ReligionAndMarxism by Revolutionary Socialists Organisation (Pakistan) [انقلابی سوشلسٹ]

Internal Marxism Day School June 04, 2006

On Religion Riaz Ahmed

Questions

• Present Day Society • What Economic Oppression Generates • Religion as Spiritual Oppression • Modern Industrial Worker and Religion • Religion a Private Affair • Separation of Religion & State • Demand for Freedom by Religious Institutions

Questions

• Revolutionary Party and ‘Religion a Private Affair’ • Why We Don’t Declare ‘We are Atheists’? • Why We Don’t Forbid Believers to Join our Party? • Scientific World Outlook • Error: ‘Posing Religious Question in Abstract’ • Islamism

Anindya Bhattacharyya

‘But far fewer know the whole quote:’ • “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” (Marx)

Present Day Society • Based on exploitation, masses by tiny minority • Class of landowners/capital • Slaves, Means of subsistance • Profit

What Economic Oppression Generates • Political/social oppression

• “coarsening and darkening of spiritual and moral life of masses”

• Liberty to fight for eco eman possible but until capital not from poverty, unemployment, oppression • Religion spiritual oppression on overburdened masses

Religion as Spiritual Oppression • Impotence in struggle against exploiter “inevitably gives rise to the belief in better life after death” • Savage: impotence => belief in miracles, devils, gods etc • Toilers by religion: patient, submissive, heavenly reward • Oppressors by religion:

What Economic Oppression Generates • “Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worth of man”

Religion as Spiritual Oppression

Modern Industrial Worker and Religion • Conscious of his slavery • Struggles tf half slave • Large factory/urbanisation => cast aside religious prejudices • “Leaves heaven to priests, and capitalist bigots”

• Tries to win better life for himself on earth • Socialism uses science against fog of religion

Religion a Private Affair

• Religion must be declared a private affair • Need to define above accurately • Religion/Soc private for state • Not private for Party • Everyone free to profess any religion. Socialists atheists. • Discrimination on basis of religion intolerable

Separation of Religion & State • Mosques live in feudal dependence on state, people on mullahs, medieval laws: • persecute for belief/disbelief, violate consciences

• Cosy govt jobs/income for dope • “Complete separation of church and state is what the socialist proletariat demands of modern state and modern church”

Demand for Freedom by Religious Institutions

• Sep of rel/state component of political freedom • Revolting ‘reforms’ of religious institutions compel clergy to demand freedom • Clergy: protests against bureaucratic practices, officialism, spying • Socialists: support consistent demands

Religion for Party • Not a private affair • Party: class conscious, advanced fighters for eman of w.class • “Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in shape of religious beliefs”

• Disestablishment of religious institutions: to combat religious fog with ideo weapons • Ideological struggle not a private affair but the affair of whole Party

Why We Don’t Declare ‘We are Atheists’?

• Answer explains difference b/w us and capitalist/social democrats • Rev Party: Scientific, Materialist world-outlook • Explanation of socialism includes true historical and eco roots of religious fog • Our propaganda: publication of appropriate scientific literature

Why We Don’t Declare ‘We are Atheists’?

Error: Posing Religious Question in Abstract

• Careful • Liberal: Posing in abstract/idealist • Posing as ‘intellectual’ question unconnected with class struggle • “It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods”

Why We Don’t Declare ‘We are Atheists’?

Error: Posing Religious Question in Abstract • “It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. “

Error: Posing Religious Question in Abstract

Liberals criticism of religion

• ‘A careful examination of Marx’s writings on the subject reveals that while he certainly criticised religion, he was equally scathing about liberals who elevated criticism of religion over all other political concerns.’ • Liberal: ‘Fighting the influence of religious

institutions and obscurantist ideas is in itself the way to human liberation’

Error: Posing Religious Question in Abstract

Liberals criticism of religion

• Marx’s Jewish father Christian convert to escape oppression. • Marx backed campaign to scrap the laws that discriminated against Jews. • Marx debated Young Hegalians/Bauer :

‘religion the main enemy, tf support of Jews demanding

emancipation as Jews would be tantamount to capitulating to religion and the special pleading of a religious minority. Jews should first renounce their religion, he insisted, and only then would they deserve

Error: Posing Religious Question in Abstract

Liberals criticism of religion

â&#x20AC;˘ Marx: Religious faith was primarily an effect not cause of general oppression. â&#x20AC;˘ Focusing religion serves to obscure this wider picture, diverting energy away from real social struggle and into sterile theological debate.

Why We Don’t Declare ‘We are Atheists’?

Error: Posing Religious Question in Abstract • Rev Struggle unites oppressed • Not unity about idea of God/heaven • “Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.”

Religious Question • That is why we don’t set forth our atheism in our politics • Should not prohibit religious minded in Party • Always preach scientific outlook and combat inconsistency of various ‘sects’

Religious Question • Religious question is not our priority • Real revolutionary, economic, political (anti-imperailist) struggles should not be split on third rate ideas • Anti-war, Anti-imperialist struggle equating war and Islamic terrorism ‘rapidly lost

Ruling Class Divides Masses â&#x20AC;˘ Madressahs are a problem, Terrorism is Pakistan-based, Suicide bombers because religious ideas -- Diversion

â&#x20AC;˘ Real economic, social and political problems created by neo-liberalism.

Ruling Class Divides Masses •

Real economic, social and political problems created by neoliberalism:

• 5 million less students in primary schools in Musharraf’s regime, Karachi: 2 lakh pass matric 4% go to university, no jobs, two-tier education system, money for stockbrokers, textile barons, bank-loans not for hospitals, transport, housing, water, sewerage

• Calm, consistent, patient preaching of proletarian solidarity and scientific world-out-look -doesn’t require secondary

Islamism • Two approaches to modern Islamic political movements • Islamism as reaction incarnate • Progressive, anti-imperialist

Confusion: Power of Religion • Religious/free-thinkers see religion as a historical force in its own right • Actually: Religious institutions, priests and teachers arise in certain society and interact with that society • Roman Catholic church: late ancient world, 1000 yrs in fuedal, next capitalism-- changing content of its own teaching in progress

Islam • Arose in trading community in towns of 7th century Arabia -society mainly tribally organised • Flourished within great empires • Today ideology of capitalist states: Pakistan, Saudi, Sudan, Iran • Inspiration to many oppositional movements • Survives: Because Adapts

Islam

Adapts/Survives

• Finance from Saudi traders, bureacrats, landowners, merchants and industrialists of modern capitalism • for mosques, madressah, preachers

• Also support of mass of ordinary • puts across a message offering consolation to poor and oppressed

• Balances message

• b/w a degree of protection to oppresed and protection from rev overthrow of exploiters

Islam

For Rich & Poor • Rich: • pay 2.5% zakat, govern in just way, husbands not mistreat wife

• Poor: • Expropriation of rich by poor ‘theft’ • Disobedience to ‘just’ govt crime • Fewer rights for women

• Appeal: • poor and wealthy alike by offering regulation of oppression

Islam

For Rich & Poor • Bulwark: • against harsher oppression and revolution • like Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism

Full of Ambiguities • Ambigious tf appeals to different classes

esp shaken by social convulsions • Has to be open to differing interpretations • at the price of opposing camps

• Muhammad’s death 632 AD • 2 yrs after fateh-e-Mecca • dissension -- Abu Bakr/Ali • Ali- Ruling of Bakr oppressive

• Battle of Camel -- 10,000 died

• Dissension -- First split -- Shia & Sunni

Mainstream Islam

Not Homogenous Set of Beliefs • NW Africa to Bay of Bengal • involved: ‘incorporation into Islamic society of peoples who fitted into Islam many of their old religious practices, sometimes contrary to original tenets of Islam’ • popular Islam: cults of local saints, holy relics • Sufi brotherhood: mystical, magical • orthodox Islam: regards these as idolatry

Mainstream Islam

Fundamentalism: Against Traditionalism • Call for return to practices of prophet’s time not realy about conserving the past but reshaping people’s behaviour into something quite new • Khomeini : ‘Unfortunately, true Islam lasted for only a brief period after its inception. First the Umayyids (after Ali) and then the Abbasids (after Umayyids) inflicted all kinds of damage on Islam. Later the monarchs ruling Iran continued in the same path; they completely distorted Islam and established something quite different in its place’.

Mainstream Islam

Reality

• Both defenders and opponents • Islamism as traditionalist doctrine based on a rejection of modern world • in reality things are more complicated

• Aspiration to recreate a mythical past • involves not leaving existing society intact, but recasting it

• Islamists: • do not reject every feature of existing society

Mainstream Islam

Reality

• Accept modern industry, modern technology, science • Revivalists: fusing ancient traditions and forms of modern social life • Wrong to refer to all Islamists as ‘reactionary’ ‘Islamic fundamentalist’

Mainstream Islam

Interpretations of Regeneration

• Blurred difference b/w Islamism and traditionalism • Notion of social regeneration wrapped in religious language • Different interpretation • May mean ending ‘degenerate practices’ due ‘cultural imperailism’ − veil, mixing, segregated schools/workplace, against music

• May mean challenging imperialism’s political domination

Mainstream Islam

Interpretations of Regeneration • Different interpretations: • apply to different social classes • religious phraseology prevents those involved recognizing differences

• Heat of Struggle • individuals mix meanings • so ‘fight against unveiling of women is seens as a fight against the Western oil companise and abysmal poverty of the mass’ • Yet beneath this confusion of ideas there are real class interests at work

Anindya Bhattacharyya