Debate, Solidarity and Internationalism

Lionel Sims: dragon

EXTRACT: Later in the week CU saw the launch of Jack Conrad’s Fantastic reality: Marxism and the politics of religion - extensively rewritten and re-edited, with four extra chapters. Comrade Conrad explained in his talk that he had decided to excise some of the sections dealing with immediate or contemporaneous political questions, which by definition would turn out to be essentially ephemeral or of limited relevance, thereby leaving room for more historical material. Not for the first time, the comrade expressed astonishment at the fact that a question of such vital importance for the working class movement has received such scant attention - barely moving on from Karl Kautsky’s magnificent, though far from perfect, 1908 study, The foundations of Christianity.
Comrade Conrad emphasised how communists have no interest in fighting a Richard Dawkins-like ‘war on religion’, let alone in introducing a hellishly oppressive theocracy along the lines of Enver Hoxha’s Albania or some other Stalinist freak society. He reminded us that Marx’s famous comment about religion being the “opium of the people” has been continually misinterpreted, even though the intent should be more than clear. In the 19th century opium was routinely dispensed in order to relieve pain. Religion, therefore - or at least as Marx saw it - was a coping mechanism, or spiritual sticking plaster, sought after by those suffering from social alienation, exploitation and oppression (“the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions”). Armed with this truly humanist understanding, we can see that all religions - to one extent or another - are promising pie in the sky, or communism, when you die. Trying to ‘abolish’ religion without first abolishing the alienated material conditions that give rise to religion is actually an inhuman policy. And another Stalinist legacy.

READ MORE