[lbo-talk] Irreligious But Not Secularist (was Not in Search of the"Salt of the Earth")

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Sun Dec 3 06:18:04 PST 2006


On 12/3/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie wrote:
>
> > Here's my proposal: (1) develop a good historical materialist
> > understanding of the religious in all their varieties; (2) create a
> > new secular -- but not secularist -- world view for ourselves (we
> > currently have none that all or most of us share even inside the
> > Marxist tradition); and (3) NOT to equate Marxism or socialism or
> > leftism with secularism and make adherence to secularism a condition
> > for being part of the Left, narrowly or broadly defined.
> >
> > Looking at the European political trend (e.g., banning hijab, the Far
> > Right gaining ground in large part due to Islamophobia and
> > anti-immigrant sentiments, opposition to Turkey joining the European
> > Union in part based on fear of Muslims, and so on); the American
> > political trend (e.g., little opposition to violations of civil rights
> > and liberties of Muslims, despite a high level of opposition to the
> > Iraq War); the intellectual trend (e.g., silly but popular books like
> > Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the
> > Spell, Sam Harris' The End of Faith, Oriana Fallaci's The Rage and the
> > Pride, etc.; the concept of Islamofascism gaining currency); the
> > current focus of US imperialism on West Asia, I think that it's more
> > than ever important not to make it appear that being on the left and
> > being a religious believer are mutually exclusive. Instead, we should
> > think about how religious faith can, has, and still does motivate many
> > from diverse religious traditions to make great contributions to
> > struggles against exploitation and oppressions.
> ====================================
> Well, you've reassured me at least that you don't want to pack us all off to
> church this morning, and that your more modest objective is to show "how
> religious faith can, has, and still does motivate many from diverse
> religious traditions to make great contributions to struggles against
> exploitation and oppressions".

The problem is that many of us, irreligious leftists, in America do not have any particular place to go and work with our fellow believers every Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, unlike religious leftists. The lack of standing secular left institutions keeps secular leftists an insignificant minority, for people who become politicized have nowhere to go in many places, and it makes religious institutions the only ones to which people can turn. The vaccum becomes especially a problem in a time like this.


> Despite your many suggestions, I'm not convinced the left has generally
> thought or made it appear otherwise. Any historical left-wing intolerance
> towards religion has been aimed, not at the mass of believers, but at
> instances where reactionary clerics have often had the blood of massacred
> dissenters and innocents on their hands.

Indiscriminate anti-clericalism made political sense when the Catholic Church, a centralized institution, also had vast land holdings and its clerics were a class unto itself, but it doesn't make sense in Islam, Protestantism, and other decentralized religions, and probably even the Catholic Church today, where some clerics are on the Left, some are on the Right, and there is a vast middle inbetween. In Protestant denominations like Congregationalism and Presbyterianism, pastors are more employees of their congregations than national churches, for each congregation chooses its own. If possible, we want to draw a political line so that we can put ourselves on the side of a majority.

General anti-clericalism won't do in the USA. Nor will it in West Asia.


> I don't think your views about religious belief represent a departure from
> Marxism. That seems a side issue.

Has it been an issue? No one said anything like that here or on PEN-l, to my knowledge, in this and related threads. Not that I would care if anyone did. Since when has Marxism become like the Catholic Church? :->


> Your critics are reacting to something
> more specific: what they regard as a romanticizing of political Islam and a
> corresponding softness towards crimes committed by the Islamic clergy
> against the Iranian left. It may be another case where differences get
> magnified and the debate becomes artificially polarized on both sides, but,
> given the gravity of the issue, maybe not.

The record of the Iranian Revolution on political executions, imprisonment, and so on should be evaluated by the same standard we employ in evaluating other revolutions, bourgeois nationalist, populist, or socialist. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list