[lbo-talk] Marxism and Religion

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Thu Mar 1 14:30:55 PST 2007


Oh come on Andie. First you say

"On the relative ranking of religions according to some criteria of progressivity, the later corpus is silent."

Then I show you that on the contrary, here, in what is arguably the most important section of the most important chapter of his most important book, the argument suddenly veers into precisely that, the relative ranking of religions. J

ust think about that - at just the moment that he is doing the revolutionary thing that he does in <i>Capital<i/>, to show that economic reasoning is not rational, but a fetishised, alienated understanding, he reminds us that this critique is derived from the Feuerbachian critique of religion.

To which you say

"Well, that's pretty thin."

and

"OK, the passage shows that he later held a view consistent with the idea of OJQ,"

Never mind On the Jewish Question, he holds the Hegelian view, albeit somewhat modified, that Christianity, especially protestantism, is a more developed outlook than preceding religions

"although he doesn't mention Judaism, "

actually he does mention Judaism, I just left that bit out

"that Christianity, especially protestantism and deism, is most fitting for a market society, and one may infer my indirection that Marx thought that this religion was relatively more progressive because it was the most fitting for the kind of society that he thought was most progressive, although Marx doesn't say this here."

Well, I think you are fudging. He is pretty clear. Certainly he means that protestantism is a higher form of reflection than earlier religions. The ambiguity - which is no ambiguity at all if you draw the meaning out - is only that he does not mean that Protestantism is the highest form of self-reflection available. Unlike Hegel, he does not think that all development ceases with protestantism, but that it too will be superseded, by a rational disenchantment of the human condition.

What Marx is most definitely not saying is 'each age is equally close to God', like Ranke.

Andie:

"However even if the inference is allowed, that doesn't give us a relative ranking of Christianity versus Islam (which was the question at issue). "

Well, I think that is a bit cloth-eared of you, though I guess you are right when you say

'I don't see any basis for thinking that "the popular religions" include Islam'

But not to understand what it is about protestantism that makes it superior to the clunkier old testament religion is a failing. It is the unity of God and Man in Christ, the humanisation of God and, in the protestant version, the guiding principle of conscience over instruction. This latter is present in Islam, especially in the Sunni branch, but there is without doubt a dull opposition of the realm of God and the realm of man, which as Hegel rightly said, only makes God finite, determinate, particular.

Finally, Andie writes:

"The reiteration of the Young Hegelian point that religion will vanish only when it is no longer produced by social circumstances is one that recurs often in Marx's writings, of course, and his consistent adherence to that view explains in part why he does not engage in anti-religious polemics. What would be the point?"

But I think it is you that misses the point. Marx is not saying, hey, let's leave these people be in their beliefs, what is the point of denying them their comforts. He is saying these obscurantist prejudices arise out of vile conditions, ergo the only way to destroy these obscurantist prejudices is to destroy these vile conditions. As he said to Weitling, banging the table, "ignorance never helped anyone".



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