It is impossible to speak seriously about Marxism in the West without incorporating the role of Christianity in each social formation. “Western Marxism has taken a historic distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Viet Nam, and Cuba.”
I would recommend reading this and sending this to any radlibs/DSA/anarchists you know
There is some truth to the lasting effect of Christianity on not only Marxist but leftist thinking in general. Anti-Marxists, such as Löwith, Bultman or Kołakowski knew this even better than Marxists themselves. They were perfectly right in pointing out that many concepts in leftist political thought are secularizations of Christian ideas.
But the problem with them as well the argument in this article is that they consider certain analogies between these traditions as real historical continuities with explanatory value. Martyrdom, paradise, saints, apocalypse, and synod all had their Marxist counterparts, but they did not develop directly out of Christian origins. In fact, in every country where Marxist or Marx-inspired political parties became popular before WWI (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium) their success relied on the secularization of their working class constituents. Marxism for them fulfilled a main function of Christian religiosity: giving hope and a historical perspective, and Marxism was rarely practiced as a theory (this is why the most prolific theorists in this time came from the east: Kautksy, Rosa, Lukacs and Lenin for example). But there was little by way of contact between Christianity and Socialism and it only emerged after WW2 in the form of Liberation Theology.
The second argument that western Marxists would disregard historical socialist formations because of some Christian-inspired purity is mostly horseshit. First, the Catholic Church does the exact opposite of what western leftists do according to the author. The church teaches that no moral transgression vitiate the truth of the dogma and therefore the Church can embrace all sorts of assholes. Western leftists on the contrary operate from a moralist platform and abandon their political position if immoral behavior can be associated with it (as they did in 1956). Many pointed out in this thread that the reason for the moral purism of western leftists is not their Christian background but their weakness. Generations of defeat and failure conditioned them to appreciate martyrdom.
All this goes back to the paradox of the current, unprecedented historical situation. Today, Marxist theory is flourishing everywhere but there is no international working class political movement to which it could attach. There is a wide gap between the mostly college educated practitioners of this theory and those classes and actors which could form a revolutionary subject. That is perhaps a greater issue than what the author focuses on. It is not the job of western Marxist to write apologia about various state-capitalist regimes, but participating in the creation of a working class consciousness should be.
There is some truth to the lasting effect of Christianity on not only Marxist but leftist thinking in general. Anti-Marxists, such as Löwith, Bultman or Kołakowski knew this even better than Marxists themselves. They were perfectly right in pointing out that many concepts in leftist political thought are secularizations of Christian ideas.
But the problem with them as well the argument in this article is that they consider certain analogies between these traditions as real historical continuities with explanatory value. Martyrdom, paradise, saints, apocalypse, and synod all had their Marxist counterparts, but they did not develop directly out of Christian origins. In fact, in every country where Marxist or Marx-inspired political parties became popular before WWI (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium) their success relied on the secularization of their working class constituents. Marxism for them fulfilled a main function of Christian religiosity: giving hope and a historical perspective, and Marxism was rarely practiced as a theory (this is why the most prolific theorists in this time came from the east: Kautksy, Rosa, Lukacs and Lenin for example). But there was little by way of contact between Christianity and Socialism and it only emerged after WW2 in the form of Liberation Theology.
The second argument that western Marxists would disregard historical socialist formations because of some Christian-inspired purity is mostly horseshit. First, the Catholic Church does the exact opposite of what western leftists do according to the author. The church teaches that no moral transgression vitiate the truth of the dogma and therefore the Church can embrace all sorts of assholes. Western leftists on the contrary operate from a moralist platform and abandon their political position if immoral behavior can be associated with it (as they did in 1956). Many pointed out in this thread that the reason for the moral purism of western leftists is not their Christian background but their weakness. Generations of defeat and failure conditioned them to appreciate martyrdom.
All this goes back to the paradox of the current, unprecedented historical situation. Today, Marxist theory is flourishing everywhere but there is no international working class political movement to which it could attach. There is a wide gap between the mostly college educated practitioners of this theory and those classes and actors which could form a revolutionary subject. That is perhaps a greater issue than what the author focuses on. It is not the job of western Marxist to write apologia about various state-capitalist regimes, but participating in the creation of a working class consciousness should be.
Edit: grammar, syntax