[lbo-talk] Marxism, Religion, and Capitalism (was Tariq Ramadan and Islamic Socialism)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 2/16/07, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yeah, there are Muslim socialists, folks who call
> themselves Christian anarchists, or  any number of
> things.
>
> About a decade ago I asked an Afghan immigrant, who
> had come to the US by way of Germany and who had a
> B.A. in Economics from that country, if he thought the
> economic ideas outlined in the Qur'an were basically
> socialist. You know, that book that says Jesus was the
> messiah and which appeals to the supernatural for its
> authority.
>
> He told me, no, socialism is socialism, and Islam is
> Islam, each a separate, whole system. One of the 5
> pillars of Islamic faith is giving 10% of one's income
> to the church or to charity. I guess youc ould call
> that welfare if you want. And other principles in the
> Qur'an control other aspects of economic behavior:
> usury or lending at interest is supposed to be
> forbidden, for ex. But so is alcohol or men wearing
> gold. (Wedding doweries, the way meat is processed,
> etc., are also pretty explicitly outlined in the
> Qur'an.) Most of these principles are based upon how
> the nascent Muslim community of Medina operated after
> they were chased from Mecca, in 622 AD.
>
> One could piggy back some hybrid pf socialism on top
> of this, just like when progressive Xtians try
> piggybackmodern anti-capitalism values onto Xtianity.
> You end up with a jumbled & inconsistent mess.

Marxists are fond of saying that religion is compatible with
capitalism, and so it is, especially in some hands, but the same can
be very well said about Marxism.  As a matter of fact, it is probably
easier to reconcile Marxism with capitalism than to reconcile religion
with it.

Religion, after all, was originally a pre-modern, pre-capitalist
phenomenon, so, in order to adapt any variety of it to capitalist
life, you have to change it radically, almost beyond recognition
sometimes, and that's what people of all religious faiths,
fundamentalist and anti-fundamentalist, conservative and progressive,
have done with their belief systems.

In contrast, Marxism arose after capitalism, in response to it, and
one of its tenets widely held by adherents to Marxism is that
transition to socialism first of all demands a great deal of
capitalist development, and for many Marxists no amount of capitalist
development seems enough foundation for that perpetually postponed
transition, even though there is now growing evidence that several
more decades of capitalist development may destroy many of the
greatest cities of the world: "The melting of just Greenland's ice
sheet could raise the worldwide sea level 20 feet" (Brett Clark and
John Bellamy Foster, "Is the New UN Global Warming Report Too
Conservative?"
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cf170207.html>).   But you are an
anarchist, so I'm no doubt preaching to the converted when it comes to
compatibility of Marxism and capitalism.  :->
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>