On 3/8/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So
religion is going to be around for a long long time: it's based in the
mortality of people and the fact that we live in groups. I think that
agnostics (like myself) and especially atheists (Dawkins _et al_) need
to learn to live it. It's better than heroin, after all.
Marx and Marxists have often thought that religion is basically either
a ruling-class ideology to facilitate exploitation or a sigh of the
oppressed substituting heaven for an earthly kingdom or both. There
are both aspects in religion, and those aspects may disappear if
exploitation and oppression can be done away with (which doesn't seem
possible any time soon), but in all likelihood religion predates the
rise of class society and will probably outlive it, how to face death
-- one's own or others' -- being one of the questions that religion
may be better equipped to address than science.
Yoshie writes: >Even systematic atheists can, however, very well have
"belief in hope beyond reason." Crisis theory among leftists, many
(or most?) of whom are systematic atheists, is informed by one such
belief imho.<
_all_ crisis theory among leftists? Yoshie, please avoid this kind of
sweeping generalization. it's like Doug making his snide remarks about
the opinions of pen-l without noting the existence of exceptions. Such
stereotypes do not aid dialog within, and unity of, what's left of the
left.
I don't intend to address all varieties of crisis theory here, but
there are a couple of trends, I think:
1. Leftists used to be more interested in crisis theory that posits
immanent limits to capital, but today they seem increasingly
interested in crisis theory that posits external limits ("peak oil"
being one of the popular ones) to it. Maybe that's a sign of
exhaustion of crisis theory.
2. In the heyday of socialism, even the most knuckle-headed
socialists equipped with only the most simplistic notion of crisis had
means to connect their thoughts on it to the practical question of
transition. Today, though, even the most sophisticated thoughts on
crisis exist without a link to practice.
A while ago, Michael Yates posted a link to Sam Gindin's notes on US
hegemony and opportunities for the Left:
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/gindin090207.html>. Sam essentially
argues against the "belief in hope beyond reason," the idea of US
hegemony unraveling on its own, and proposes instead that we think
about what we can do about new openings that are emerging. But that
generated no discussion here (or on LBO-talk where Michael also posted
the link). Instead, people just want to follow news about strains and
downturns of capitalism, and postings about those become threads.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
