I was listening to some writings on Marx by Lenin the other day and as far as I understood it: materialism is the idea that consciousness is a byproduct material interactions within reality as opposed to the idealist conception that reality only exists within and as a construct of consciousness. Marx extended the materialist conception in dialectical materialism to consider social interactions and structures as material conditions that are also required to produce consciousness. Lenin also writes of Marx’s belief that religion and theology is inherently idealist, and that ideas like agnosticism that tried reconcile religion and materialism were reactionary or a “shame-faced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world”.
the above paragraph is of course a gross oversimplification of idealism, materialism and dialectical materialism, and may be partially or entirely wrong. I found the original text to be quite difficult to comprehend and this is just how I understood it, so if I’m wrong about anything please correct me.
moving on, it seems to me that many Marxist-Leninists think that one of many contributing factors to the decline and collapse of the USSR was the suppression of religion, especially as it did not seem to be particularly effective given how quickly religion returned after the collapse. with all the aforementioned in mind, I have a few questions:
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do you think that religion is antithetical to dialectical materialism?
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was suppression of religion in the USSR enforced out of a belief by the party that it contradicted the principles of Marxism–Leninism?
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would a socialist state with a party that strictly adhered to Marxism–Leninism but allowed religious freedom among its citizenship be stable?
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would a hypothetical state be able to cultivate material conditions that lead people to willingly give up religion, if said state decided that religion was a threat to its sovereignty?
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have you personally experienced any cognitive dissonance from simultaneously holding religious and Marxist-Leninist beliefs?
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I haven’t read/listened to a whole lot of theory, what literature would you recommend to better understand dialectical materialism?
I think the issue is mixing religions together as one homogeneous thing, with groups of people who only knew religion through oppression and never saw a religious preacher doing something other than stealing people’s money and diddling kids, and they can’t seem to comprehend when an another group holds on to their religion, like if your only experience with religion is the KKK crucifying black people you’d assume native tribal religions are similar if you didn’t do research on it.
An example I have to give from Algeria is that Algeria isn’t ruled by sharia and Algerians aren’t strict practicers of Islam, but people here are extremely anti-secular, why? Because of the “secular” French colonialism doing everything it can to destroy Islam and spread Christianity, they used to starve us then bring breads a crosses, they used to kidnap kids and convert them to Christianity, they turned our ancient mosques into horse barns, they made us work in wine plantations. For us this is what “secularism” means… And also whatever tf secularist Tunisia was doing, like they used to shove fanta bottles into islamist enemies of america as a torture method tf
I 100% agree, but it pisses me off a lot when marxists do it bc i have higher hopes
To quote
Out of curiosity, would you agree that Islam generally is more progressive, or has more potential for such, than many of the other Abrahamic religions?
That’s been my perspective, because of various things like the explicit anti-racism/supremacism (compared to some forms of Judaism for example, or Christianity of a particular period/form), the promise of eventual equality and elimination of poverty and a mandated redistributive method unlike Christianity’s looser ‘you should’ thing (kind of pie in the sky, but still), the avoidance of the ‘god king’ of Papacy, and also just how popular it seems - in its early times and also currrently, in terms of gaining converts (or returnees as I suppose they’d say) to Islam.
Not to say that it always is, or that particular forms or teachings aren’t regressive, but generally that seems the case to me. It seems to have a big draw for poor people in the west I think. And not to say that the others can’t be progressive, but they’re generally less so at least in their current forms.
I’d say Islam allows socialist relations more immediately, but I think we forget that many Christian and Jewish movements have been Socialist or Communist. Marx himself calls out the Diggers as the first flickering light of modern Socialism.
And the “God King of the Papacy” is not just ignoring the many breakaway sects, but maybe an oversimplification of Catholic history.
Revolts by Agrarian Socialist groups have often appealed to the Pope as protection against the feudal or early capitalist exploitation of the local Bishoprics or the Papal States nobility.
Finally I’d say Jesus’s “sell all you have to the poor and follow me” is a pretty direct method of redistribution, if not a popular one.
I’m not fully educated on islamic teachings and I am not fully educated on progressiveness.But what I noticed is that generally Islam is progressive except in current woman and queer rights which only got better in the west in the past century, which also aligns with the period most Muslims in the world fell under colonial and wahabbi hands.
I think islam is more popular with the oppressed because the story of Muhammad resonates better than other prophets, like Moses cut the sea and helped the jews escape oppression, Jesus in christianity got crucified and the oppressed people basically lost, but Muhammed was this outcast who even though was part of a rich ruling tribe choose to teach the poor and lead them to fight against his own tribe and own family, one of his closests was an African slave who got freed. And even after he took over Mecca he forced himself to only take what’s enough to eat, he used to tie a rock to his stomach so he wouldn’t feel hungry, there was zakat which was given to the poor. You don’t need a miracle to do what Muhammed did to help the oppressed it’s realistic and easy to resonate with.
I think material conditions are a factor here. Christianity was formalized as a tool of empire.
If you look at the Islam that was practiced in places where it was party of thr state hierarchy I am sure you would find it less liberatory than the Islam we see after centuries of them being marginalized by society
Great point. There was a lot of disinterest in actually learning about the societies of many of these minority populations. It gets annoying when I just casually look for writings on folks tales from Siberia or Central Asia and find the same note of “this researcher wrote a book collecting and studying these stories, but wasn’t allowed to publish it with the states reason being that it would encourage nationalism and anti-sovietism.”
Often the republic’s CP would ban things because they worried about being seen as encouraging nationalism and didn’t want the Union government to step in either in fear of a crackdown or just to maintain their own powerbase. Sometimes the Premier will personally get involved and allow something to be published, overriding the local party. Minority ethnic history and religion became used as an excuse during deportations, and well after those ended or in populations that never did get deported, the sense was that secularism was a threat.