[lbo-talk] Marxism and Religion

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Feb 26 11:52:27 PST 2007


On 2/26/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure what the practical implications are of the Rev
> Furuhashi's apologetics for religion. Should secular leftists refuse
> to work with religious ones in antiwar or living wage campaigns? Of
> course not. I can't imagine anyone doing that. Should you shed your
> intellectual honesty and stifle criticism of religion? I sure hope
> not. So where's this all going?

Intellectual honesty, it seems to me, demands that we take a good look at the world and realize that relative dearth of the religious among a people doesn't make them more revolutionary than relative prevalence of the religious among them. Japan is a very good example of that.

In my view, atheism is not politically better for leftists than religion, and vice versa, if what you want to eventually arrive at is communist society. It all depends on what kind of atheism and what kind of religion. Some religions are better than some atheisms, and some atheisms are better than some religions. Between the best atheism and the best religion, which are morally and politically equal (another point that intellectual honesty demands that we recognize), I personally would prefer the best atheism, but that's only because I have never been religious, and people who are religious would probably prefer the best religion to the best atheism.

On 2/26/07, Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
> Today we might want to consider the slogan "Workers of all religions and
> creeds, unite!"

A good idea! -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list