Don't get yer panties in a bunch. I didn't mean to dispute that he thinks that Protestantism is the appropriate religious ideology for capitalism, or market society, the topic of the section, and that market society is a higher, better, superior social form than prior forms, but it doesn't follow that he thinks that that the ideology for a higher form is therefore better. It's not a compliment in the Manifesto (in many other ways, as I don't have to tell you, an encomium to capitalism), that it tears apart the social bonds that tie man to man and leaves nothing but the cold cash nexus. He's not very flattering about the ideology of liberty, property, equality, and Bentham either.
I don't think that he later took back the semi-Hegelian views of religion he puts forth in OJQ (including the relatively negative appraisal of "Judaism," whatever exactly he means by that term in that text), but I don't think he added anything much to those views, and all I was really saying here, which you do concede, is that he says nothing in the Fetishism section, and I am not aware of anything significant he says elsewhere, about Islam.
--- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> 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".
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
____________________________________________________________________________________ Never Miss an Email Stay connected with Yahoo! Mail on your mobile. Get started! http://mobile.yahoo.com/services?promote=mail