poor or seen as socially acceptable within the time period. Many of the movements in the global south come to mind. Even historically, the original communal were utopian, not scientific because of conditions of knowledge and society were not set for otherwise. Atheism is sadly still in the realm of academia because conditions are yet still that undeveloped in say the US that people need prescription strength religion and mysticism. Religious institutions are the last places in the US for a lot of communities where mutual aid is still done without interference from authorities (where I live even this is in question now), otherwise people are cast out in a sea of alienation from themselves and each other in capitalist hell.
A lot of the woo folk would be very open to our ideas and learning theory, we seek to make the outer material reality more comfortable instead of merely seeking solace within. Animism is sort of the ancient's approach to materialism with the best knowledge they had access to, and I'd bet the modern animists are no different.
Tf. If I wanted to chat with a bunch of chauvanistic, militant atheists, I'd just sign back up to Reddit. If people are really going to wholesale shit on religion or mystical thinking as a commie, they're not much better than the assholes pushing Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism out there. Edit: mixed up my words.
Another good example of historical rebellion and religious figures would be the slave uprising and liberation of Haiti. Look up Dutty Boukman, he was one of the leaders, and also a houngan.
'Magic' or whatever you want to call it is part of the social reality we live in and isn't something we can simply wipe away overnight along with religion and mythology. People experience things they can't understand for a variety of very explainable reasons and ones yet to be discovered, so and its basically harkening back to the ancients to blame the unexplicable on magic and the likes, but they experienced something, its gaslighting and immature to simply overlook this and alienates what would be some potential allies, including large parts of the proto-proletariat. Old school magic is the affair of the most desperate and cast off portions of society and serves a strong social function to give these people some power, it itsn't the ritual of itself in isolation, but the symbolism and what it draws from when seen by society at large.
Religion is an an ancient catch all and we are not yet at the most advanced economic age to simply knock people out of religion the incomplete and illusory hope-bringer, you show people out slowly, but at the same time there is shit we don't know and its very mechanical to assume we know all and socially blind to ignore its power, like fighting with one arm behind your back ignoring a good third of all human symbolism and its power on the psyche since we are far from the day when all are immune to the power of words, symbols, and suggestion.
Back in the day, and probably today too everyone's alphabet agencies studied weird shit to hope to gain an edge on everyone else, that included former and current AES, and imagine if you could during WW2 everyone involved even had professional astrologers. Yes, even the USSR had their own professional astrologers.
The trick is, in true dialectic fashion not to go too far into the metaphysics, to steal its kernel of truth/play the game to hose your enemies and then run away really fast before it caves in on you, as it will on the bourgeois dictatorship in the west with magical thinking the default to the point they now buy the simulacrum full sale. You don't want to go the other way neither, that just alienates you from the very people that direly need the most assistance getting away from the metaphs in a very ultra move denying their lived experiences as they understand it.
but what about the inverse? How might we use them, too?
Encourage spiritual scholarship - like, "hey, they're trying to use our own beliefs to trick us, so let's study up and expose the fraudsters". Spiritualism, religious practices, even lower-case 'o' "occultism" (haven't got a better word for it, sorry) -- these are as much a part of shared culture as this or that film franchise or book series or local sports team or music genera. Yankeedom doesn't like talking about belief and that's bullshit. A religious reference can be just as clarifying to a discussion as a film reference or talking about systems like mechanics in a game.
And there is a spiritual component to people's feelings - this sense of bigger things, of being a part of something even while we're distinct. Denying that or treating it as taboo is silly. I'm agnostic but I won't deny feeling spiritual things. But I also won't limit myself to a single set of cultural explanation. Any materialist movement that actually wants to help people shouldn't avoid the spiritual. It should treat it carefully and with respect, though.
And there is a spiritual component to people's feelings - this sense of bigger things, of being a part of something even while we're distinct.
Revolutionary optimism is - as one poster mentioned some time ago on here - the irrational belief that things will get better. But they didn’t say this in a negative way. I mean, why would anyone pick up a gun and kill tyrants if they don’t believe their children can finally eat one day - or if not their own children, then their neighbor’s children - even if the situation is dire? Why would Hamas or any of the anti colonial forces in the previous decades keep fighting even in the face of supposedly superior firepower? Without the irrational hope, then morale disappears, and you get savage spite. And I don’t even think savage spite is all bad either because if you know objectively you will fail, and you no longer have hope, then you’re gonna take as many of these bastards to hell with you if they want to roll that way.
Of course, this is not to say that these people are 100% irrational. Morale is also bolstered by superior tactics and victories. It’s a combination you have to balance and master for an effective resistance against exploitation and misery because exploitation and misery caused these spiritual, ‘irrational’ conditions in the first place
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.
Of course, Lenin was a man of action living in revolutionary times. We’re living in relatively easy times, at least in the west. People gotta stop intellectualizing shit and realize only less Desperate and miserable conditions can make someone comfortable enough to debate this shit, like we are now. It’s funny because we don’t hear too much about Kim Jong Il, but while searching for this quote I came across some of his basically saying “don’t hate the players, hate the game”
In Chinese history, peasant rebellions have been principally religious and the ruling ideology has been principally nonreligious, but go on about how religion is inherently reactionary and the absence of religion isn't.
i'm not sure if you're doing some modern 'chinese traditional religion isn't religious' thing or just need a testament to Chinese rulers demonstrating religious conviction & presentation. i wouldn't mind learning more about the view that chinese traditions don't constitute a 'religion', but in the other case we can just look at an album of imperial temples & religious titles that emperors used
Wondering if its fair to suggest probably every premodern peasant rebellion had some religious component. I'd guess that's why the early modern/modern examples are so interesting, like a closeness bias thing
I think most elements of most premodern societies were significantly religious, so there are some other biases involved in that.
Chinese Emperors are so non-religious that they built Temples to Heaven to carry out yearly sacrifices for good harvests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven
Huh is this directed at me, or at respondents in the other thread?
It's a question isn't it? How to turn religious thought from the opiate of the masses to the amphetamine of the masses.
I think the answer is as ever to change the material conditions to support socialist beliefs, and the local religious people will develop their theology in turn. It does help that aside from hardline Calvinism and some of the more esoteric mystical branches of other religions, most religions emphasise "putting in the work". Jesus doesn't say, "Pray and have faith that god will liberate the poor from oppression," he says to the rich man ", Sell everything you have and follow me".
Ruling classes have spent centuries trying to make passages like this into metaphors or parables about some internal mystical state of mind, but most of the original texts and early commentors are very clear, very direct on how being a member of the oppressing classes is basically the worst thing you can be. It's very easy to break this via discussions on a local level, and because it has a ready made ideologicalmframework to spread, it is easy to do so.
This can backfire of course, like nationalism as a component of struggle can result in a resurgence of reactionary thought. But if you are a religious socialist you have a duty to try to do this.
We see how far "opposition to book worship" goes-- which is to say, 'right out the window' when it comes time to dunk on spiritual practices outside the Western 'Enlightenment'. Peckerwoodery.
