----- Original Message ----- From: "Lenin's Tomb" <leninstombblog at googlemail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 12:18 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 15% of the Population, 2 Hours per Weekend
> On 3/25/07, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> > Rosa Luxemburg said that the problem with reformism wasn't that it was a
> > different road to the same path, but that it was a different road to a
> > different path. That's what I think about religious sentiments.
Engagement
> > might lead you towards salvation and the kingdom of heaven, if that is
what
> > you want, but it is unlikely to lead the religious to revolution, or to
make
> > God's Kingdom on Earth.
>
> That is a non-sequitur. Religion doesn't lead you to socialism, but
> this doesn't follow that the two can in no way be coextensive. Given
> the political polyvalence of most religious beliefs, and given that
> huge numbers of socialists have had religious beliefs, there is no
> reason to assume that one can't engage with religious people simply
> because their faith doesn't automatically incline them in that way.
>
Interestingly in Canada Religion played a large role in the development of socialist politics. Indeed the history of left wing populism is rapped up in a particular articulation of the social gospel and the creation of the New Jerusalem here on earth. Even today there is still a presence of left wing Protestantism.
But the real question is what makes some forms of protestant proselytizing more popular than others at different times. It is no secret that hyper individualized forms of Protestantism have had more success in the last thirty years than their collectivist cousins.
And this suggests to me that religion and spirituality cannot be thought of as autonomous from other ideological belief systems and indeed develop in tandem with the socio-political ideological mood of the day. To be a crude materialist about it material social relations are the context in which all belief systems develop and to which they driven to make some accommodations.
North Americans live in a hyper individualized context and for the most part conduct their negations with the world as individuals. Both left forms of Christianity and left political ideology are in this sense fighting an uphill battle against the atomizing forces of the contemporary political economy. On the right, individualism is rhetorically encouraged while at the same time allowing for collective action. What would a left form of this look like?
Travis Fast
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