[lbo-talk] Max Horkheimer on Theism and Atheism

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Tue Jul 10 10:26:22 PDT 2007


On 7/10/07, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie writes:
>
> > ...Neither religion nor Marxism, if taken
> > seriously, is a matter solely of individual conscience to be excluded
> > from the public sphere.
> =================================
> That's true, but if you leave it hanging at that, it suggests you are
> putting an equal sign between them.
>
> I wouldn't. The values and institutions injected into the public sphere by
> Marxists and by Judeo-Christian-Islamic fundamentalists are quite different,
> and mostly at odds with each other - and violently so, when they are both
> equally contending for control over that sphere.

Or you might take it as an invitation to thinking, instead.

The term "fundamentalism" has been ill defined and applied in a way that is politically misleading, as Ervand Abrahamian argued (see "Capitalism and Religious Fundamentalism," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070618/011894.html>).

Some religious believers who may be properly called fundamentalist are also politically quietist, living in the "quiet and private congregation mode," while others are political and some violent to boot.

Some religious believers who are not only not fundamentalist but are opposed to fundamentalism take their congregations to be bases of political organizing for a variety of left-wing causes, while others refuse to do so.

Fundamentalists are not all right-wing on all issues either. The best historical examples may be John Brown and David Walker.

In short, the political lines to be drawn for various purposes do not necessarily revolve around the question of whether or not religious believers are fundamentalist. They depend on the contents of beliefs (pro-labor or pro-capitalist, anti-imperialist or pro-imperialist, etc.), not on the modes in which beliefs are held.

It requires peculiar combinations of objective conditions, such as found in Japan and Western Europe, created by centuries of unique historical circumstances, for people to practice their religion largely in the "quiet and private congregation mode" (though this point needs a qualification: there are Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe, and there is New Komeito, linked to Soka Gakkai, in Japan: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Komeito_Party>).

It can take military dictatorship or other illiberal means to reduce religion to the "quiet and private congregation mode" in countries where conditions like those of Japan or Western Europe do not obtain, if large numbers of people, as they often do, turn religion into potent means of political organizing that challenges the ruling parties. The practices of the Turkish government and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party government before the US invasion are very good examples of that, and so are many other governments in the predominantly Islamic world (and now increasingly in the USA, too, where habeas corpus has been abolished in the name of "war on terror"). Many liberals and leftists there have actively or passively supported such means to suppress moderate as well as extreme Islamist parties and movements: "The Future of Secular Parties in the Arab World," <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070709/012983.html>.

That may or may not have been the wisest course of action. That is up to them to decide. It is clear, however, that their choice has had political consequences: the law and practice that exclude Islamists from political participation are the same ones that exclude many others, including liberals and leftists themselves, from it; and liberals and leftists lose their reputation as principled defenders of rights and freedoms of people, which, in combination with their failure to present a concrete alternative to neoliberal capitalism, has cost them mass support.

This is a difficult issue, for some fundamentalists, such as those of the Al Qaeda variety, are essentially _nothing but terrorists_ and _must be suppressed_, but exactly _how_? That is an issue that liberals and leftists have not politically and philosophically confronted head-on, but the failure to do so may destine them to political irrelevance, especially in countries where Islamists of many varieties, left or right or center, terrorist cells or mass political parties, have grown. -- Yoshie



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