B.: If it's sloganeering we're looking for, I much prefer Kropotkin's "No gods, no masters" to your "Workers of all religions and creeds, unite," Charles. ("Life, liberty, and private PROPERTY" can be a creed, FYI.)
Especially if -- as the feeling I'm getting here tells me -- the point is, true or untrue, hey these wacky religions are there, and we can use them, too. So, whether they're true or not, they can be functional for our cause. ("Look at what Catholics get done believing in their stuff!" etc. Yeah - Scientologists, too.)
A lot of the world is religious and believes in the supernatural. More's the pity. I'm not interested in patching bits of socialist or anarchist theory onto those phantasmic fable-systems here or there when I don't believe in thm. Talk about disingenuous, unscrupulous, or even odiously opportunistic
^^^^ CB; I agree with you that there is this potentially opportunistic and pateranalistic side to this, and you are correct to bring it out. However, we don't usually think that the slogan "Workers of all nations and races , unite! " is an endorsement of nations, nationalism or chauvinist nationalism. Rather it is a call to put aside nationality for the purpose of uniting in class struggle. So, similarly, this is Communists' call to workers of all religions to put aside their religions in relations to the workers of other religions. To wit, today, Christian American workers stop fighting Islamic Arab workers.
But I think your basic point is a necessary clarifying criticism of the slogan.
I mean I wouldn't try to fully substitute this one for the original. It is an important Lemma pertinent to today when religion seems a point of division among workers as much as nationality , maybe ? That's my thought anyway.
For me the opportunism bars me from doing anything like joining a church. I would sort of be a permanent hypocrite to go to religious services regularly. On the other hand, one can't be a left activist without going to many meetings in churches. Not only that, most people I know are believers. I would be a social outcast if I didn't go to church sometime, observe the rituals, sing, say "amen" to sermons, etc. It's a social requirement. I would be insulting people if I didn't. Can't sit there and explain to each person "Well, I'm not a believer, and I wouldn't want to be a hypocrite". That would be ridiculous and sectarian. So, one is forced into a certain minimum of hypocricy. The main "People's Centers" , left party houses ,are in progressive churches, Central United Methodist and the Unitarian Church, in Detroit. New Bethel Baptist is famous as CL Franklin and Aretha Franklin's church. The Midwest Labor Institute Library, Welfare Rights Organization, and most peace rallies are in the Central United Methodist Church.
The thing about creeds is it's a way to include Marxism. Marxism is a creed, no ? If workers with the creed life, liberty and property wants to unite with workers with the creed "abolish private property" to struggle against capitalism, so be it.:>) We mean abolish _big_ private property, not personal property.
^^^^
Okay, so we should "understand" religionists. (And like I 've said, I've actually read the Qur'an cover to cover -- about as far out as the Bible.) So where's the pressure for them to understand US? NPR? PBS? Pfft.
-B.
Charles Brown wrote
"Today we might want to consider the slogan "Workers of all religions and creeds, unite!"
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