We have no disagreement about the Catholic church. But I think treating religion as pure epiphenomenon that has no other cause than economic and social oppression is simplistic.
I wasn't fawning over the pope. And in your (or Lenin's) argument, smashing "the institution of the church" and smashing religion seems to be the same thing. It's not.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- This stuff about Marxism being a religion is really an old saw, and was first propagated by outright reactionaries. But perhaps you're comfortable with that.
If my citing Lenin appears to you to be anachronistic, compare that to your own attitude to the Church.
What I've said above is, as Lenin points out, the ABC of Marxism. So yes, it's an automaton quote, but precisely because it's an automatic position for anyone who considers themselves a Leftist, and has been for quite some time now. Go and look up the attitude of the revolutionaries of 1848 and 1871 on these matters--you'll see that one need not be a Leninist, strictly speaking, to share this opinion. But perhaps you'd prefer to simply liquidate this history.
Is this the listserv of the Left Business Observer or the Right Business Observer? It seems to me utterly ridiculous that some are fawning over this new pope for apparently having mentioned "social justice". (Does one even need to mention, in this context, that "justice" is not a political category, as Sartre rightly noted?)
Smashing the institution of the Church is a sine qua non for the Left--and this is not an abstraction but is rather entirely consistent with the history of the Left.
-dl
On Mar 14, 2013, at 3:16 AM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> I assume he's saying that being a Marxist (in the way exemplified by your anti religion diatribe) is like belonging to a church but without other people.
>
> That is, the automaton quote from Lenin and the self-righteousness might qualify a marxist as being a church of one.
>
> Funny. But perhaps I misinterpreted. Always possible.
>
> Joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> How so?
>
> -dl
>
>
> On Mar 13, 2013, at 9:27 PM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
>
>> That's really funny.
>>
>> Joanna
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Douglas La Rocca <douglarocca at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> What's up with this defense of the Church? Have people forgotten what it
>>> means to be a Marxist?
>>
>>
>> I think it's like belonging to a church, but without the part where there
>> are other people?
>>
>> --
>> "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
>> lytlað."
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