I went to Vietnam a couple times. If you hang out downtown in the city, you might get a random Jehovah’s Witness or Seventh Day Adventist* try to chat you up. “Oh, we can’t do missionary work out in the open, so we just do one-on-one conversations like this”. Despite the lack of “Jesus saves, die sinner” signs in Hanoi, you can definitely find Catholic and Protestant churches in Vietnam.
The Western press likes to piss and moan about settler nation missionaries that go, without proper visas mind you, to spread their Western versions of Christianity to the DPRK, only to get deported. So am I allowed to enter a white people country without a visa to stir up trouble and expect no consequences???
I’m the furthest thing from an expert on Myanmar. I get everything I know from Burmese friends. But if you look into the minority people situation, many of them are being heavily proselytised by the worst of the Amerikan type. I don’t want the Pat Robertson’s the world anywhere near struggling people.
*I’m definitely not saying that JWs and SDAs are anywhere near the worst as Christian sects go.
I think it’s pure idealism to think that a social phenomenon that predates class society will somehow go puff as soon as class society is abolished. Religion predates class society, so obviously whatever human need or social function it fulfills isn’t attached to class society.
Not exactly. Worship yes, but religion as institution everywhere tended to be the cornerstone of class society, archeological findings in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Americas clearly points on priests being the first unproductive class that started to exploit others and eventually also got political and military power and became aristocracy. Getting rid of classes and private property will not liquidate religion but it will greatly weaken it. On the other hand there would be very much need to help this process before liquidation of classes, since religion could be very much again a catalyst for the class society.
I guess my question would be what’s the difference between organized worship and (organized) religion. In a communist society, people would be far less alienated from each other and much more likely to participate in collective activities. This would range from creating art to playing sports to cooking to to collective study, but this could easily be applied to something like worship. It’s extraordinarily unlikely that people would do so many productive and recreational things collectively but choose to worship individually. And with any collective activity, there’s always going to be de facto veterans and leaders, so in the context of collective worship, this would lead to a de facto clergy.
I don’t really want to speculate anymore since we obviously aren’t close to a communist society, and I’m not making a definitive claim that worship/religion is an inherent part of the human condition. I just think people are getting way ahead of themselves when they say, “let’s abolish religion lmao.” Let’s focus on getting to socialism and communism first before we even think about abolishing religion.
Yet this is exactly the condition that born religion once. If you didn’t noticed, most religions is based on collective activities and this is the base of their organisations and the danger they pose. We WANT religion to be purely individual, that would means its withering and removed danger from it.
Yes that’s why this needs to be at most, even in most basic stage of socialism, treated just as the art or sports or cooking club, anything more and you get religion undermining socialist state and leading to what happened in East Europe. At least because they WILL try to organise and EVERY religious organisation will by its very nature be against marxist state.
Yes, and during socialist stage, state having monopoly on violence could keep them in check, but what about later, in communism?
We can see a time in the past where nothing like this existed, religion is as much natural as capitalism is, and just as we can eventually eliminate the latter, there’s no reason we can’t do it with the former, just we don’t yet know any successful methods, though some experiments were promising, for example in Czechia atheism stays high even despite dismantling socialism - in other words, state supression of religion works, we just did not did it long enough and made mistakes in it (For the records, i think both China and Cuba are making a mistake with current supportive politics, they just freeze and push back the reaction, once some kind of trouble stands, those will rise as center of opposition, just remember how churches acted as snitch points during the revolution in Cuba).
Depends what they means about it. Just press the button lol nope, just as in case of the class society which were born from and alongside religion. But i am of strong opinion that religion should be, just as class, combated by socialism with its eventual elimination actively sought of. I think Lenin was on the right way in his article about militant materialism (note the word chosen, not atheism, not antitheism, but militant materialism, as in promoting better alternative to combat trash of history just as promoting socialism to get rid of feudal and capitalist dregs).
No, as above we should strive to do it at the same time, i don’t belive communism could even be reached without getting rid of or at least completely neutralising religions.
I guess it goes back to whether you think worship is an inherent part of the human condition. If we broadly agree with worship -> collective worship -> organized religion, then communism would have to negate the impulse towards worship somehow. I’m not sure how you would get rid of worship. I would imagine that at a minimum, humanity would have to no longer fear their mortality and no longer feel anguish over other people’s deaths. So it’s not enough that you no longer fear death but you also no longer feel anguish other people’s death to the point where you would resort to coping mechanisms to process their deaths.
It’s not enough that material conditions get better for people to no longer fear death. In fact, I think it’s the exact opposite. As material conditions get better, people will have a greater sense of attachment and ownership over their material surroundings and a corresponding greater existential anxiety towards death which will be seen as an event that robs people of experiencing this wonderful material world. In other words, I believe there’s a contradiction between humanity creating heaven on Earth through communism and humanity’s understanding of death as robbing people of experiencing heaven on Earth. One form of cope would of course be a spiritual heaven that’s a mirror of material heaven.
I believe the general chain is fear of death/anguish over death -> worship as cope over the inevitability and painfulness of death -> collective worship -> organized religion. And I have absolutely no clue how humanity would get over death or whether it’s entirely possible. I don’t mean individuals but humanity as a collective whole. The only thing I could think of is some kind of transhumanism where (trans)humans can’t die. There would be no point in believing in a heaven or a soul if you can’t even get to heaven and your soul will never separate from your body by virtue of not dying. But this is complete speculation verging on worldbuilding of some fictional scifantasy world at this point.
Pretty much the same problem how would you get rid of other similar elements of superstructure, like petty-bourgeoisie sentiments. I guess time, propaganda and education but Lenin not for nothing said it’s the hardest part of revolution. Again this is something we have to yet develop methods, but i don’t see why it’s impossible. I guess easiest would be to canalise that into something else - funnily enough you can see capitalism doing that very successfully by destroying the traditional societal values and structures and canalising and weakening the worship into various other targets. Of course we should strive to be way better than that, but i just use it as example that it is possible when the ruling class ideas are in non-priestly hands.
I don’t think that is even very relevant? I know plenty of people and there were a lot of them historically, especially communists, which didn’t reacted with worship to fear of death. It’s more that the death is completely relegated to the hands of priests so there is barely any alternatives. In this case creating classless society where people live without fear and alienation would probably take care of most of it by itself.
Is that even supported by any research? Sound like something Moliere criticised in his play or an argument to “human nature” like greed is good and eternal etc. If that’s your personal experience from people around you, you might consider changing your surroundings.
I won’t comment on the rest because it is pure speculation going even further than the idea of classless society. We have more pressing concerns like how to stop the christofash and their cassock overlords.
Yeah
The changing base recreates the superstructures upon it. I don’t disagree that it may not go “poof” and disappear, however the liberation of production and centralization of power in the hands of the workers creates new paradigms that may or may not undermine the foundation that foments religious belief I the first place.
This is also what i think, but note that historically religion was catalyst for class society, so i ccanot imagine classless society with priesthood existing in any form.
It’s the other way around. Class society is the cause, not the effect, of religion.
Or rather, they both cause and result from each other… but the base is always more fundamental than the superstructure.
Otherwise we’re getting into territory where the basis of society is not economic, but religious. Which is not materialist but idealist, essentially Hegelian rather than Marxist.
AES states are not classless, therefore not without religion. But definitely working toward religious abolition indirectly through class abolition.
Society is the cause of religion, definitely, but at first it wasn’t class society. Hard to tell exactly because lack of infromation but first parasite classes almose everywhere were priests and for this didn’t happened for no reason. Remember that relation between base and superstructure isn’t completely one directional.
Yes, the base was in every case control over distribution of goods, which then turned slowly into private property. And that distribution was based in religion, granaries were temples.
I never implied that
Yes, but working towards abolishing it should be more direct and proactive, just like getting rid of other non desirable superstructure elements.