[lbo-talk] Marxism and religion

[andie nachgeborenen]

I'm overlimit but imposing on Doug's good will and
taking advantage of the fact that I have not been
writing much lately. Last one for today, however. 

Joanna, maybe your comments gets never near the point
here. Surely Marx that the _capacity_ to be alienated,
to experience the market world as heartless, soulless,
and oppressive, is  a sine qua non of changing it.
This capacity finds expression, in bourgeois society,
in various ways, first, as an experience of
diminishment, deprivation, oppression, and alienation,
a world, literally, of hurt. Second, as a response to
that hurt, of a kind of self-medication, in religious
dreams of a better world beyond this one. But it also
can be expressed in resistance, struggle, and
collective attempts to bring about change. Clearly
Marx thinks that is the way to go. 

The importance of having that capacity as part of
human nature is central to the Marx's emancipatory
projects. As you say, Joanna, if we were pure
"Smithian" rational economic agents or poor, nasty,
and short "Hobbesean" brutes (of course neither
Summitry nor Hobbes held the views of human nature
usually associated with them, but that is another
story), we would be very unlikely to want change
because we would not experience the market world as
oppressive. The fact that we seek solace in religion,
therefore, although it may reduce our chances of
changing the conditions we find oppressive, shows that
we do find them oppressive, and therefore might, under
the right conditions, seek to change those conditions.
But it is not religion but need for it, or what the
need for it implies, that is the positive thing on
this account.



As to MLK and progressive religiosity, I do not think
Marx ever acknowledges that religion itself can be a
vehicle for social change in a progressive way,
although maybe he says something nice about the piety
that motivated abolitionism, I'm not sure. Certainly
the idea is wholly antithetical to the Young Hegelian
project, which did not seek to harness religion to the
service of progress but to reveal its -- we would say
now, and Marx would after 1845 -- ideological role in
supporting the status quo. 

Possibly that may have been a failure on Marx's part
and the Young Hegelian project. Be that as it may, the
real issue that we have been circling around, I think,
is the way the existence of religion shows that human
nature involves the capacity to suffer from alienation
and to cope with or overcome that suffering.

--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:

> Well, yeah, there's a difference between Vicadin and
> Heroin, in today's 
> parlance.
> 
> There's a difference between the working class
> completely accepting 
> their subjugation and pain, and their fantasizing a
> world that would be 
> worthwhile to live in.
> 
> One could turn the idealism of religion into a
> demand for heaven on 
> earth, into a dream (in MLK's parlance) that could
> be realized. It would 
> be much harder complete cynicism or a dog-eat-dog
> vision into that.
> 
> Joanna
> 
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> 
> >So Marx would consider a soporific to be maybe
> >"somewhat" positive? Really, Joanna. Obviously he's
> >not operating on reefer madness assumptions, but
> he's
> >saying that we can understand why people would turn
> to
> >religion, and that this turn has a  bad
> conservatizing
> >effect. The anesthetic effects deadens the pain
> while
> >leaving the cause to fester and suppurate.
> >
> >--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >>>Your point?
> >>> 
> >>>
> >>>      
> >>>
> >>His point is that it was considered a soporific,
> an
> >>anodyne.
> >>
> >>Not entirely positive, but not the evil it has
> been
> >>made into since.
> >>
> >>Joanna
> >>
> >>___________________________________
> >>
> >>    
> >>
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 
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