" 'Illusion of self'? When the torturer tortures and the tortured screams where is the illusion of self? Do both feel each other's pain? Thanks, but I'm going to try to look after my little "self" as long as I've still got it. Communism to me means the full emancipation of individuality, which I feel is denied under capitalism. I want much more self, not less."
I had a feeling that Brian's attempt to explain "no-self" would run into the materialist/atheist buzzsaw. I'm still in my infancy when it comes to understanding such spiritual concepts (have read parts of the Diamond Sutra, and Kerouac's "Some Of The Dharma"), but I suspect that Brian, believing that this world is illusion, understands that the pain of flesh is "real," as is "death," would not dismiss the cries of the tortured.
The funny thing about communists is that many of them share the same spiritual idea of humanity, only in godless terms. There is One Spirit that unites us, but it's of this world, here and now, and if only enough people understood the emancipating power of socialism, they would flock to the ideal. So, in general terms, the atheist left isn't that far from the spiritual left -- the difference lies in the definition of reality, and the point of life itself.
DP