Ralph Dumain : CB:My earlier comment ( recopied below) addresses the issue of early "religion". The rational, original kernel of "religion" is ancestor "worship", i.e. basing living relationships on the kinship relationship to a dead ancestor. By this, experiences of the dead are preserved for future generations, culture and tradition. This is not "superstitious" but critical to a scientific understanding of life. In the era of its origin it was highly rational as compared with other species' systems of life. It gave a big adaptive advantage to homo sapiens.
As to whether this ancient fundamental is the basis for some type of liberation theory that is not "religious" but "spiritual" or some such, today, is another question. I don't see reinstituting old time kinship relations today. The larger population makes that impracticable. But maybe there is some analogy from kinship that would help building a new social structure. CB: We might start to give answer to this in reference to ancestor "worship"/kinship as the foundattion of human society, but not class inflected religion. There's something wrong with this. > Ideological explanations necessarily locate >religion's starting point late in human culture since they begin by >attaching, or equating, religion to ideology. Ideology, however -- >understood as a rationalization, and camouflage, for class and gender >exploitation -- could hardly have originated before the division of labor. >But that left dangling the question of whether religion itself existed prior >to class society. I don't recall how Marx and Engels handled this, but I would say this is demonstrably false. Ideology is manifested in class society but clearly cannot originate there. Nor can there be a demarcation of religion and ideology, for all religion is a manifestation of ideology, i.e. mystified consciousness. People could not have started out as rationalists and then been hoodwinked by religion. They were always superstitious, but the mode of production and the organization of society transformed their superstitions into new systems and institutions, and in these new incarnations the ruling classes justified their rule. >But that left dangling the question of whether religion itself existed prior >to class society. If so, it could not be explained as an ideological >construct, and its existence would precede, perhaps even run separately >from, the dialectic of class struggle that for Marxist theory provides the >motive force of social development. [. . . . ] Was religion, then, moving >on a track separate from the rest of >human history? But that would not be an attractive alternative for >nonbelievers, because it came perilously close to concurring with an >idealist notion of religion. This is all rather confused. Saxton is arguing as if ideology is merely manipulative deception and hence all the ideational content inherited by societies are predicated on the intent to deceive alone. His logic is based on false premises. The liberatory content of religion, such as it is, is hardly an anomaly. Saxton completely misunderstands his subject matter. >They needed a secular (materialist) account of the origin >of religion separate from the origin of ideology. This would allow religion >to function (later on) as the keystone of ruling-class ideology, yet not >preclude explaining its liberationist phases by reference to particular >historical circumstances (such as colonial regimes, for example, or the >importation of slaves, or "guest" workers). At the same time, and perhaps >more important, it would situate religion in the earliest stages of human >development, before division of labor and the advent of class society. This is mistaken. Ideology cannot possibly originate with class society, and in any case, the allegedly non-class character of primitive societies needs to be looked at more carefully, in terms of the relation between men and women, youth and elders, rivalries and witchcraft, etc. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
