======================================================================
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
======================================================================
Dan observed: "When I discuss religion with many leftists, this is what I get :
Yeah. I don't myself believe in God. I think it's all irrational nonsense.
However, the belief in God, delusional as it may be, takes on a real existence
through social relationships. It serves as a social structure which provides
individuals with values and collective cohesiveness in the face of outside
attacks. I find this way of thinking, so common among leftists, to be
patronizing and even more reactionary than the belief in a deity itself."
Yeah, God is all nonsense, all the time, and, even if it does provide many
people with solace and "values[with] collective cohesiveness" it occurs at a
price (this is, after all, capitalism): the subtraction of the will to
challenge what people see in front of them "with my [their] own eyes" (to quote
historians across time). Or, if not the total will, the belief that changing
society can only happen if it maintains "collective cohesiveness", you know,
like the collective cohesiveness that "we all" have when we hunker down into
our "social structures" that somehow transcend the very . . .Crap that we live
in today.
No One Knows What "collective cohesiveness" Is Because We Have Never
Experienced A World Without "Borders"--Not us under capitalism, not the
post-capitalist workers states, not the primitive communists before
feudalism--No One.
For that, we need to move forward Without A Sense of Collective Cohesiveness
Into A Sense of Collective Action That Wins Us the Opportunity to Become the
"New [People]" Of Which Che, among others, Have Spoken. To seek collective
cohesiveness as we struggle to end the dictatorship of capital is to replace
religion with "Marxism"; a religiosity that has nothing to do with the aims of
ending capital and profit with human need and the collective control of the
means of production by the working masses. We can only achieve whatever
"collective cohesiveness" turns out to be through this end ((be advised, that
the last there is a sop to those who feel the need for some acceptable
emotional resolution in the struggle against capitalism) .
Because this point is true, we need not bother with the "moral" need to
reconcile religion with class struggle; we can use religion--if it moves the
masses in a revolutionary direction--or we can oppose its dogmatism--if it gets
in the way. If Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky never opined this (I seem to
remember they did), then let it be said now; Marxists, revolutionists, we will
fight with every tool available. We will fight "dirty", we will fight "clean",
but we will always fight on the side of our class; until we win--we fight to
win, not to be "good" people but because it is the only choice the oppressed
have in the final analysis. And, our fight is not the fight of
capital--violence in service to oppression--it is the fight of the overwhelming
social, political, and, only when it becomes necessary to defend them, military
force of the people whose sheer mass will bring soldiers to stand with them,
bring the more ignorant of us into confidence, and keep the overlords of
privilege ensconced in their homes hoping that the natural mercy of the
magnanimous proletarians will reach them before the justly outraged, but less
conscious of us, do (after all, the revolution against capital truly is about
peace and an end to violence else it is not against it all).
Oh, and if some religionists don't like that we see religion as a tool rather
than the moral drivel they would wish it to be, we can point to the class that
uses this tool with such effectiveness (if not efficiency) and what it has
wrought. Such people can make their choices; a world where we all can have our
preferred mythologies without persecution or a world that chooses which
mythology that should fit "all"? Such people can stand or they can fall as we
surely will if we do not choose to fight.
________________________________________________
Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
Set your options at:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
