religious crackpots in public life, was Re: The heart of a leftist

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Jul 10 22:59:28 PDT 2000


Kelley wrote:


>At 02:51 PM 7/10/00 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:
>>Here's an old hypothesis. Religion is sigh of the oppressed
>>creature, heart of a heartless condition. It is the opium of the
>>people. Maybe Americans are more oppressed or depressed than the
>>news lets on, living in the most heartless conditions, in need of
>>an opiating painkiller.
>
>tut tut. mustn't refer to marx's early works. nothing but a left
>hegelian then. so, not the "real" marx and so, not the "real" word.
>at any rate, here's the full quote which i think is much more
>illuminating:

Marx's early works have a decided advantage over our modern left-Hegelians', in that in Marx you'll find remarks such as:


>The demand to abandon
>the illusions about their condition is the demand to give up a condition that
>requires illusions.


>The weapon of criticism, to be sure, cannot replace the criticism of weapons;
>material force must be overthrown by material force

The *abolition* of a material condition that requires illusion doesn't figure as a political demand in our contemporary left-Hegelian theory.

Yoshie



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