Today i had the misfortune of encountering a western “leftist” on Twitter. He stans Podemos (a spanish demsoc party, very liberal and proNATO, they are now in a coalition government with the socdems and they love Zelenski). We discussed the Ukraine War and Russia. I thought he would do the typical “ok the US and NATO are very bad, but Russia is bad too!” so i brought up the NATO invasions of Yugoslavia and Libya to show how the west is manufacturing consent now with Ukraine just like they did with Yugoslavia and Libya, which i assumed he would say were bad. Well the motherfucker goes and says “akchually those invasions were good, we stopped genocides and evil dictators”. WTF. How are these people “leftists”? They are straight up NATOist warhawks. How is this “the left” now? And this is in Europe, where the left is much stronger than in the US! I cant stand this. HOW IS THIS “LEFTISM”? Im so angry right now, what a piece of shit human being, defending imperialist genocides while calling himself a “leftist”. He even had the gull of saying “you arent a leftist, you defend genocidal regimes like the USSR, Putin or North Korea, youre a fascist!”. Fucking unbelievable. Ok rant over.
Oh and he also defended finnish and baltic nazis of WW2 and said “bolshevism is just like nazism”. Plus he said holodomor was real and when i showed him that expert historians on the subject like Mark Tauger, J Arch Getty and Stephen Wheatcroft think otherwise, he said “youre wrong, the historical consensus doesnt agree with you”.
I mean, i still think tho that we shouldnt supress religion, we should control it, like in China. Religion will fade away with communism, but until then we must deal with it somehow. Supressing it doesnt work (as a pole you sure must know) and its wrong. By controlling it, we remove cults and reactionary branches of mainstream religions and put in its place religious leaders loyal to the Communist Party. China did this great in Tibet. They replaced the proUS Panchen Lama with a prochinese one, and as soon as the Dalai Lama dies the same thing will be done, and it will be the end for the US funded tibetan opposition. Same in Xinjiang, they have religious leaders who respect secularism and are loyal to Beijing. I also think we shouldnt ban religious people from joining the Communist Party as long as they can separate their faith from reality and do a materialist analysis (meaning no creationist type idiots). Thats what i think.
See, this is the think that also irk me incredibly. Why the fuck always when i write “religion is incompatible with marxism”, something that Marx, Engels and Lenin wrote literally few hundred times each, i immediately got accused of wanting to “supress religion”.
What do everyone even means by “Supressing religion”? I feel like for some strange reason everyone always pictures priest hunts like anarchists in Spain did… Which was excessive and every ML should tell you the same. Maybe expropriating powerful, antagonistic and reactionary religious intitutions? I mean, those are the people that have such persecution complex that ANY infringing on their priviledges is ALWAYS treated as total war against “religion”. What to do with them?
Also, what religion is also super important point. Some minor sect which is barely recognizable? Or maybe catholic church with hierarchy, millions of faithful, powerful material support and ties to CIA? Or maybe something like scientology or Falun Gong (just compare what scientology did in USA and Falun Gong did in China).
China can afford controlling religion because religion, and especially single religion, never had very much sway in China and first few decades of PRC seen rapid increase in atheism. They never had something like catholic church rule of souls or calvin fundies or wahhabists. Religions there just listen because they are weak, as religions always do, this is a constant through history, once they get strong, they start to talk strong too. Always. Also Falun Gong again, do note that when they crossed the line, PRC fell on them like a ton of brick, no hiding behind “religious freedoms” bullshit for the dangerous reactionaries.
And about religious people joining the party, you missed. While cooperation with religious people is of course possible when necessary, party should not be mass organization of anyone who could crawl in. Party members should be held to higher standards. And “being marxist” is not even the higher standard, it’s absolute minimum. And “being marxist” include materialism. Not fideism. As you can even see from the CPC and afaik every other communist party of past and current AES, atheism is required, though not necessary militant one, and it’s probably not strictly enforced unfortunately (as a Pole i could tell you this was one of the reasons why Poland went to shit and got explosion of fundamentalism). Then again, it’s hard to say if they keep their faith to themselves, and if they prove they CAN really separate it, why not, it’s functionally indiscernable anyways.
As a Pole i would said to you that church was not even remotely supressed enough. It should be just dissolved with all assets confiscated and all recognition by the law equaled with let’s say chess club.
Again, for practical work of the party, this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/may/13.htm
I mean, i said what i said because in some socialist countries religion was very heavily suppressed imo, in Albania for example or USSR at times. Getting a Bible or a Quran was very hard and so on. I think assets of churches should be expropiated indeed. Churches should become like a kind of mass organization imo, with all its assets owned by the state and the organization also controlled by the state. The church functions as a church but is subordinated to the party and takes orders from it. Again, i think religious people who can think in a materialist way should be allowed to join the party. Ofc there should be high standard requirements, but if they meet them and are believers, i think its ok. I understand why you think this is impossible, since your country is full of religious nutjobs (no offense), but i can guarantee you its true. Here in Spain religion has much less influence in society than in Poland, and youll find many people who consider themselves catholic but dont appear like it at all. They rarely go to church, follow no restrictions associated with catholicism and dont care about what the Pope says about abortion, gays or some other thing. My mom is like that, shes a scientist so she can apply rational thinking, but she still believes. I often ask her why (im atheist), and she says it makes her feel protected during hard times. I think that these type of people, which believe me are very common here in western europe, should be allowed to join the party.
I also think you shouldnt discard the progressive potential for religion. I think religion is a tool, so its not bad by itself. Sure religion is very often used by reactionaries, but it can also be used progressively. Again what China did in Tibet, they picked a loyal Panchen Lama, and now he uses his strong influence as a religious leader to promote socialism, friendship with the chinese government and fights the tibetan CIA opposition. Indeed, the beliefs of the mainstream religions (islam, christianity, judaism and buddhism) are often quite compatible with socialism, since they promote friendship with others, helping the poor, solidarity, etc. Hell if Jesus Christ was alive today hed be 100% called a “communist” by the libs. Thats where christian socialism and islamic socialism comes into the picture. In countries with strong religious influence it can be a great way to strenghten socialism i think. Ofc you should be able to control the religious leaders for this to work, otherwise the reactionaries can use the religion against socialism. For example i think in Poland it wouldnt work, because the religious leader is the Pope, and hes in Rome so you cant control him. It could work tho in Russia for example, where you have the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church there. You put someone loyal in charge, control him and use christianity to promote socialism. I think its an option as valid as state atheism. Both options could work in the appropiate material conditions i think. What do you think?
Yes and no. While state should control it, it should be matter of security services, not official part of the state, and the control needs to be excercised carefully. Religion turned into state puppet bring plethora of its own problems. I see it more like every other NGO under socialism, just a club. Agree on the property, the historical sites should be property of nation anyway and the nonhistorical as much as any other club.
No, churches should not be directly subordinate of the party. It would create dangerous precedent of party abandoning materialism and dabbling in religion.
This is what i’m trying to say, religion is INHERENTLY reactionary. It can be used as weapon against something even MORE reactionary, like imperialism nowadays, but it’s playing with fire, leave it unchecked and you will burn everything. Not to mention even the most progressive religion will never turn to marxism, because marxism is antithetical to every religion philosophically and every religion is in a nutshell philosphy + worship practices. It may coexist, but again i’m just reiterating Lenin.
And also very important part - when religion and marxism met, it’s not relgion that need to be controlled more strictly. It’s party, to not be infiltrated by idealists.
Yet historically they always oppose marxism. Clerical socialism is a thing, but it isn’t the right thing. It’s just opportunism. Note they are always negating marxist class thory, that should tell you everything.
That is low bar considering even libertarians are calling eachother “communist” over minuscule differences in what pass for theory for them. Also Jesus WAS communist, he was heavily influenced by essenes sect and they were archetypical primitive communists, but as you can probably guess, primitive religious communism is not the right thing too.
Yeah it didn’t. During PRL every priest had his own papers, and there was no other society as heavily infiltrated by the state security. That’s why i’m sceptical about that control you speak of, and not because the pope, in practice local churches can just ignore him totally and he will not do anything because the fear of schism. It’s because we tried it and it didn’t work, catholic church organisation, at least in Poland, resemble mafia more than anything.
No, state atheism is the only possible option.
Funnily enough, your idea was was tried already. I don’t think i need to elaborate on Robespierre attampt to create new revolutionary religion, or more importantly on american civil religion as example what happenes if state is too close to that. And neither of those is even marxist. But i just want to mention this very debacle happened in bolshevik party around 1910, with resolt obvious - people attempted to were treated as more dangerous than mensheviks and trotskyist because they strike at the very heart of marxism.
I think what you said about China demonstrates the crux of the matter. The right approach that should be pursued depends very much on the particular circumstances of every revolution, the history and the cultural peculiarities of each individual country, and how much of an impediment or a significant reactionary force that the religious institutions in each case represent. I think the more tolerant Chinese approach was right for China, and the more militantly anti-clerical approach of the Bolsheviks was right for Russia where the church had historically been a very reactionary force and was in bed with all the worst of the old power structures.
The role which religion and church serve should be analyzed and studied on a case by case basis. For instance in Cuba it seems that they have managed to overwhelmingly embrace the progressive and socialist side of Christianity. In Libya Gaddafi had done something similar with Islam. In Poland on the other hand i see a situation much more akin to that of pre-1917 Russia unfortunately.
I’m going to go ahead and channel Mao here and say the key is to investigate and try to thoroughly understand the situation before formulating a policy position.
Exactly, this is part of why i think those people from GZ are nowhere near being ML - the very core of what Marxism Leninism is and why it is so successful is that it always need to pay attention to the material conditions and formulate theory and practice according to it (while staying troe to the marxist principles). They are obviously not doing it.
Liberal idealism tends to formulate policies based on abstract universal principles rather than objective conditions on a case by case basis. The idea being that if something is right in situation X it will always be right in every other situation as well.
I think many self-proclaimed Marxists haven’t yet managed to overcome this anti-materialist way of thinking.
Yeah, that’s why dogmatism is such a problem. Last time we saw that on a huge scale after the war in Ukraine started. Those guys just copied Lenin writing about 1914 without a shred of attempt to analyse the conditions… And ignored me when i asked them how about what he wrote about 1905 Russo-japanese war for example.