>Anyway...is faith/spirtuality/religion incompatable with Marxist theory? West was >attacked by the poster, in part, because of West's Christian beliefs. I >was surprised by this, since this stance seems to echo the same Marxist >orthadoxy that alienated many African American, African, and Caribbean >scholar-activists who initially embrassed Marxism as a theory of >liberation. What's ironic about this Marxist dismissal of African/African >American spirituality as "superstition" is that it was these same >"superstitions" that provide the basis for Black revolutionary warfare >against slavery and Western imperialism. Reply I am familiar with some of the teachings and theology espoused by THEM - The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, may he rest in peace. My mother's father gravitated towards the ideology of Elijah Poole in the 1940s and many activists in Detroit during the 1960s and 1970s had and hold a certain respect towards the Nation of Islam during this time frame. This includes Anglo American activists as well as African Americans. The fact of the matter is that the SWP - Socialist Workers Party, through their newspaper the Militant had a working relation with Malcolm X and was in the forefront of publishing much of his work. This is a fact of history. I believe myself to be familiar with and have studied for a considerable amount of time, the body of work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels or that which is considered the theory grid constituting what is called Marxism. Faith is not incompatible with any theory or ideology and that includes the theory grid that is Karl Marx's and Frederick Engels approach to the science of society. Spirituality or the internal life of the individual, as they strive to exist and make sense of the world and its complex human relations (expressed in our conscious awareness of existence) is not incompatible with any theory and that includes the theory grid of Karl Marx. Faith is an indispensable and inherent quality of the mind, that manifest striving, hope and the belief in the evidence of things not seen but longed for; and embraces the struggle of the individual and community to make better things - a higher form of living and loving, manifest. Anyone that claims Marxism as a theory guild has faith in its science of how and why society moves from one mode of production to the next. Faith is not a theological doctrine. Faith may drive the belief in a doctrine. The doctrine of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was in fact a doctrine - the doctrine of the Asiatic Black Man, with a specific theory of the coming of man. It's theory of the coming of man is a materialist assumption of earthlings being the product of an advanced civilization and whites being a "byproduct" of experimentation on this original earthling - the original man. Roughly speaking, the coming of "the white man" - who is said to step forth eating juniberry roots and flesh raw, is associated with the second Adam in the Bible's Book of Genesis part II. The first Adam - man from soil or earth man (Adappa) of Genesis I, is said to be a different beings manifesting a different process of creation than he of Genesis II. It is this difference that in the last instance underlay the theory grid of books life the Honorable's "Eat to Live." In the context of the Theological intellectual community, the Nation's theory grid makes more sense as a materialist assertion, than the Christian ideology that man is the product of nothing and comes into existence as a product of the idea or word that is God being made material. I state this because this Christian "nothing" is a theoretical abstraction at variance with every concept of ancient mans articulations of our origins as products of Gods that could be seen, felt and touched. Even in ancient American Indian lore, one finds references to "the people who flew their planet" and in Hoppi lore one cannot dismiss their accounting of the third coming of man. ( Their second accounting of the coming of man speak of a radical disruption of the orbit of earth - a change in its magnetic poles and the earth now revolving in the opposite direction. "The sun now rises in the east and the people got dizzy." In the third coming of th Hoppi, "man was separated from the fourlegged" and smelled different.) Further, this Christian Theological and philosophic "nothing" is the field of discourse and division - (between that sector calling itself materialists and idealists), and to the materialist sector can only mean and must mean that which sits outside our field of perception at a given moment. In modern terms, "that which sits outside our field of perception at a given moment" is called the laws of emergence or the dialectic of coming into being. Something does in fact come from nothing once we define this "nothing" - not as an abstraction of an abstraction, but as existence below the field of perception. The equivalent of "the materialist nothing" within Theology, amongst at least my brand of Marxism means "the law of emergence." Here is the theory key: What we see as the emergence of a new qualitative definition, means we are witnessing the second phase of its development because human being cannot see emergence. By definition we could not witness our emergence. At best we study a new qualitative definition and then work backwards to understand the process of emergence or coming into being. Thus, in his writings Cornel West calls or refers to himself as a genealogical Marxist, meaning that the general materialist conception of history - the theory grid of Marx approach to why society leaps from one mode of production to the next, is the most valid explanation of general society advancement to emerge in the world intellectual arena. "Genealogical" means to me "materialist" but there remains a certain contempt for the word "materialist" in the popular mind, which equates the word with lust and greed for things. Materialism as a term of philosophy has no moral or ethical dimension and is used outside the concept of the deadly seven sins. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels writings get a bad rap by many intellectuals and ordinary folks not familiar with them. In my estimate, what has alienated blacks - African American intellectuals, from the intellectual Marxist movement, has been its domination by the oppressor peoples, who in America are Anglo-American. This domination has been political, ideological and organizational with intense cultural attributes and implications. The Anglo American people, have in history hurt us and continue to hurt us and this hurt is etched into the physic of generations of African Americans. We have hurt ourselves and continue to hurt ourselves because of our ignorance and social depravity. This is not to say that I lack awareness of and belittle the historic crimes melted out to us at the hands of Anglo America. What has gotten us through this ordeal is a boundless faith in the inevitable triumph of the human heart - our heart, and this feeling and idea of triumph in the face of seemingly hopeless odds, is the stuff of Walker's Appeal, as it accelerated the spilt in the Abolitionist Movement and provided the doctrine basis for the most militant and revolutionary sector of the abolitionists movement. Here is the problem: The Marxist doctrine of the industrial proletariat being the engine of social revolution stands in direct contradiction with our lived experience and there is nothing in world history to validate this theory proposition as anything more than a proposition, with a limited shelf life. In America this doctrine of the industrial proletariat as engine of social revolution or the communist revolution, meant and still means that the Anglo American people, who have constituted the bulk of the industrial proletariat, had the "historic" task of freeing us and the world, as modern proletariats. Many communists have faith in this doctrine and I believe their faith is misplaced. Sure, these kind of Marxist swear on a stack of Bibles . . . or rather Marx volumes that their doctrine is a scientific fact, yet they present no evidence of this "fact." When I have asked them to authenticate their "facts" they state, "just because it has not happened yet, does not mean it won't happen." Is this not faith wearing the garb of science? Now let me get real. As a young man there was no possibility of me join any revolutionary organization lead by whites . . . period. This remains true to this very day and I feel absolutely no reason to qualify or justify my ideology and belief. In history I am part of the group called "the black Marxists" or the "Maoists" or "Stalinist," which in America basically means "nonwhite Marxists," during the 1970s and after. Is Marx theory grid relevant to blacks in America? Of course it is but one has to read this for themselves. Or be walked through Karl and Engels writings by the black Marxist and those who inherited our views that evolved from real life experiences of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and into the 21st century. Only a fool condemns religion and only a simpleton and charlatan pretends that work within and combat within the Theological community can be dismissed. Is the coming of man to be explained and described on the basis of a militant materialism or "the intellectual nothingness" of the custodians of evil? I am always deeply embarrassed that the so-called Marxists will never directly answer anyone's real life questions and instead rest upon vague general statements of their faith. Marx was not a goddamn God and he and Engels erred often in their assessments of the revolutionary potential of segments of the world working class as they lived out their lives. Let he who has not erred - sinned, cast the first fucking stone. And no brother, my vulgarity is not a refusal to think things out or a lack of vocabulary. Perhaps childish . . . but I hold all of bourgeois society in contempt. Ralph is his own person and be in philosophic space. This of course does not mean he has no contributions. Melvin P.
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