Beyond Religiosity
The Marxist Challenge to Consciously Evolve
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
MI Kalinin, in the 1953 book entitled On Communist Education states:
‘I once made the statement at the Lobachevsky Military Academy that to study Marxism does not mean to read through Marx, Engels, and Lenin; you may study their works from cover to cover, you may be able to repeat their ideas word for word, but that will not necessarily signify that you have really learned Marxism. To learn Marxism means to know after mastering the Marxist method how to approach all other problems connected with your work. If, let us say, the sphere of your future work is agriculture, will it be an advantage to be able to employ the Marxist method? Of course it will. But to employ the Marxist method, you have to be an agricultural expert. Otherwise nothing will come of your attempt to apply Marxism in agriculture. This should not be forgotten if you wish to apply Marxism in practice, if you wish to be men of action, and not textmongers of Marxism. But what does being a Marxist mean? It means being able to adopt the correct line. But to be able to adopt the correct, Marxist line, you also need to be a first-rate expert in your particular sphere of activity.’ (Pages 14-15)
Marx (and Engels) did not write a great deal about religion– there is no single masterpiece amongst the 50 volume output that specifically deals with the minutiae of religious belief and practice – but what he did write is singularly devastating to religion as a concept. Admittedly Marx was writing from the perspective of the European experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which had spread from the Middle East (via Rome) and taken root in the psychological and cultural fabric of that continent. Due to Christianity eventually achieving the status of state religion in Rome, its presence in Europe, in both its earlier Catholic, and later Protestant manifestations, has always been highly politicised, socially aggressive, and culturally destructive. This religious construct became a political (and oppressive) force in its own right, to the extent that its seminaries and priests developed a justifying theology that deviates alarmingly from the original teachings of its presumed founder. This led to the peculiar situation of a religion claiming a unique moral right to interfere in the affairs of humanity, whilst simultaneously practicing an obvious form of direct hypocrisy, designed solely to retain political power and influence by keeping the common people in an arrested state of psychological and cultural development. This oppression was nothing other than a manic drive for political power at all costs, by a minority of clerics who claimed a higher knowledge simply because they possessed the ability to read and write – an ability they jealously guarded and prevented from spreading throughout ordinary society. This dominance was initiated by mimicking the indigenous non-Christian belief systems encountered by an expanding church in Europe, which prepared the way for these early religions to be systematically attacked, ridiculed, and finally destroyed. This process of aggressive internal (i.e. psychological), and external (i.e. political/cultural) colonisation even included the attacking and destroying of other types of Christianity, and the rampant spread of anti-Semitism throughout Europe. This destructive process spread out of the geographical confines of Europe during the European colonial expansion period, (c. 1500 – 1950), and is still happening today through the activities of well funded Christian missionaries who enter non-European cultures with the specific aim of converting the populace to Christianity. This religiosity has two distinct components; the first is the propagation of illogical and superstitious beliefs as a higher form of logic, and the second is the creation and sustaining of a social system predicated upon theology, that privileges the church as a dominant class, whilst fiercely oppressing and suppressing the majority of people whose status is literally (and theologically) reduced to that of the status of ‘sheep’ living in a field. The sheep have no other experiences of life, than that decided by the farmer. There is a presumed higher knowledge, or divine wisdom that justifies the existence of the church and its activities in the world. The church defines its own definitions and activities as ‘good’ (i.e. from god), and every other definition and activity the product of evil, (i.e. from the devil). It ascribes to itself an all-knowing and privileged position in the world – a position presumed to link the world of humanity to the world of theistic heaven.
The attitude of Karl Marx with regard to religion is the product of his philosophical development away from the philosophy associated with the Young Hegelian movement. Hegel, despite his incisive mind, and modern approach to philosophy, nevertheless, still adhered (at the foundation of his thinking), to the Judeo-Christian notion that the material world was created from nothing by a divine entity (i.e. god). To Marx, this appeared as a secular inclined philosophy that still predicated its thinking upon a Judeo-Christian construct, and as a consequence was flawed as it still retained one foot firmly within the camp of religious dogma. Hegel was stating clearly that god created humanity. Marx accepted one of the key ideas proposed by Ludwig Feuerbach in his critique of religion, which stated that it was humanity that created religion, and not the other way around. This simple reversal of Hegelian philosophical thought signifies for Marx, the complete break with historical idealism. This transformative process did not happen overnight, and essentialist elements of idealistic assessment can still be detected in his 1843 critique of Bruno Bauer’s essay entitled ‘On the Jewish Question’. Here, Marx presents the essence of Judaism as a set of monetary relations based upon a Jewish presence (or insertion) into medieval European society. He does not view this monetary relationship as the theological essence of Judaism, it must be said, but rather as the historical reality that Jewish populations inhabit. Marx is not interested in religious Judaism; in fact he treats this idea as something of a misnomer, but only in the assessment of reality as it presents itself to the logical mind through the analysis of history, and how that history manifests in the present moment. However, it is clear in this text that Marx has psychologically moved away from the consideration of religious teaching as nothing other than the assessment of superstition and irrationality. His antagonism toward religion (and religious adherents) is obvious, and despite his borrowing from Feuerbach, Marx would ultimately criticise this thinker for not going far enough in the development of the implications of his own ideas. Meanwhile, in his 1844 Introduction to his On the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx writes a pivotal and defining text with regard to his attitude toward religion;
‘Man, who has found in the fantastical reality of heaven, where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reflection, will no longer be tempted to find only the semblance of himself – a non-human being – where he seeks and must seek his true reality.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: The human being makes religion; religion does not make the human being. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of the human who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But the human is no abstract being squatting outside the world. The human is the world of the human – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual power point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.’
An inverted consciousness is a false consciousness, or a view of the world that is the wrong way around. Marx is suggesting that religion, as both a body of distinct teachings, and as a concept, is the product of a lost (and previously correct) self-consciousness. This correct consciousness, or the ability to view existence free from superstition, dogma, and idealism, is obscured by an inverted reality which infects the mind of the individual from birth, and which is perpetuated by the state and society. As both the state and society are premised upon an inverted (i.e. unnatural) view of the world, it follows that everything produced by such an entity is necessarily flawed in the same manner as its creator. Religion gains its power through human imagination. As the real essence of humanity is lost, the imaginative process, aided and abetted by the intellect, creates a theological monolith that masquerades as objective truth. This projects a fantastic illusion upon the human mind (and the world it inhabits), that ascribes all manner of illogical attributes to human consciousness. The only available methodology to hold it all together is the requirement for blind faith amongst the adherents, because as soon as it is questioned, the edifice of religion is threatened with collapse. As society perpetuates religion amongst its citizens, Marx suggests that the false world of religion is directly representative of the false world of the state, and that a struggle against one, is a struggle against the other. This is the revolutionary psychology of the Marxian critique of religion. To read and understand what Marx has written, is to set into motion a transformative psychological process that frees the individual from the tyranny of history and religion. Marx creates the inner conditions for the regaining, or rediscovery of a true or correct self-consciousness free from the conditioned thought patterns of an enslaving mentality. And yet Marx does not dismiss religion entirely out of hand. Yes, for Marx religion is the epitome of false consciousness, but he readily admits that its teachings permeate society to an extensive degree. Indeed, the teachings of religion serve as a common logic amongst the people, and provide the material for an entire body of knowledge that is assumed to explain the entirety of reality. This is the pervasive nature of religion and explains why a struggle against it, is also a struggle against an inverted society. If the correct self-consciousness of humanity is not lost, then Marx suggests that religion would have no currency amongst the people, as the conditions for its creation would not exist. It is clear that Marx is not anti-religious; even though his comments definitely do not agree with religious teaching, dogma, or theology. The Marxian view of religion is one that is intended to set the human mind free of its self-limiting conditioning. Through this liberating perspective, his viewpoint can not be truthfully viewed as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ religion, as Marx, whilst acknowledging the importance that deluded society holds for religion, nevertheless, treats religion as an irrelevance that should be moved beyond as soon as possible. For Marx, religion is a fairytale, and although its content (in allegorical or metaphorical form) might allude to this or that process or understanding, it remains at best a hopeless mishmash of imagination and false assumptions. This is why Marx continues assessing religion in the Introduction to his On the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in the following manner;
‘Religion misery is, at one and the same time, the expression of real misery and the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the soul of a heartless world, as well as the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. To supersede religion as illusionary happiness of the people is to require their real happiness. To require that they give up their illusions about their conditions is to require that they give up a condition that necessitates illusion. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.’
Religion is suffering, because the structure of religion is premised upon a distorted vision of reality which is compounded by the oppression of the state upon its citizens. Religion makes its adherents suffer, whilst claiming that a freedom from suffering is just around the corner, albeit in an after-life following physical death. Those psychologically conditioned to accept religion have no choice but to suffer as a consequence, even though as individuals, they may interpret their deeply held religious beliefs to be a means of relieving the ills of the world. Marx suggests that although many people genuinely feel that they are adhering to a religion because it makes the world a better place, in reality religion itself is the preserver and conveyance of the very suffering that is presumed to be over-come. Religion traps within its developmental confines, the original suffering of its first adherents, and passes this suffering from one generation to the next. Religion promises a freedom it can not existentially provide, and so its ‘saviour’ quality has to be projected into another mystical world which can not be seen from this world. Therefore the psychological constructs of theology are derived from an escapist mentality; that is premised upon the notion of escaping from a prison cell, but with no logical means of escape – other than physical death. Of course, physical death is not an escape in conventional terms, but rather the non-functioning of the physical body. As theology is powerless to affect processes in the physical world, it has had to develop a different way of measuring success. This measuring device is actually the dispensing with the means of measuring altogether, and to stand in its place a fantastical representation of the universe that can not be seen by anyone, but which is assumed to exist just beyond the horizon of human perception. This is the illusion that Marx suggests must be abandoned and given-up altogether if real human freedom is to be found. Fantastical imagery may serve as a short-term and distracting entertainment for the human mind, but this in itself produces no freedom from suffering. Theology, religious belief and practice act as a temporary anaesthetic which Marx likens to the drug opium. The imbuing of opium may numb the mind and body for a time, but such an experience changes nothing about the structure or functioning of the objective world. Religion, with its supposed function of relieving suffering in the world, is the vehicle through which suffering is preserved and sustained. Marx states;
‘Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not in order that man shall bear the chain without caprice or consolation but so that he shall cast off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason; so that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun about which man revolves so long as he does not revolve about himself. It is the immediate task of philosophy – to unmask the self-estrangement, in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.’
Religion is inherently positioned as a psychologically and physically conditioned crossroads in the centre of life. No part of the bourgeois system can escape criticism, because no part of the bourgeois system is free from the influence of religious conditioning in one form or another. Marx, emphasising the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, equates the achieving of freedom from religion, with that of securing the status of a rational, reasoning being free from superstitious beliefs. A rational, reasoning human being shines like a real sun, rather than being trapped and revolving around the false sun of theology. In other words, theology is a false light pretending to lead humanity to safety. But which in reality just leads its adherents around in circles that go nowhere. Through the philosophy of good ideas, Marx seeks to set the record straight by transforming theological spirituality into the correct use of the human mind. In this definition of the use of the human mind, the term ‘spiritual’ takes on a totally different meaning and describes a mind that is free from the superstition of theology, and which continuously produces advanced and progressive ideas. In the German Ideology, Marx (and Engels) states:
‘The class that possesses the means of material production, by virtue of this also possesses the means of spiritual production… The individuals composing the ruling class possess, among other things, consciousness as well, and by virtue of this, think. In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and scope of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in all its spheres, hence rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; and that means that their ideas are the dominant ones of the epoch.’
Having established how Marx viewed and critiqued religion predominantly in the West, a number of interesting questions emerge. How should a communist approach religion and religious adherents, and does Marx’s criticisms of religion apply to non-Judeo-Christian paths? The Marxian perspective is that alienation from the true self leads to escapist adventures in the mind, and that no matter how powerful or suggestive a theological idea may be, it has no relevance in reality beyond the human mind that conceives it. This is not to say that it has no affect in the world, on the contrary, history is strewn with the dead of millions who fought one another to the death because of differing theological constructs. This example follows the general assumption that to varying degrees, ignorance is dangerous to humanity. The Marxian answer to this is to end this state of ignorance and allow the human mind to develop and function optimally. This is in accordance with evolutionary thinking and sets the agenda for conscious transformation. This is true despite the fact that Marx placed the greatest emphasis upon the analysis of the physical (or material) conditions of history. He acknowledged that it is the human mind that is conditioned by history, but which, under the right circumstances, can also condition history. Marx wants humanity to stop being the passive victims of conditioned history, and to start the process of conditioning history for the betterment of humanity’s existence. This involves, according to Marx, the ascendency of the working class (proletariat), over that of the middle class (bourgeois), so that a great equalising of society and its resources can be dramatically established. This socialist revolution creates the historical conditions for humanity to evolve beyond basic levels of human consciousness, which to date has been based upon the domination of the many, by the few. The Judeo-Christian religion has been part of the process of holding back human conscious evolutio from developing to the next stage. How should Marxists approach religiously minded individuals? Lenin states the following in his 1899 work entitled Our Programme;
‘We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.’
Developing Marxism in all directions, as Lenin advises, is the logical answer to the religious question. As religion has stubbornly survived down to present, even in the former Soviet Union, it is unlikely that it will wither on the branch. Religion, as the centre-piece to bourgeois exploitation, will survive as long as bourgeois society survives. Therefore, even if the correct Marxist attitude is cultivated toward religion, the constructs of religion within a bourgeois society continue to influence directly both the religiously minded, and indirectly the secular process. Much cultural expression in the secular West is the product of religion stripped of its obvious religious garb. It is, in a very real sense, the presence religious processes continuing to function without an obvious reliance upon the recognition of a god concept. This ‘behind the scenes’presence of the Judeo-Christian religion, acts as the psychological and emotional cement that binds the bourgeois secular world together. What is needed is the obvious transformation of religious theology into that of Marxian philosophy, so that the religious salvation promised (but never delivered) by theology, is actually delivered through the rubric of communist thought. This dialectical process requires an engagement with religion that allows for, and facilitates this transformative development away from primitive beliefs, to that of reasoned arguments. More than this, however, but such a process necessarily redefines the relationship between communism and religion, without compromising Marxist thinking. Marxist thinking can end the alienation that justifies the existence of religion, and in that expedient capacity, usher in a new psychological and physical era of human advancement. Marxist thinking must be made relevant to the religiously minded so that they willingly develop their own ideas out of the dogmatic cul de sac they find themselves within. This is an example of Marxism taking a pro-active course into the realm of religiosity and liberating its adherents from the inside. As Kalinin teaches, Marxists can only assist the development of society if they understand the norms and practices of the specific areas they seek to transform.
As the demise of the obvious outer forms of institutional Christianity unfolds in the West, a psychological gulf - a free space (formerly dominated by theology) – is revealed in the human mind. This free space (which often retains a yearning for something beyond itself), can be utilised by the Marxist cause, and through socialist education, lead the individual to the higher level of communal thinking and dialectical understanding. This assists the demise of the social and political institutes of religion that have built-up over centuries of exploitation of the people, and effectively removes religion as a political force at its psychological root. The presence of Marxian philosophy can act as a means to prevent the falling of the human mind into a false consciousness that obscures reason. This return to normality, or psychological balance (i.e. true self-consciousness), is a transformation away from an imbalanced state of mind. Of course, in reality, Marxian philosophy is a preventative measure that develops the human mind into its full and optimum functioning capacity, but in that role it can reduce and remove the sense of alienation that lies at the root of religious thinking. For a religious thinking person, placing the mind the right way around appears to be a transformative experience. Marx acknowledges (in Das Kapital I) that the human being is unique, in that s/he possesses the ability to construct abstract images in the mind, before taking action in the world;
“A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of his honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax.”
If theistic religion is the psychological (and physical) concretisation of historical suffering within a distinct body of knowledge passed on from one generation to the next, then the insight of Karl Marx into its true nature is both shocking and stark. Religious thinking, generally speaking, presents itself as a panacea, a cure all for human ills, and yet according to Marx it is in fact performing the exact opposite function – it is preserving the very suffering it claims to transcend. For Marx, conventional religion is the bulwark of the oppressive state, and represents a highly conservative psychological (and physical) road block on the path to true conscious growth. This is why Lenin refers to religion as a ‘private matter’, that is, a matter of concern between an individual as his own psychology. As religion has no place in the outward manifestation of an advanced society, its establishments must be disinvested of all social power. A socialist and communist society strives to remove all sense of alienation from the minds of its citizens, by creating non-alienating physical constructs and establishments free of the inherent oppression of the old system. It is Marxism that carries out the true transformation of the individual and society, and which reveals religion to be an imposter. Religiously minded people must develop their understanding away from the seductive nature of scripture, and toward the rational nature of Marxism, and it is incumbent upon Marxists everywhere to assist in this process of radical realignment, if Marxian thinking is to truly spread into every corner of society both psychologically and physically.
Many religiously minded individuals are part of religious networks that have no intention whatsoever of transcending the alienated human condition, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. This creates a false intellectualism that takes its authority directly from scripture, mediated by the strong personalities of ecclesiastical hierarchies, and cult leaders – often it is difficult to discern the difference. This religious pretension in the West, that simultaneously claims a higher knowledge, whilst demonstrating the exact opposite, has kept the masses in servitude for centuries. The certitude of the intellectual insight of Karl Marl cuts through the muddled and confused thinking that is theology, and exposes the pseudo-intellectualism of the church for what it is, a false consciousness. Those religiously minded individuals who have developed their conscious level, and who are susceptible to the Marxist message, should be engaged and encouraged to transition. There is nothing for the committed Marxist to fear from religion, on the contrary, there is everything to gain. The true transformation is that of joining the incisive intellection established by Karl Marx and seeing through the veil of lies that permeate and define bourgeois society. This is true in reality, regardless of what religion an individual either chooses to follow, or is born into, as there is an element of delusive religiosity in all of the world’s religions despite differences in culture and developmental history. It might also be said that some supposed atheists follow their path of ‘no god’ in an obsessive manner that directly mirrors their religious counter-parts. Even within atheism there can still exist fundamental elements of religiosity, such is its pervasive nature. Being beyond religion in the Marxist sense, demands that all religiosity is left behind through a conscious evolutionary process. This means abandoning completely, the intolerance and bigotry often displayed through religion, and sometimes copied by those who deny there is a god. Atheism and theism historically, are inherently linked to the presence of religiosity. Atheism is not a state free of religion, but rather the shadow, or counter-point of religious thinking. It is the Judeo-Christian religion defining the terms through which it will be viewed (and criticised) by humanity, and this perspective can be clearly seen in history. The Roman state had the crime of ‘atheism’ which was used to punish those who did not respect or pay proper worship to the pantheon of Rome. As Judeo-Christians were sometimes charged and punished by this law – as Christians insisted upon a monotheistic entity over that of Roman polytheism – when Christianity became the state religion of Rome, as an act of vicious revenge, it used the same term to refer to non-Christians in a prejudicial and highly destructive manner, yet another example of the suffering encoded and passed on within strictures of Christianity. A Marxist should move beyond theism and atheism, and adopt a position of non-theism. This embodies the insight of Karl Marx, who received a very good bourgeois education, but instead of looking back upon the system that had provided him with these analytical tools (with a glowing and supportive attitude), he instead went forward and beyond it. Through a pristine logical penetration of the world as it presented itself through his mind and body, Marx saw through the bourgeois system and was able to express this understanding throughout the 50 volumes that comprise his collected works. Perhaps Marx’s definitive statement upon the corrosive nature of Christianity in society with regard to colonialism is found in the first volume of Das Kapital, where he criticises the religious attitude of the Quaker William Howitt, and describes him as ‘…a man who makes a speciality of Christianity.’ Marx continues;
‘The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth.’
How did Marx arrive at this philosophical position? In the late 1830’s, as a student at Berlin University, David McLellan (in his Karl Marx – A Biography) states that Karl Marx joined the Doctors’ Club and entered the philosophical and theological movement known as the Young Hegelians. This was essentially a discussion forum for the preservation, dissemination, and development of the dominant philosophy of the age propounded by Friedrich Hegel. Hegel, a practicing Lutheran (Protestant) Christian, had held the chair of Philosophy from 1818 –1831 at Berlin University. He believed that he had created the perfect synthesis between secular, logical philosophy, and theology. Marx was never entirely happy with the perspective of Hegel, but made a study of his system, as he saw it containing potential elements that might be useful in assessing the nature of reality. Engels stated (in his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific) that Hegel had presented, for the first time in history, a system that offered an integration of natural, historical, and spiritual aspects bound together through a process of continuous transformation. Furthermore, according to Engels, Hegel’s approach strove to establish the fact that this process was an organic one, as opposed to being reliant upon some kind of mystical unfolding of events. However, following Hegel’s death in 1831, the Hegelian movement split into two broad camps with conservative branch emphasising the religious content, and the radical branch preferring to state the prominence of Hegel’s rationality over that of theology. It is the latter movement through which Marx develops his criticism of theology and places reason and logic as the supreme vehicle for the development and evolution of humanity. Marx, as a philosophy student, was much taken with the idea of a developed self-consciousness as that exhibited through many Greek scholars and philosophers, particularly Socrates, Plato, Aristole, and Epicurus, etc. In fact, many Young Hegelians view Hegel – their mentor – as a new Aristole which they must follow, very much living in his all-encomposing shadow. The Prussian state at the time tended to ruthlessly crush any political dissent, and so this created a situation where many philosophers exercised their mind in the safer direction of the theology; not so with Marx. He stated without hesitation that logic and reason must prevail over theology, and that in the final analysis, theology was a product of imperfect philosophical thinking that. In other words, whatever theologians may or may not think about the religious teachings they follow, these supposedly ‘divine’ teachings (given to humanity by a theistic entity), are in fact nothing but the creations of the human mind projected outward onto a non-existent, mythological being. Furthermore, this being the case explains why there is no objective evidence to support the assertions of theology. Theology is not ‘divine’ but is simply the product of the human mind contained within a human body; both of which are suffering psychologically and physically due to the historically conditioned circumstance of the inhabited physical environment. Therefore, for Marx theology is not the answer to inner estrangement, or alienation. This is to state that theology does not solve the problem that it claims it does.
The book entitled ‘Karl Marx on India’, (edited by Iqbal Husain), presents a compilation of the articles written by Marx for the New York Daily Tribune, during the time period 1853 – 1862, that form a compendium of information regarding India and British imperialism. Much of this content represents Marx writing exclusively in English for the first time, and presents evidence of the development of his understanding with regard to the unfolding of Indian history. In the early articles Marx approaches India essentially from Hegel’s position. Hegel, despite being a philosopher who advocated the uncritical acceptance of Christian theology, states (in his The Philosophy of History) that Hinduism (i.e. Brahmanism) is a product of imagination, and its caste system the ultimate deprivation of personality and freedom. Hegel goes on to say that ‘Hindoos have no history’ and ‘no growth expanding into a veritable political condition.’ Hegel’s obvious misinterpretation and misrepresentation of Indian culture (and history) is further compounded when he comments ‘the morality which is involved in respect for human life is not found among the Hindoos.’ Marx states in his Tribune article dated the 25th of June, 1953, the following;
‘…murder itself [being] a religious rite in Hindustan – a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting in degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.’
Peculiarly, Hegel acknowledges that the stratified caste system, (with its multiplicity of polytheistic entities) was superior to an undifferentiated society, but nevertheless condemned it as creating ‘…the most degrading spiritual serfdom.’ The research contained in Karl Marx on India demonstrates that Marx repeated all of this Hegelian opinion in his early Tribune articles, but not without careful consideration and qualification. In 1953, for instance, genuine knowledge concerning Indian history, culture and religion was scant in Europe, and what there was, was presented through the distorting filter of an often racist Eurocentricism. Gilbert Archer, in his Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism, states that Hegel is obviously wrong in his assessment of Indian history, and that Marx used much of Hegel’s work, although in reverse causality, to assess Indian historical (and economic) development. However, Marx thoroughly rejected the idea that divinity had created Indian society, and steered clear of much of Hegel’s more obviously flawed opinions, choosing instead to emphasise the oppression and injustice he believed existed at the heart of the caste system. In Marx’s early Tribune work, it is clear that he presents the idea that the caste system itself prevented economic development, which, whilst keeping Indian society the same throughout the generations, did not allow for the unfolding of dialectical history. Marx, through the studying of work other than Hegel, (such as Michael Wilks’ 1810 Sketches of South India, John Campbell’s 1852 Modern India, James Mills History of British (1806-18), and numerous parliamentary reports), developed a reasonable amount of reliable knowledge about India, and suggested that the domination of Indian society by religion had prevented any significant economic, cultural, and political growth throughout its history. In a letter dated the 2nd of June, 1853, Marx, (referring to Hegel’s assumption that religion creates society), asks Engels; ‘Why does the history of the East appear as a history of religions?’ By the time of the publishing of Grundrisse (1857) and Das Kapital (Volume 1) in 1867, his views on Indian history and society had developed considerably since his analysis of the Indian village in 1853. Certainly by 1857 Marx (and Engels) had developed a pronounced anti-colonial and anti-imperialist position that nolonger unquestionably assumed the positive effect of capitalist expansion (either inside or) outside of Europe, much of which was brutal, uncompromising and led to de-development. This process of seeing through colonialism probably began with Marx and Engels immigrating to England in 1849. This relocation gave them direct access to the destructive effect of British imperialism in Ireland, and eventually Marx would support the Chinese cause in the Second Opium War and the Sepoy Uprising in India. Kevin Anderson, in his 2010 study entitled Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, describes the philosophical narrative of the Grundrisse;
‘In this germinal treatise on the critique of political economy, he launched into a truly multilinear theory of history, wherein Asian societies had developed along a different pathway than that of the successive modes of production he had delineated for Western Europe… While he had seen the Indian village’s communal social forms as a prop of despotism in 1853, he now stressed that their forms could be either democratic or despotic.’
It is clear that for Marx, Brahmanism in India performed the same stultifying social and psychological function as that of the Christian church in the West. The caste system prevented any development in political economy in India. Each person, being born into a caste with a rigid labour function, could only perform the task allotted to his caste. This theological system, created by the mind of humanity, was mistakenly viewed as emanating from a theistic entity, and manifesting on earth. Due to its obvious dogmatic structure, Marx critiqued the caste system for its inherently oppressive and deterministic nature. Like the Christian church, the Brahmanical theological inversion prevented humanity from evolving in any direction, and sustained an ancient system of social organisation that went no where.
During his days in the Doctors’ Club Karl Marx became very good friends with another radical Young Hegelian named Karl Koppen. Karl Koppen was a history teacher (dedicating his 1840 book entitled ‘Frederick the great and his Opponents to Marx), and both he and Marx would remain lifelong friends. Koppen recalls that in those student days, Marx was ‘a true arsenal of thoughts, a veritable factory of ideas’, and Koppen (in a letter to Marx) believed that Bruno Bauer’s book the ‘Christian State in our Time’ drew largely on the ideas of Marx. It is also interesting to note that Karl Koppen eventually became recognised as a European scholarly authority upon the philosophical teachings of Buddhism, and that his association with Marx was probably responsible for the knowledge of Buddhism that Marx possessed. This knowledge can be seen at work in an article he wrote for the New York Tribune dated the 1stof September, 1957, and entitled ‘Sepoy Revolt in India’. Marx states (retaining his original spelling);
‘…the three higher castes of the Hindhoos – the priests, the warriors and the cultivators – belonged to a race which intruded itself into India from the north, bringing with it a new language, a new religion, and new social institutions, and the evident relationship of the Sanscrit to the Latin, the Greek, the German and the Slavonic tongues, proves these intruders and conquerors to have sprung from the same root with the existing dominant races of Europe. While these foreign invaders made themselves, as princes, soldiers, priests and landlords, the masters of the country, the original populations, pressed more and more toward the southern extremity of the peninsular, were included in the inferior caste of Sudras, handicraftsmen and artisans, wholly excluded from political or intellectual influence, and restricted exclusively to industrious labor as servants of the higher classes.
After the country had been thus ruled, nobody knows for how many ages, but not without violent internal commotions and bloody religious quarrels, which ended in the expulsion of the Budhists – who seem to have been a sort of Brahmanical rationalists from India, and the complete triumph of the orthodox creed, not, however, without incorporating into itself, as generally happens in such cases, many ideas and superstitions of the rival faith; somewhat more than a thousand years ago, India became exposed to a new invasion by armies and nations from the North, who had, by this time, adopted the Mohammedan faith.’
It is generally accepted that Buddhism arose from the insights of a Brahmanic Indian prince who occupied the second highest caste of Kshatriya – reserved for warriors and kings. Although this caste is technically below the Brahmin caste of dominant priests, (who held power over early Indian society simply through the regulation of the making of fire in the villages), at the time of the Buddha’s birth (c. 6th century), the Kshatriya caste had started to politically dominate, and exclude the Brahmins from real power, reducing their status to that of purely spiritual functionaries. This development triggered a society-wide breaking of tradition as defined by the Brahmins. Young men, who originally had to raise a family and make a living before giving up the world - according to Brahmanic scripture, now left their families (usually without permission), whilst unmarried and retreated to the forests and mountains to practice mind control techniques common to yoga. The Buddha rejected theism, certain types of materialism, and idealism, when formulating his explanation of the psychology of perception as he understood it to be. He noted the existence of the belief in polytheism, karma, and rebirth within Indian society at the time, but stated clearly that such beliefs were an illusion generated by a deluded mind. It is interesting that Marx refers to Buddhism as ‘rational’ in nature, a description that he refused to use for any other religion, or spiritually inclined philosophical path. It is as if Marx is suggesting that Brahmanism produced an individual (in the person of the Buddha) who managed to throw-off the limitations of his culturally conditioned religiosity, and regain his rationality. It is interesting here, to consider Lenin’s assessment of the apparent subject – object dichotomy when he states (in his 1914 text entitled Summary of Dialectics) the following;
‘Philosophical idealism is only nonsense from the standpoint of crude, simple, metaphysical materialism. From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, on the other hand, philosophical idealism is a one-sided, exaggerated, development (inflation, distension) of one of the features, aspects, facets of knowledge, into an absolute, divorced from matter, from nature, apotheosised.’
Although it is true that Marx only mentions Buddhism once in his entire 1853-1862 body of work for the New York Tribune, elsewhere Marx records in a letter to Engels, that in early 1861, whilst visiting Berlin (in an unsuccessful attempt to regain his Prussian citizenship), he met his old friend Karl Koppen, and together enjoyed a drinking session which Marx said did him ‘a power of good’. Afterwards, Koppen presented Marx with a two volume set of his classic study upon Buddhism, (written in German), that is still regarded as a pivotal scholarly work today. Marx exhibits in his work a very good grasp of Indian history including the development and domination of its various forms of religiosity. As his ruthless criticism of everything unfolded, Marx had to necessarily adjust the minutiae of his arguments, whilst retaining the general deconstruction of bourgeois society and the exploitative psychology it produces and perpetuates. Whilst continuously revealing the historical class antagonism and contradiction inherent in the unfolding dialectical process, Marx clearly demonstrated that it was historical (material) conditions manifesting in different parts of the world that gave rise to religiosity, and that at no time could it be truthfully stated (outside of blind faith), that a divine being had created human existence as Hegel supposed, and all religionists believed. The psychological patterns in the human mind that purport to adhere to theological religious beliefs are not imported into the mind from the mysterious influence of a theistic entity, but are rather the product of sensory stimulus received from the existential, material environment. In the case of the development of religious structures in early India, for example, the Buddhist monk Sangharathana states (in the ICBI eJournal Patriarch’s Vision December 2013);
‘According to the study of anthropology, a group of people (who originated on the Indo-Iran plain) migrated to Indiaand settled in the Indus-Valley area. They were nomadic tribes in search of a suitable environment to settle. When they found banks on sustainable rivers, they established their home and built a civilization. They started agricultural life in India and faced numerous problems due to environmental changes like floods, storms, forest fires, earth quakes, and land slides etc. They tried to work out the reasons for these natural occurrences, but when they failed to do so, tended to believe that there was a powerful super natural being behind these events.‘
This rational view common to Buddhist philosophy supports the version of history that Marx presents in his 1853-1862 work as published in the New York Tribune and elucidated throughout his collected works. The fact that Asian Buddhists in general, and to a certain extent, modern Hindu scholars, advocate a similar early history to the development of India is important to counter assertions aimed at Marx of ‘Eurocentricism’, when interpreting the conditions as found in Asia. After-all, Hegel’s Eurocentricism is obvious and easy to discern. It interprets the unfamiliar (i.e. Indian history and culture) from the position of the familiar (i.e. Western history and culture), even though the latter has no bearing on the former. This is what the academic Urs App refers to as Arlecchino mechanism at work. In works such as ‘The cult of Emptiness’, App refers to the fundamental misrepresentation of Asian religious culture by Western explorers, who tended to limit everything to a Judeo-Christian interpretation. Arlecchino is a character in an Italian commedia dell’arte who believes that the entire world operates exactly along the lines of his own family, and acts accordingly. Hegel skilfully weaves limited facts about Asia with imagination, mythology, and bias. As Marx used Hegel as a philosophical starting point, this has led to thinkers such as Edward Said to suggest that Marx is bias in his assessment of the East, and in reality is presenting another form of Orientalism – or Western misrepresentation. However, such an assessment appears to deliberately avoid or ignore the entirely different and radical approach that Marx employed. The reality is that Said’s groundbreaking (1978) work on Orientalism (which caused a paradigm shift in Western academia) was not his own original creation, but was rather developed from the theories propounded by Anouar Abdel Malek (1963), and Maxime Rodinson (1968). Although Edward Said acknowledged these thinkers in his re-presentation of their work, he omitted to mention that both were in fact Marxist academics, and failed to acknowledge the philosophical debt that the theory of Orientalism owed to Karl Marx. Gilbert Achcar, in his Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism, expertly presents this case and points out that Edward Said misrepresents Karl Marx when accusing him of the very bourgeois trait (of Orientalism) that his historical materialism reveals. This is a criticism that Said has received from many other Arab and Asian thinkers who premise their ideas on the work of Karl Marx and who find it odd that Marx should be accused of the very injustice his work reveals. Achcar’s research suggests that there are two distinct interpretations of what it means to be ‘Eurocentric’. The first is ‘Supremacist’, which Karl Marx definitely was not, whilst the second deals with the episteme of the time. Achcar asserts that the work of Marx (and Engels) was undoubtedly Eurocentric in the sense that they had to formulate their theory through the filter of European academia. This is to say Marx formulated theories about Indiawithout first-hand experience of the country he was assessing. However, Edward Said, in his work, wrongly implies that Marx was a ‘Supremacist’, and not simply writing through a Eurocentric rubric. More to the point, the revolutionary theory of Marx that breaks cleanly with historical idealism, transcends the cultural conditioning through which it is manifests. Perhaps the most poignant criticism of Edward Said, by other Arab and Asian thinkers, is that through his well known work Orientalism, he is presenting a form of ‘Orientalism in reverse’, whereby the West is presented as a continuous line of historical development from ancient Greece to the modern USA, and that as a consequence, the Western mind is innately unable to gain true knowledge of the Orient.
The religious structures of bourgeois society are sentimentalised into presenting a permanent state of misery, as an illusionary state of permanent hope. Theology is a nonsense presented as a higher truth. The Christian church, mirroring the class constructs of bourgeois society, ruthlessly exploits its adherence – the common people – to its own mercenary ends. The Christian church is nothing other than a method of preserving class privilege and bourgeois excess through the muddling of reason with the use of theology. The common people are kept in a continuous pre-modern level of psychological development, and the only aspect of the Christian church that is truly ‘eternal’, is its ability to ruthlessly oppress and exploit those it controls. Secularism, in many respects, is the continuance of the psychology of the Christian church stripped of its obvious, outer religiosity. Bourgeois secularism (within a liberal society) is seldom little more than the furtherance of religious aims, without a direct recourse to an all controlling theistic entity. This is why Marx advocated a ruthless criticism of all that exists. Secularism is the dark shadow of religiosity and its assumed freedoms nothing more than pretentious allusions. The religious-secular dichotomy of the bourgeois state is not the establishment of equality, but merely represents the relaxing of morality associated with scripture. The modern Christian church supports rightwing governments, trades in arms, protects child abusing priests, and perpetuates anti-Semitism, racism, and discrimination. Its priests are drawn from the middle classes, and its top-down, hierarchical (feudalistic) structure ensures those at the bottom – that is the ‘devout’ masses – are kept entirely in their place whilst simultaneously believing in a fairytale about a mythological ‘heaven’ that exists somewhere else, but never ‘here’. The Christian church makes a virtue of oppression as personal suffering, and views poverty and injustice in society as inherently correct because it is representative of the will of god; this is why the church is a dangerous and backward institution. Psychological growth in the direction of Communism can not occur as long as a small group of influential men are allowed to run an institution as corrupt as the Christian church. Exactly the same criticism can be aimed effectively at Judaism and Islam, which may be viewed as variants upon a theistic theme, certainly in the light that Judaism gave historical birth to the other two. Marx clearly presents Brahmanism (i.e. Hinduism) as a blatant attempt by foreign invaders of India to oppress, stratify, and dominate the indigenous (Dravidian) peoples of India, forcing them to live predominantly in the southern half of their country, and inflicting a mixture of theology and philosophy upon the country that sought to concretise the racial divide of the physical caste system in terms of unquestionable religiosity. Later, Buddhism, as a reform movement, would look to breakaway from this system, denying the validity of the caste system, or that gods were real and could assist humanity. Although Buddhism seeks to empty the mind of the psychological patterns imported through class (or caste oppression), and may be considered a unique movement within the philosophy of religion, nevertheless, overtime many of the structures of religiosity have become an integral part of this movement. Today, much of modern Buddhism, despite its clear philosophy to the contrary, may be observed (to a lesser or greater extent) as conforming outwardly to the religiosity of Brahmanism in Asia, and after its spread to the West, to the religiosity of Judeo-Christianity. This bourgeois pollution has caused such aberrations as Buddhists monks in Burma and Thailand inciting race hatred, and race wars against Muslim minorities - surely mimicking the rhetoric of the United States of America, and its ‘war on terror’. Although Marx may have viewed Buddhism as rational, the propensity for emancipatory philosophies that have grown out of religion to descend back into the quagmire of religiosity is always a danger. Marx advocates the regaining of the true self-consciousness unhindered by superstition and religious belief. In this, his work represents a complete, total, and final epistemological break with the primitive mindset that once looked out upon the world and attempted to explain naturally occurring phenomena through the means of fanciful stories. These stories use imagination to fill in the gaps lacking true knowledge. Religion is a particular type of ‘gap filling’ that once offered a sense of ‘awe’, coupled with moral guidance, and an explanation of sorts, for the presence of life. At one time in human history religion may have been valid as the only means of explaining reality to a developing human mind. Today, the world and the human mind have moved on considerably. The technological, postmodern age has produced real wonders, the like of which renders the comparative weak mysteries of religious thinking redundant.
The truth of the matter is that ‘faith’ will not develop technology, medicine, space travel, or advanced and progressive philosophy. Faith can not plan an economy, or manipulate agriculture to produce food, and it certainly can not move a mountain. More than this, however, but bourgeois religion uses faith only as a means to control the masses it exploits and oppresses – this is the true nature of religion that the intellect of Karl Marx saw through. Applying his method of dialectic deconstruction, it is not enough to simply deny the validity of religion, or in so doing espouse what may be construed as the Marxist line. Religion and its theology (and in the case of Buddhism, its philosophy) must be met intellectually head-on. Marxists, like Marx before them, should possess a thorough knowledge of the subject that is being analysed in a progressive and advanced manner. It is decidedly unMarxian to trumpet ideology in the name of Communist rationality on the one hand, whilst simultaneously failing to acquire correct knowledge of the subject on the other. Declaring belief systems null and void does not win over the adherents of those systems to the Communist cause, but on the contrary, only serves to alienate them from it. Although Marx wrote relatively little about religion, what he did write is highly significant. He sees the criticism of religion to be the doorway to the complete and full criticism of bourgeois society. For the bourgeois mentality to be fully understood, religion must be understood and deconstructed. Those infected with the psychology of religiosity must be reasoned with and led away from the damaging conditioning that limits their perception of reality and condemns them to live in a fairytale existence with no happy ending. Every Communist should help those who are the victims of religion to regain their true self-consciousness in the light of Marxist rationality. Marxism and Marxists should not create a presence that compels religionists to retreat further into the world of theological imagination, and cling with an ever stronger determination to the outer (physical) structures of the church. The church is a psychological construct made physical, with its ignorance inspired rhetoric equating the exploitative bourgeois state with its imaginary construct of a theistic entity. With the exploitative bourgeois class system firmly equated with god, it is no secret that the church views a rebellion in the former as a direct attack on the latter. The logic (and for that matter, compassion) contained in Marx’s critique of religion is far stronger than any theological construct, and this should be the basis for the deconstruction of religion. Although the church can be directly combated on the social level, it can also be effectively dismantled on the psychological level. This psychological approach removes the need to ‘believe’ from those infected by the taint of religiosity. Marx explained the historical psychology of the development of religion, and herein lays the key or antidote for its transcendence. Marx explains what a false consciousness is in relation to religion, and furnishes (through this explanation) the means to correct an inverted psychology. Marxists should follow this example and strive to self-educate on every aspect of reality so that no corner of bourgeois excess is left unrevolutionised, and no aspect of the theory of Karl Marx remains undeveloped.
Marx criticises the psychology of the Judeo-Christian church, stating that its idealism is an inversion of reality, directly implying that reality is not represented by Judeo-Christian theology. Lenin develops this theme through his interpretation of Marxism by emphasising that the church, (as an exploitative social entity) must be permanently excluded from the political process, and stripped of all such existing power still in its possession. This is not an attack upon the church per se, but rather a form of direct action designed to remove the unnecessary politicisation of theology. For Lenin, the church should have no political power, and religious belief relegated to the concerns only of the private citizen. Lenin conceived that the Communist state, when fully established, would bring every forward thinking and progressive state of existence to the physicality and psychology of humanity, and that as a consequence, the alienation caused by the bourgeois system would fall away. This evolutionary process from Capitalism to Socialism, and then to Communism, would remove the physical and psychological conditions that have in the past produced the development of inverted religious teachings. If the stimulus is removed, the response does not occur; but this is not the sudden eradication of the psychology of religion, as such an ambition would take generations (and decades) to fully achieve, even if temples, synagogues, and churches were destroyed, and religious teaching banned. Over 70 years of Communist education in the Soviet Union failed to eradicate religious thinking, and the Christian church found it a relatively easy task to re-establish itself in Russia and surrounding countries post-1991. Communist China, for instance, since the 1980’s has essentially allowed the re-establishment of traditional religious teaching, providing those traditions are suitably modified to assist the building of Socialism in that country, and do not behave in an independent, counter-revolutionary manner. The official, state run Buddhist Association of China (中國佛教協會 - Zhōngguó Fójiào Xiéhuì) defines Buddhist practice in Communist China as;
‘Activities: The BAC was founded in 1953 and the current President is Master Chuan Yin (传印法师– Chuan Yin Fa Shi). The BAC is a patriotic association and an educational administrative organization, which unites all the Buddhist practicing nationalities in China. Its objective is to assist the People’s Government by implementing and protecting freedom of religion, whilst safeguarding the legal rights and interests of the Buddhist community. The BAC maintains Buddhism as an honourable religion, supports the establishment of Buddhist enterprises, and perpetuates the excellent Buddhist tradition. Buddhism is encouraged to be patriotic to the flag, keep its teachings relevant and up to date with the progress of the world, and become self-sufficient and strong; whilst striving to unite the ethnic groups of China, as well as working toward the building of a Socialist Stateand the reunification of China.’
In Article 52 of the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (Part II the State and the Individual), Lenin’s attitude toward religion is clearly formulated into state law;
‘Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship or atheistic propaganda. Incitement of hostility or hatred on religious grounds is prohibited. In the USSR, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church.’
Whereas China focuses state control primarily upon Buddhism, Lenin emphasises the control of religion in general. Buddhism in China is perceived as a foreign presence from a different country – even though it has been present for around 2000 years. Daoism, by way of comparison, an indigenous form of Chinese nature worship, does not have applied to it the same level of state control; and Confucianism, whilst nolonger being state creed (and the vehicle of feudalistic oppression), nevertheless has been re-constituted as a language education institution that has spread throughout the world. Daoism and Confucianism, as distinct but fully ‘Chinese’ belief systems, are not subject to the same legal restriction as that applied to Buddhism. The Chinese state applies Marxian inspired law differently, toward different belief systems, although as within the USSR, freedom of religion is legally protected in the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese approach adapts state law (dealing with religion) to prevailing local conditions. An example of this adaptability may be viewed through the different policies pursued by the Chinese state toward the (Arabic) Hui and (the Turkic) Uighur ethnic minorities. This position has to do primarily with the fact that China’s Communist Revolution had to transition from feudalism to Socialism without an intermediate capitalist phase. This meant that the minds of the populace functioned primarily through a religious view of the world that was encouraged and justified by the hierarchy of the feudalist state. The emperor was the son of heaven, with the nobility sharing in this presumed divinity that diminished as the social status lowered, until the popular masses, possessing no divine essence, were left to their own devices in the formation of their religiosity. Buddhism, entering China from India via the Silk Road, tended to give the masses a religious focus that was not premised (or directly linked) with the Chinese imperial state. The presence of Buddhism amongst the masses was officially perceived as a problem that violated the top down hierarchy of the state, and which threatened the hegemonic power of that establishment. Overtime, the state (in the body of the emperor) reacted to this presence through the polarity of acceptance and rejection. At certain points in Chinese history the state embraced Buddhism and showered its adherence with rewards and accolades; whilst at other times Buddhism was banned and its followers persecuted.
The issue for Marxian thinkers is what has to be done to transform the psychology and physical habits associated with religiosity and its practice. This is a historical issue. Marx, in The German Ideology, clearly explains how the environment, (operating through socio-economic patterns), creates the conditions for the formation of religiosity;
‘Division of Labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc.’
Marx adds (as a margin note in the original manuscript), the following commentary to the first line; ‘The first form of ideologists, priests, is coincident.’ Those who possess the leisure time created by the hard work of the masses, and who are freed as a consequence from the need to work hard for their subsistence, possess the conditions whereby their physical bodies receive appropriate nourishment without effort. The basic need to survive is supplied by the labour of others, and this frees the human mind to disengage from the activity of competing in the environment for resources, and instead look into its own interior. This is the inversion of the mind compounded by injustice, inequality, and suffering (through working conditions) in the environment. Despite the inherent psychological dangers involving religiosity within this situation, human beings being freed from the immediacy of the fight for survival, have used their minds in a positive manner to formulate science and technology, develop medicine, and create progressive and advanced philosophies such as the theory of evolution, and the Marxian critique of political economy. This ability to free and use the mind is not denied as an important development within human evolution by Marx, but his stringent critique of religion is based upon what he views to be a distortion of this otherwise positive attribute. The mind departs from a clear (and real) perception of its own inner state and functioning, and deviates away (or loses touch) with the material reality that surrounds it. This concrete knowledge of psychology and material analysis is replaced with an elaborate and often sophisticated world of imagination. Natural inner and outer processes become viewed through a filter of false images and pseudo-knowledge. This is true alienation whereby humanity loses touch with the very reality that gives it life, and through which it lives. The psychology of religiosity is self-defeating and self-perpetuating; it cuts off any chance of psychological or material progression, and traps the believer in an unending cycle of dependence based upon fear and superstition. Once the mind of an individual is infected by theology, a dark cloud of ignorance descends and the light of reason is diminished. Religion, (unlike the material science it mimics), promises to solve all of the mysteries of life, and yet fails to solve a single one. This is why a blind faith in the teachings of theology is a crucial corner stone for religion. It amounts to a faith in nothing. Marx reveals, through his progressive teachings, that the ‘mystery’ of life, if it can be called that, is nothing more than the human mind evolving to ever higher levels of awareness so that it can cognise and understand the world it inhabits, and how that world affects its own inner workings.
How are Marxists to engage religion? Working from within a bourgeois society that misrepresents its self-interest as universal law, religiosity is guaranteed as a human right. This is because it inherently supports the bourgeois system. As a perceived ‘right’ in law, and considering the aggressive proselytising of the Judeo-Christian religion in the West, it assumes a default position of resisting any and all attacks aimed at it through any type of criticism. This effectively gives its adherents immunity from common sense and progressive thinking. The bishops and priests strictly control the flow of knowledge to their flock, ensuring that they, as the ecclesiastical hierarchy, are continuously privileged by their knowing, and that this knowing always appears superior to those less educated beings under their control. The faithful flock is truly reduced to the psychological status of ‘sheep’ and as a consequence, has to have every aspect of their life defined, controlled, and limited by shepherds of the church (i.e. priests). This situation persists in the West despite the relative wealth that exists, and the continuation of the spread of secularism. In the East, Indiais a secular democracy that is still controlled by the caste system (outlawed in 1947). The caste system, held in place by a rigid social demarcation based solely upon skin-colour, dominates India’s secularism to a remarkable degree. The pull of this inverted psychological view of the world is often stronger than the forces of progression and advancement, despite the presence of Communism in that ancient country. Despite the development of wealth amongst the middle classes, by far the greater number of Indian people live a life of grinding poverty which allows for an escape through religiosity. Brahmanic religion is preserved in this poverty, and even those who attain wealth tend to support a religious system that raises them above the struggling masses. Despite the progressive nature of Buddhist philosophy, in countries throughout Southeast Asia many of its monkish adherents preserve ignorance in the masses through cultivating a sense of indifference to external conditions, and holding back advanced knowledge of meditation techniques. All in all the Marxist critique of religion holds true around the world.
To undermine the monopoly that the upper priestly echelons of religions hold over the suffering masses, Marxists should learn the minutiae of religious teaching and use this knowledge to encourage the faithful to develop their opinions away from religiosity and toward a progressive Marxist perspective. This can be achieved through isolating the ‘universalisms’ contained in all religions, and relating these teachings to Marxist thinking. This requires that an interface be developed that is psychologically remedial in nature and apparently non-confrontary. It requires the establishment of a Marxist Institute of Interreligious Affairs that facilitates the development of religiously minded individuals in a progressive direction away from the cul de sac of religiosity. To do this, the inherent belief systems of different religions must be fully understood not only from a Marxian perspective, but also from the psychology of each respective tradition. Marxism can only succeed if its cadres demonstrate a superior understanding of religious thinking, which includes the aims and objectives that each religion believes it is pursuing. Respect for the beliefs of others facilitates a two-way dialogue that does not necessarily equate to agreeing with those beliefs. Such an approach easily counters the default position inherent in each religion of rejecting criticism at the point of encounter. Marxian knowledge, when used in this way, dismantles ignorance and encourages an inner process of learning that moves the individual beyond the religious mind-set. Marxism possesses the means to work with religion through a progressive dialogue in a manner suitable for the times that does not betray the thinking of Karl Marx, or remain stuck in the past, but develops it into a new area of analysis and functionality. In this way, the universalisms found within religions can be developed (and transformed) into the progressive thought development associated with the construction of Socialism and Communism.
‘I once made the statement at the Lobachevsky Military Academy that to study Marxism does not mean to read through Marx, Engels, and Lenin; you may study their works from cover to cover, you may be able to repeat their ideas word for word, but that will not necessarily signify that you have really learned Marxism. To learn Marxism means to know after mastering the Marxist method how to approach all other problems connected with your work. If, let us say, the sphere of your future work is agriculture, will it be an advantage to be able to employ the Marxist method? Of course it will. But to employ the Marxist method, you have to be an agricultural expert. Otherwise nothing will come of your attempt to apply Marxism in agriculture. This should not be forgotten if you wish to apply Marxism in practice, if you wish to be men of action, and not textmongers of Marxism. But what does being a Marxist mean? It means being able to adopt the correct line. But to be able to adopt the correct, Marxist line, you also need to be a first-rate expert in your particular sphere of activity.’ (Pages 14-15)
Marx (and Engels) did not write a great deal about religion– there is no single masterpiece amongst the 50 volume output that specifically deals with the minutiae of religious belief and practice – but what he did write is singularly devastating to religion as a concept. Admittedly Marx was writing from the perspective of the European experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which had spread from the Middle East (via Rome) and taken root in the psychological and cultural fabric of that continent. Due to Christianity eventually achieving the status of state religion in Rome, its presence in Europe, in both its earlier Catholic, and later Protestant manifestations, has always been highly politicised, socially aggressive, and culturally destructive. This religious construct became a political (and oppressive) force in its own right, to the extent that its seminaries and priests developed a justifying theology that deviates alarmingly from the original teachings of its presumed founder. This led to the peculiar situation of a religion claiming a unique moral right to interfere in the affairs of humanity, whilst simultaneously practicing an obvious form of direct hypocrisy, designed solely to retain political power and influence by keeping the common people in an arrested state of psychological and cultural development. This oppression was nothing other than a manic drive for political power at all costs, by a minority of clerics who claimed a higher knowledge simply because they possessed the ability to read and write – an ability they jealously guarded and prevented from spreading throughout ordinary society. This dominance was initiated by mimicking the indigenous non-Christian belief systems encountered by an expanding church in Europe, which prepared the way for these early religions to be systematically attacked, ridiculed, and finally destroyed. This process of aggressive internal (i.e. psychological), and external (i.e. political/cultural) colonisation even included the attacking and destroying of other types of Christianity, and the rampant spread of anti-Semitism throughout Europe. This destructive process spread out of the geographical confines of Europe during the European colonial expansion period, (c. 1500 – 1950), and is still happening today through the activities of well funded Christian missionaries who enter non-European cultures with the specific aim of converting the populace to Christianity. This religiosity has two distinct components; the first is the propagation of illogical and superstitious beliefs as a higher form of logic, and the second is the creation and sustaining of a social system predicated upon theology, that privileges the church as a dominant class, whilst fiercely oppressing and suppressing the majority of people whose status is literally (and theologically) reduced to that of the status of ‘sheep’ living in a field. The sheep have no other experiences of life, than that decided by the farmer. There is a presumed higher knowledge, or divine wisdom that justifies the existence of the church and its activities in the world. The church defines its own definitions and activities as ‘good’ (i.e. from god), and every other definition and activity the product of evil, (i.e. from the devil). It ascribes to itself an all-knowing and privileged position in the world – a position presumed to link the world of humanity to the world of theistic heaven.
The attitude of Karl Marx with regard to religion is the product of his philosophical development away from the philosophy associated with the Young Hegelian movement. Hegel, despite his incisive mind, and modern approach to philosophy, nevertheless, still adhered (at the foundation of his thinking), to the Judeo-Christian notion that the material world was created from nothing by a divine entity (i.e. god). To Marx, this appeared as a secular inclined philosophy that still predicated its thinking upon a Judeo-Christian construct, and as a consequence was flawed as it still retained one foot firmly within the camp of religious dogma. Hegel was stating clearly that god created humanity. Marx accepted one of the key ideas proposed by Ludwig Feuerbach in his critique of religion, which stated that it was humanity that created religion, and not the other way around. This simple reversal of Hegelian philosophical thought signifies for Marx, the complete break with historical idealism. This transformative process did not happen overnight, and essentialist elements of idealistic assessment can still be detected in his 1843 critique of Bruno Bauer’s essay entitled ‘On the Jewish Question’. Here, Marx presents the essence of Judaism as a set of monetary relations based upon a Jewish presence (or insertion) into medieval European society. He does not view this monetary relationship as the theological essence of Judaism, it must be said, but rather as the historical reality that Jewish populations inhabit. Marx is not interested in religious Judaism; in fact he treats this idea as something of a misnomer, but only in the assessment of reality as it presents itself to the logical mind through the analysis of history, and how that history manifests in the present moment. However, it is clear in this text that Marx has psychologically moved away from the consideration of religious teaching as nothing other than the assessment of superstition and irrationality. His antagonism toward religion (and religious adherents) is obvious, and despite his borrowing from Feuerbach, Marx would ultimately criticise this thinker for not going far enough in the development of the implications of his own ideas. Meanwhile, in his 1844 Introduction to his On the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx writes a pivotal and defining text with regard to his attitude toward religion;
‘Man, who has found in the fantastical reality of heaven, where he sought a supernatural being, only his own reflection, will no longer be tempted to find only the semblance of himself – a non-human being – where he seeks and must seek his true reality.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: The human being makes religion; religion does not make the human being. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of the human who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But the human is no abstract being squatting outside the world. The human is the world of the human – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual power point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.’
An inverted consciousness is a false consciousness, or a view of the world that is the wrong way around. Marx is suggesting that religion, as both a body of distinct teachings, and as a concept, is the product of a lost (and previously correct) self-consciousness. This correct consciousness, or the ability to view existence free from superstition, dogma, and idealism, is obscured by an inverted reality which infects the mind of the individual from birth, and which is perpetuated by the state and society. As both the state and society are premised upon an inverted (i.e. unnatural) view of the world, it follows that everything produced by such an entity is necessarily flawed in the same manner as its creator. Religion gains its power through human imagination. As the real essence of humanity is lost, the imaginative process, aided and abetted by the intellect, creates a theological monolith that masquerades as objective truth. This projects a fantastic illusion upon the human mind (and the world it inhabits), that ascribes all manner of illogical attributes to human consciousness. The only available methodology to hold it all together is the requirement for blind faith amongst the adherents, because as soon as it is questioned, the edifice of religion is threatened with collapse. As society perpetuates religion amongst its citizens, Marx suggests that the false world of religion is directly representative of the false world of the state, and that a struggle against one, is a struggle against the other. This is the revolutionary psychology of the Marxian critique of religion. To read and understand what Marx has written, is to set into motion a transformative psychological process that frees the individual from the tyranny of history and religion. Marx creates the inner conditions for the regaining, or rediscovery of a true or correct self-consciousness free from the conditioned thought patterns of an enslaving mentality. And yet Marx does not dismiss religion entirely out of hand. Yes, for Marx religion is the epitome of false consciousness, but he readily admits that its teachings permeate society to an extensive degree. Indeed, the teachings of religion serve as a common logic amongst the people, and provide the material for an entire body of knowledge that is assumed to explain the entirety of reality. This is the pervasive nature of religion and explains why a struggle against it, is also a struggle against an inverted society. If the correct self-consciousness of humanity is not lost, then Marx suggests that religion would have no currency amongst the people, as the conditions for its creation would not exist. It is clear that Marx is not anti-religious; even though his comments definitely do not agree with religious teaching, dogma, or theology. The Marxian view of religion is one that is intended to set the human mind free of its self-limiting conditioning. Through this liberating perspective, his viewpoint can not be truthfully viewed as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ religion, as Marx, whilst acknowledging the importance that deluded society holds for religion, nevertheless, treats religion as an irrelevance that should be moved beyond as soon as possible. For Marx, religion is a fairytale, and although its content (in allegorical or metaphorical form) might allude to this or that process or understanding, it remains at best a hopeless mishmash of imagination and false assumptions. This is why Marx continues assessing religion in the Introduction to his On the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in the following manner;
‘Religion misery is, at one and the same time, the expression of real misery and the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the soul of a heartless world, as well as the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. To supersede religion as illusionary happiness of the people is to require their real happiness. To require that they give up their illusions about their conditions is to require that they give up a condition that necessitates illusion. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.’
Religion is suffering, because the structure of religion is premised upon a distorted vision of reality which is compounded by the oppression of the state upon its citizens. Religion makes its adherents suffer, whilst claiming that a freedom from suffering is just around the corner, albeit in an after-life following physical death. Those psychologically conditioned to accept religion have no choice but to suffer as a consequence, even though as individuals, they may interpret their deeply held religious beliefs to be a means of relieving the ills of the world. Marx suggests that although many people genuinely feel that they are adhering to a religion because it makes the world a better place, in reality religion itself is the preserver and conveyance of the very suffering that is presumed to be over-come. Religion traps within its developmental confines, the original suffering of its first adherents, and passes this suffering from one generation to the next. Religion promises a freedom it can not existentially provide, and so its ‘saviour’ quality has to be projected into another mystical world which can not be seen from this world. Therefore the psychological constructs of theology are derived from an escapist mentality; that is premised upon the notion of escaping from a prison cell, but with no logical means of escape – other than physical death. Of course, physical death is not an escape in conventional terms, but rather the non-functioning of the physical body. As theology is powerless to affect processes in the physical world, it has had to develop a different way of measuring success. This measuring device is actually the dispensing with the means of measuring altogether, and to stand in its place a fantastical representation of the universe that can not be seen by anyone, but which is assumed to exist just beyond the horizon of human perception. This is the illusion that Marx suggests must be abandoned and given-up altogether if real human freedom is to be found. Fantastical imagery may serve as a short-term and distracting entertainment for the human mind, but this in itself produces no freedom from suffering. Theology, religious belief and practice act as a temporary anaesthetic which Marx likens to the drug opium. The imbuing of opium may numb the mind and body for a time, but such an experience changes nothing about the structure or functioning of the objective world. Religion, with its supposed function of relieving suffering in the world, is the vehicle through which suffering is preserved and sustained. Marx states;
‘Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not in order that man shall bear the chain without caprice or consolation but so that he shall cast off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason; so that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun about which man revolves so long as he does not revolve about himself. It is the immediate task of philosophy – to unmask the self-estrangement, in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.’
Religion is inherently positioned as a psychologically and physically conditioned crossroads in the centre of life. No part of the bourgeois system can escape criticism, because no part of the bourgeois system is free from the influence of religious conditioning in one form or another. Marx, emphasising the philosophy of the European Enlightenment, equates the achieving of freedom from religion, with that of securing the status of a rational, reasoning being free from superstitious beliefs. A rational, reasoning human being shines like a real sun, rather than being trapped and revolving around the false sun of theology. In other words, theology is a false light pretending to lead humanity to safety. But which in reality just leads its adherents around in circles that go nowhere. Through the philosophy of good ideas, Marx seeks to set the record straight by transforming theological spirituality into the correct use of the human mind. In this definition of the use of the human mind, the term ‘spiritual’ takes on a totally different meaning and describes a mind that is free from the superstition of theology, and which continuously produces advanced and progressive ideas. In the German Ideology, Marx (and Engels) states:
‘The class that possesses the means of material production, by virtue of this also possesses the means of spiritual production… The individuals composing the ruling class possess, among other things, consciousness as well, and by virtue of this, think. In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and scope of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in all its spheres, hence rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; and that means that their ideas are the dominant ones of the epoch.’
Having established how Marx viewed and critiqued religion predominantly in the West, a number of interesting questions emerge. How should a communist approach religion and religious adherents, and does Marx’s criticisms of religion apply to non-Judeo-Christian paths? The Marxian perspective is that alienation from the true self leads to escapist adventures in the mind, and that no matter how powerful or suggestive a theological idea may be, it has no relevance in reality beyond the human mind that conceives it. This is not to say that it has no affect in the world, on the contrary, history is strewn with the dead of millions who fought one another to the death because of differing theological constructs. This example follows the general assumption that to varying degrees, ignorance is dangerous to humanity. The Marxian answer to this is to end this state of ignorance and allow the human mind to develop and function optimally. This is in accordance with evolutionary thinking and sets the agenda for conscious transformation. This is true despite the fact that Marx placed the greatest emphasis upon the analysis of the physical (or material) conditions of history. He acknowledged that it is the human mind that is conditioned by history, but which, under the right circumstances, can also condition history. Marx wants humanity to stop being the passive victims of conditioned history, and to start the process of conditioning history for the betterment of humanity’s existence. This involves, according to Marx, the ascendency of the working class (proletariat), over that of the middle class (bourgeois), so that a great equalising of society and its resources can be dramatically established. This socialist revolution creates the historical conditions for humanity to evolve beyond basic levels of human consciousness, which to date has been based upon the domination of the many, by the few. The Judeo-Christian religion has been part of the process of holding back human conscious evolutio from developing to the next stage. How should Marxists approach religiously minded individuals? Lenin states the following in his 1899 work entitled Our Programme;
‘We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.’
Developing Marxism in all directions, as Lenin advises, is the logical answer to the religious question. As religion has stubbornly survived down to present, even in the former Soviet Union, it is unlikely that it will wither on the branch. Religion, as the centre-piece to bourgeois exploitation, will survive as long as bourgeois society survives. Therefore, even if the correct Marxist attitude is cultivated toward religion, the constructs of religion within a bourgeois society continue to influence directly both the religiously minded, and indirectly the secular process. Much cultural expression in the secular West is the product of religion stripped of its obvious religious garb. It is, in a very real sense, the presence religious processes continuing to function without an obvious reliance upon the recognition of a god concept. This ‘behind the scenes’presence of the Judeo-Christian religion, acts as the psychological and emotional cement that binds the bourgeois secular world together. What is needed is the obvious transformation of religious theology into that of Marxian philosophy, so that the religious salvation promised (but never delivered) by theology, is actually delivered through the rubric of communist thought. This dialectical process requires an engagement with religion that allows for, and facilitates this transformative development away from primitive beliefs, to that of reasoned arguments. More than this, however, but such a process necessarily redefines the relationship between communism and religion, without compromising Marxist thinking. Marxist thinking can end the alienation that justifies the existence of religion, and in that expedient capacity, usher in a new psychological and physical era of human advancement. Marxist thinking must be made relevant to the religiously minded so that they willingly develop their own ideas out of the dogmatic cul de sac they find themselves within. This is an example of Marxism taking a pro-active course into the realm of religiosity and liberating its adherents from the inside. As Kalinin teaches, Marxists can only assist the development of society if they understand the norms and practices of the specific areas they seek to transform.
As the demise of the obvious outer forms of institutional Christianity unfolds in the West, a psychological gulf - a free space (formerly dominated by theology) – is revealed in the human mind. This free space (which often retains a yearning for something beyond itself), can be utilised by the Marxist cause, and through socialist education, lead the individual to the higher level of communal thinking and dialectical understanding. This assists the demise of the social and political institutes of religion that have built-up over centuries of exploitation of the people, and effectively removes religion as a political force at its psychological root. The presence of Marxian philosophy can act as a means to prevent the falling of the human mind into a false consciousness that obscures reason. This return to normality, or psychological balance (i.e. true self-consciousness), is a transformation away from an imbalanced state of mind. Of course, in reality, Marxian philosophy is a preventative measure that develops the human mind into its full and optimum functioning capacity, but in that role it can reduce and remove the sense of alienation that lies at the root of religious thinking. For a religious thinking person, placing the mind the right way around appears to be a transformative experience. Marx acknowledges (in Das Kapital I) that the human being is unique, in that s/he possesses the ability to construct abstract images in the mind, before taking action in the world;
“A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of his honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax.”
If theistic religion is the psychological (and physical) concretisation of historical suffering within a distinct body of knowledge passed on from one generation to the next, then the insight of Karl Marx into its true nature is both shocking and stark. Religious thinking, generally speaking, presents itself as a panacea, a cure all for human ills, and yet according to Marx it is in fact performing the exact opposite function – it is preserving the very suffering it claims to transcend. For Marx, conventional religion is the bulwark of the oppressive state, and represents a highly conservative psychological (and physical) road block on the path to true conscious growth. This is why Lenin refers to religion as a ‘private matter’, that is, a matter of concern between an individual as his own psychology. As religion has no place in the outward manifestation of an advanced society, its establishments must be disinvested of all social power. A socialist and communist society strives to remove all sense of alienation from the minds of its citizens, by creating non-alienating physical constructs and establishments free of the inherent oppression of the old system. It is Marxism that carries out the true transformation of the individual and society, and which reveals religion to be an imposter. Religiously minded people must develop their understanding away from the seductive nature of scripture, and toward the rational nature of Marxism, and it is incumbent upon Marxists everywhere to assist in this process of radical realignment, if Marxian thinking is to truly spread into every corner of society both psychologically and physically.
Many religiously minded individuals are part of religious networks that have no intention whatsoever of transcending the alienated human condition, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. This creates a false intellectualism that takes its authority directly from scripture, mediated by the strong personalities of ecclesiastical hierarchies, and cult leaders – often it is difficult to discern the difference. This religious pretension in the West, that simultaneously claims a higher knowledge, whilst demonstrating the exact opposite, has kept the masses in servitude for centuries. The certitude of the intellectual insight of Karl Marl cuts through the muddled and confused thinking that is theology, and exposes the pseudo-intellectualism of the church for what it is, a false consciousness. Those religiously minded individuals who have developed their conscious level, and who are susceptible to the Marxist message, should be engaged and encouraged to transition. There is nothing for the committed Marxist to fear from religion, on the contrary, there is everything to gain. The true transformation is that of joining the incisive intellection established by Karl Marx and seeing through the veil of lies that permeate and define bourgeois society. This is true in reality, regardless of what religion an individual either chooses to follow, or is born into, as there is an element of delusive religiosity in all of the world’s religions despite differences in culture and developmental history. It might also be said that some supposed atheists follow their path of ‘no god’ in an obsessive manner that directly mirrors their religious counter-parts. Even within atheism there can still exist fundamental elements of religiosity, such is its pervasive nature. Being beyond religion in the Marxist sense, demands that all religiosity is left behind through a conscious evolutionary process. This means abandoning completely, the intolerance and bigotry often displayed through religion, and sometimes copied by those who deny there is a god. Atheism and theism historically, are inherently linked to the presence of religiosity. Atheism is not a state free of religion, but rather the shadow, or counter-point of religious thinking. It is the Judeo-Christian religion defining the terms through which it will be viewed (and criticised) by humanity, and this perspective can be clearly seen in history. The Roman state had the crime of ‘atheism’ which was used to punish those who did not respect or pay proper worship to the pantheon of Rome. As Judeo-Christians were sometimes charged and punished by this law – as Christians insisted upon a monotheistic entity over that of Roman polytheism – when Christianity became the state religion of Rome, as an act of vicious revenge, it used the same term to refer to non-Christians in a prejudicial and highly destructive manner, yet another example of the suffering encoded and passed on within strictures of Christianity. A Marxist should move beyond theism and atheism, and adopt a position of non-theism. This embodies the insight of Karl Marx, who received a very good bourgeois education, but instead of looking back upon the system that had provided him with these analytical tools (with a glowing and supportive attitude), he instead went forward and beyond it. Through a pristine logical penetration of the world as it presented itself through his mind and body, Marx saw through the bourgeois system and was able to express this understanding throughout the 50 volumes that comprise his collected works. Perhaps Marx’s definitive statement upon the corrosive nature of Christianity in society with regard to colonialism is found in the first volume of Das Kapital, where he criticises the religious attitude of the Quaker William Howitt, and describes him as ‘…a man who makes a speciality of Christianity.’ Marx continues;
‘The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth.’
How did Marx arrive at this philosophical position? In the late 1830’s, as a student at Berlin University, David McLellan (in his Karl Marx – A Biography) states that Karl Marx joined the Doctors’ Club and entered the philosophical and theological movement known as the Young Hegelians. This was essentially a discussion forum for the preservation, dissemination, and development of the dominant philosophy of the age propounded by Friedrich Hegel. Hegel, a practicing Lutheran (Protestant) Christian, had held the chair of Philosophy from 1818 –1831 at Berlin University. He believed that he had created the perfect synthesis between secular, logical philosophy, and theology. Marx was never entirely happy with the perspective of Hegel, but made a study of his system, as he saw it containing potential elements that might be useful in assessing the nature of reality. Engels stated (in his Socialism, Utopian and Scientific) that Hegel had presented, for the first time in history, a system that offered an integration of natural, historical, and spiritual aspects bound together through a process of continuous transformation. Furthermore, according to Engels, Hegel’s approach strove to establish the fact that this process was an organic one, as opposed to being reliant upon some kind of mystical unfolding of events. However, following Hegel’s death in 1831, the Hegelian movement split into two broad camps with conservative branch emphasising the religious content, and the radical branch preferring to state the prominence of Hegel’s rationality over that of theology. It is the latter movement through which Marx develops his criticism of theology and places reason and logic as the supreme vehicle for the development and evolution of humanity. Marx, as a philosophy student, was much taken with the idea of a developed self-consciousness as that exhibited through many Greek scholars and philosophers, particularly Socrates, Plato, Aristole, and Epicurus, etc. In fact, many Young Hegelians view Hegel – their mentor – as a new Aristole which they must follow, very much living in his all-encomposing shadow. The Prussian state at the time tended to ruthlessly crush any political dissent, and so this created a situation where many philosophers exercised their mind in the safer direction of the theology; not so with Marx. He stated without hesitation that logic and reason must prevail over theology, and that in the final analysis, theology was a product of imperfect philosophical thinking that. In other words, whatever theologians may or may not think about the religious teachings they follow, these supposedly ‘divine’ teachings (given to humanity by a theistic entity), are in fact nothing but the creations of the human mind projected outward onto a non-existent, mythological being. Furthermore, this being the case explains why there is no objective evidence to support the assertions of theology. Theology is not ‘divine’ but is simply the product of the human mind contained within a human body; both of which are suffering psychologically and physically due to the historically conditioned circumstance of the inhabited physical environment. Therefore, for Marx theology is not the answer to inner estrangement, or alienation. This is to state that theology does not solve the problem that it claims it does.
The book entitled ‘Karl Marx on India’, (edited by Iqbal Husain), presents a compilation of the articles written by Marx for the New York Daily Tribune, during the time period 1853 – 1862, that form a compendium of information regarding India and British imperialism. Much of this content represents Marx writing exclusively in English for the first time, and presents evidence of the development of his understanding with regard to the unfolding of Indian history. In the early articles Marx approaches India essentially from Hegel’s position. Hegel, despite being a philosopher who advocated the uncritical acceptance of Christian theology, states (in his The Philosophy of History) that Hinduism (i.e. Brahmanism) is a product of imagination, and its caste system the ultimate deprivation of personality and freedom. Hegel goes on to say that ‘Hindoos have no history’ and ‘no growth expanding into a veritable political condition.’ Hegel’s obvious misinterpretation and misrepresentation of Indian culture (and history) is further compounded when he comments ‘the morality which is involved in respect for human life is not found among the Hindoos.’ Marx states in his Tribune article dated the 25th of June, 1953, the following;
‘…murder itself [being] a religious rite in Hindustan – a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting in degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.’
Peculiarly, Hegel acknowledges that the stratified caste system, (with its multiplicity of polytheistic entities) was superior to an undifferentiated society, but nevertheless condemned it as creating ‘…the most degrading spiritual serfdom.’ The research contained in Karl Marx on India demonstrates that Marx repeated all of this Hegelian opinion in his early Tribune articles, but not without careful consideration and qualification. In 1953, for instance, genuine knowledge concerning Indian history, culture and religion was scant in Europe, and what there was, was presented through the distorting filter of an often racist Eurocentricism. Gilbert Archer, in his Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism, states that Hegel is obviously wrong in his assessment of Indian history, and that Marx used much of Hegel’s work, although in reverse causality, to assess Indian historical (and economic) development. However, Marx thoroughly rejected the idea that divinity had created Indian society, and steered clear of much of Hegel’s more obviously flawed opinions, choosing instead to emphasise the oppression and injustice he believed existed at the heart of the caste system. In Marx’s early Tribune work, it is clear that he presents the idea that the caste system itself prevented economic development, which, whilst keeping Indian society the same throughout the generations, did not allow for the unfolding of dialectical history. Marx, through the studying of work other than Hegel, (such as Michael Wilks’ 1810 Sketches of South India, John Campbell’s 1852 Modern India, James Mills History of British (1806-18), and numerous parliamentary reports), developed a reasonable amount of reliable knowledge about India, and suggested that the domination of Indian society by religion had prevented any significant economic, cultural, and political growth throughout its history. In a letter dated the 2nd of June, 1853, Marx, (referring to Hegel’s assumption that religion creates society), asks Engels; ‘Why does the history of the East appear as a history of religions?’ By the time of the publishing of Grundrisse (1857) and Das Kapital (Volume 1) in 1867, his views on Indian history and society had developed considerably since his analysis of the Indian village in 1853. Certainly by 1857 Marx (and Engels) had developed a pronounced anti-colonial and anti-imperialist position that nolonger unquestionably assumed the positive effect of capitalist expansion (either inside or) outside of Europe, much of which was brutal, uncompromising and led to de-development. This process of seeing through colonialism probably began with Marx and Engels immigrating to England in 1849. This relocation gave them direct access to the destructive effect of British imperialism in Ireland, and eventually Marx would support the Chinese cause in the Second Opium War and the Sepoy Uprising in India. Kevin Anderson, in his 2010 study entitled Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, describes the philosophical narrative of the Grundrisse;
‘In this germinal treatise on the critique of political economy, he launched into a truly multilinear theory of history, wherein Asian societies had developed along a different pathway than that of the successive modes of production he had delineated for Western Europe… While he had seen the Indian village’s communal social forms as a prop of despotism in 1853, he now stressed that their forms could be either democratic or despotic.’
It is clear that for Marx, Brahmanism in India performed the same stultifying social and psychological function as that of the Christian church in the West. The caste system prevented any development in political economy in India. Each person, being born into a caste with a rigid labour function, could only perform the task allotted to his caste. This theological system, created by the mind of humanity, was mistakenly viewed as emanating from a theistic entity, and manifesting on earth. Due to its obvious dogmatic structure, Marx critiqued the caste system for its inherently oppressive and deterministic nature. Like the Christian church, the Brahmanical theological inversion prevented humanity from evolving in any direction, and sustained an ancient system of social organisation that went no where.
During his days in the Doctors’ Club Karl Marx became very good friends with another radical Young Hegelian named Karl Koppen. Karl Koppen was a history teacher (dedicating his 1840 book entitled ‘Frederick the great and his Opponents to Marx), and both he and Marx would remain lifelong friends. Koppen recalls that in those student days, Marx was ‘a true arsenal of thoughts, a veritable factory of ideas’, and Koppen (in a letter to Marx) believed that Bruno Bauer’s book the ‘Christian State in our Time’ drew largely on the ideas of Marx. It is also interesting to note that Karl Koppen eventually became recognised as a European scholarly authority upon the philosophical teachings of Buddhism, and that his association with Marx was probably responsible for the knowledge of Buddhism that Marx possessed. This knowledge can be seen at work in an article he wrote for the New York Tribune dated the 1stof September, 1957, and entitled ‘Sepoy Revolt in India’. Marx states (retaining his original spelling);
‘…the three higher castes of the Hindhoos – the priests, the warriors and the cultivators – belonged to a race which intruded itself into India from the north, bringing with it a new language, a new religion, and new social institutions, and the evident relationship of the Sanscrit to the Latin, the Greek, the German and the Slavonic tongues, proves these intruders and conquerors to have sprung from the same root with the existing dominant races of Europe. While these foreign invaders made themselves, as princes, soldiers, priests and landlords, the masters of the country, the original populations, pressed more and more toward the southern extremity of the peninsular, were included in the inferior caste of Sudras, handicraftsmen and artisans, wholly excluded from political or intellectual influence, and restricted exclusively to industrious labor as servants of the higher classes.
After the country had been thus ruled, nobody knows for how many ages, but not without violent internal commotions and bloody religious quarrels, which ended in the expulsion of the Budhists – who seem to have been a sort of Brahmanical rationalists from India, and the complete triumph of the orthodox creed, not, however, without incorporating into itself, as generally happens in such cases, many ideas and superstitions of the rival faith; somewhat more than a thousand years ago, India became exposed to a new invasion by armies and nations from the North, who had, by this time, adopted the Mohammedan faith.’
It is generally accepted that Buddhism arose from the insights of a Brahmanic Indian prince who occupied the second highest caste of Kshatriya – reserved for warriors and kings. Although this caste is technically below the Brahmin caste of dominant priests, (who held power over early Indian society simply through the regulation of the making of fire in the villages), at the time of the Buddha’s birth (c. 6th century), the Kshatriya caste had started to politically dominate, and exclude the Brahmins from real power, reducing their status to that of purely spiritual functionaries. This development triggered a society-wide breaking of tradition as defined by the Brahmins. Young men, who originally had to raise a family and make a living before giving up the world - according to Brahmanic scripture, now left their families (usually without permission), whilst unmarried and retreated to the forests and mountains to practice mind control techniques common to yoga. The Buddha rejected theism, certain types of materialism, and idealism, when formulating his explanation of the psychology of perception as he understood it to be. He noted the existence of the belief in polytheism, karma, and rebirth within Indian society at the time, but stated clearly that such beliefs were an illusion generated by a deluded mind. It is interesting that Marx refers to Buddhism as ‘rational’ in nature, a description that he refused to use for any other religion, or spiritually inclined philosophical path. It is as if Marx is suggesting that Brahmanism produced an individual (in the person of the Buddha) who managed to throw-off the limitations of his culturally conditioned religiosity, and regain his rationality. It is interesting here, to consider Lenin’s assessment of the apparent subject – object dichotomy when he states (in his 1914 text entitled Summary of Dialectics) the following;
‘Philosophical idealism is only nonsense from the standpoint of crude, simple, metaphysical materialism. From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, on the other hand, philosophical idealism is a one-sided, exaggerated, development (inflation, distension) of one of the features, aspects, facets of knowledge, into an absolute, divorced from matter, from nature, apotheosised.’
Although it is true that Marx only mentions Buddhism once in his entire 1853-1862 body of work for the New York Tribune, elsewhere Marx records in a letter to Engels, that in early 1861, whilst visiting Berlin (in an unsuccessful attempt to regain his Prussian citizenship), he met his old friend Karl Koppen, and together enjoyed a drinking session which Marx said did him ‘a power of good’. Afterwards, Koppen presented Marx with a two volume set of his classic study upon Buddhism, (written in German), that is still regarded as a pivotal scholarly work today. Marx exhibits in his work a very good grasp of Indian history including the development and domination of its various forms of religiosity. As his ruthless criticism of everything unfolded, Marx had to necessarily adjust the minutiae of his arguments, whilst retaining the general deconstruction of bourgeois society and the exploitative psychology it produces and perpetuates. Whilst continuously revealing the historical class antagonism and contradiction inherent in the unfolding dialectical process, Marx clearly demonstrated that it was historical (material) conditions manifesting in different parts of the world that gave rise to religiosity, and that at no time could it be truthfully stated (outside of blind faith), that a divine being had created human existence as Hegel supposed, and all religionists believed. The psychological patterns in the human mind that purport to adhere to theological religious beliefs are not imported into the mind from the mysterious influence of a theistic entity, but are rather the product of sensory stimulus received from the existential, material environment. In the case of the development of religious structures in early India, for example, the Buddhist monk Sangharathana states (in the ICBI eJournal Patriarch’s Vision December 2013);
‘According to the study of anthropology, a group of people (who originated on the Indo-Iran plain) migrated to Indiaand settled in the Indus-Valley area. They were nomadic tribes in search of a suitable environment to settle. When they found banks on sustainable rivers, they established their home and built a civilization. They started agricultural life in India and faced numerous problems due to environmental changes like floods, storms, forest fires, earth quakes, and land slides etc. They tried to work out the reasons for these natural occurrences, but when they failed to do so, tended to believe that there was a powerful super natural being behind these events.‘
This rational view common to Buddhist philosophy supports the version of history that Marx presents in his 1853-1862 work as published in the New York Tribune and elucidated throughout his collected works. The fact that Asian Buddhists in general, and to a certain extent, modern Hindu scholars, advocate a similar early history to the development of India is important to counter assertions aimed at Marx of ‘Eurocentricism’, when interpreting the conditions as found in Asia. After-all, Hegel’s Eurocentricism is obvious and easy to discern. It interprets the unfamiliar (i.e. Indian history and culture) from the position of the familiar (i.e. Western history and culture), even though the latter has no bearing on the former. This is what the academic Urs App refers to as Arlecchino mechanism at work. In works such as ‘The cult of Emptiness’, App refers to the fundamental misrepresentation of Asian religious culture by Western explorers, who tended to limit everything to a Judeo-Christian interpretation. Arlecchino is a character in an Italian commedia dell’arte who believes that the entire world operates exactly along the lines of his own family, and acts accordingly. Hegel skilfully weaves limited facts about Asia with imagination, mythology, and bias. As Marx used Hegel as a philosophical starting point, this has led to thinkers such as Edward Said to suggest that Marx is bias in his assessment of the East, and in reality is presenting another form of Orientalism – or Western misrepresentation. However, such an assessment appears to deliberately avoid or ignore the entirely different and radical approach that Marx employed. The reality is that Said’s groundbreaking (1978) work on Orientalism (which caused a paradigm shift in Western academia) was not his own original creation, but was rather developed from the theories propounded by Anouar Abdel Malek (1963), and Maxime Rodinson (1968). Although Edward Said acknowledged these thinkers in his re-presentation of their work, he omitted to mention that both were in fact Marxist academics, and failed to acknowledge the philosophical debt that the theory of Orientalism owed to Karl Marx. Gilbert Achcar, in his Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism, expertly presents this case and points out that Edward Said misrepresents Karl Marx when accusing him of the very bourgeois trait (of Orientalism) that his historical materialism reveals. This is a criticism that Said has received from many other Arab and Asian thinkers who premise their ideas on the work of Karl Marx and who find it odd that Marx should be accused of the very injustice his work reveals. Achcar’s research suggests that there are two distinct interpretations of what it means to be ‘Eurocentric’. The first is ‘Supremacist’, which Karl Marx definitely was not, whilst the second deals with the episteme of the time. Achcar asserts that the work of Marx (and Engels) was undoubtedly Eurocentric in the sense that they had to formulate their theory through the filter of European academia. This is to say Marx formulated theories about Indiawithout first-hand experience of the country he was assessing. However, Edward Said, in his work, wrongly implies that Marx was a ‘Supremacist’, and not simply writing through a Eurocentric rubric. More to the point, the revolutionary theory of Marx that breaks cleanly with historical idealism, transcends the cultural conditioning through which it is manifests. Perhaps the most poignant criticism of Edward Said, by other Arab and Asian thinkers, is that through his well known work Orientalism, he is presenting a form of ‘Orientalism in reverse’, whereby the West is presented as a continuous line of historical development from ancient Greece to the modern USA, and that as a consequence, the Western mind is innately unable to gain true knowledge of the Orient.
The religious structures of bourgeois society are sentimentalised into presenting a permanent state of misery, as an illusionary state of permanent hope. Theology is a nonsense presented as a higher truth. The Christian church, mirroring the class constructs of bourgeois society, ruthlessly exploits its adherence – the common people – to its own mercenary ends. The Christian church is nothing other than a method of preserving class privilege and bourgeois excess through the muddling of reason with the use of theology. The common people are kept in a continuous pre-modern level of psychological development, and the only aspect of the Christian church that is truly ‘eternal’, is its ability to ruthlessly oppress and exploit those it controls. Secularism, in many respects, is the continuance of the psychology of the Christian church stripped of its obvious, outer religiosity. Bourgeois secularism (within a liberal society) is seldom little more than the furtherance of religious aims, without a direct recourse to an all controlling theistic entity. This is why Marx advocated a ruthless criticism of all that exists. Secularism is the dark shadow of religiosity and its assumed freedoms nothing more than pretentious allusions. The religious-secular dichotomy of the bourgeois state is not the establishment of equality, but merely represents the relaxing of morality associated with scripture. The modern Christian church supports rightwing governments, trades in arms, protects child abusing priests, and perpetuates anti-Semitism, racism, and discrimination. Its priests are drawn from the middle classes, and its top-down, hierarchical (feudalistic) structure ensures those at the bottom – that is the ‘devout’ masses – are kept entirely in their place whilst simultaneously believing in a fairytale about a mythological ‘heaven’ that exists somewhere else, but never ‘here’. The Christian church makes a virtue of oppression as personal suffering, and views poverty and injustice in society as inherently correct because it is representative of the will of god; this is why the church is a dangerous and backward institution. Psychological growth in the direction of Communism can not occur as long as a small group of influential men are allowed to run an institution as corrupt as the Christian church. Exactly the same criticism can be aimed effectively at Judaism and Islam, which may be viewed as variants upon a theistic theme, certainly in the light that Judaism gave historical birth to the other two. Marx clearly presents Brahmanism (i.e. Hinduism) as a blatant attempt by foreign invaders of India to oppress, stratify, and dominate the indigenous (Dravidian) peoples of India, forcing them to live predominantly in the southern half of their country, and inflicting a mixture of theology and philosophy upon the country that sought to concretise the racial divide of the physical caste system in terms of unquestionable religiosity. Later, Buddhism, as a reform movement, would look to breakaway from this system, denying the validity of the caste system, or that gods were real and could assist humanity. Although Buddhism seeks to empty the mind of the psychological patterns imported through class (or caste oppression), and may be considered a unique movement within the philosophy of religion, nevertheless, overtime many of the structures of religiosity have become an integral part of this movement. Today, much of modern Buddhism, despite its clear philosophy to the contrary, may be observed (to a lesser or greater extent) as conforming outwardly to the religiosity of Brahmanism in Asia, and after its spread to the West, to the religiosity of Judeo-Christianity. This bourgeois pollution has caused such aberrations as Buddhists monks in Burma and Thailand inciting race hatred, and race wars against Muslim minorities - surely mimicking the rhetoric of the United States of America, and its ‘war on terror’. Although Marx may have viewed Buddhism as rational, the propensity for emancipatory philosophies that have grown out of religion to descend back into the quagmire of religiosity is always a danger. Marx advocates the regaining of the true self-consciousness unhindered by superstition and religious belief. In this, his work represents a complete, total, and final epistemological break with the primitive mindset that once looked out upon the world and attempted to explain naturally occurring phenomena through the means of fanciful stories. These stories use imagination to fill in the gaps lacking true knowledge. Religion is a particular type of ‘gap filling’ that once offered a sense of ‘awe’, coupled with moral guidance, and an explanation of sorts, for the presence of life. At one time in human history religion may have been valid as the only means of explaining reality to a developing human mind. Today, the world and the human mind have moved on considerably. The technological, postmodern age has produced real wonders, the like of which renders the comparative weak mysteries of religious thinking redundant.
The truth of the matter is that ‘faith’ will not develop technology, medicine, space travel, or advanced and progressive philosophy. Faith can not plan an economy, or manipulate agriculture to produce food, and it certainly can not move a mountain. More than this, however, but bourgeois religion uses faith only as a means to control the masses it exploits and oppresses – this is the true nature of religion that the intellect of Karl Marx saw through. Applying his method of dialectic deconstruction, it is not enough to simply deny the validity of religion, or in so doing espouse what may be construed as the Marxist line. Religion and its theology (and in the case of Buddhism, its philosophy) must be met intellectually head-on. Marxists, like Marx before them, should possess a thorough knowledge of the subject that is being analysed in a progressive and advanced manner. It is decidedly unMarxian to trumpet ideology in the name of Communist rationality on the one hand, whilst simultaneously failing to acquire correct knowledge of the subject on the other. Declaring belief systems null and void does not win over the adherents of those systems to the Communist cause, but on the contrary, only serves to alienate them from it. Although Marx wrote relatively little about religion, what he did write is highly significant. He sees the criticism of religion to be the doorway to the complete and full criticism of bourgeois society. For the bourgeois mentality to be fully understood, religion must be understood and deconstructed. Those infected with the psychology of religiosity must be reasoned with and led away from the damaging conditioning that limits their perception of reality and condemns them to live in a fairytale existence with no happy ending. Every Communist should help those who are the victims of religion to regain their true self-consciousness in the light of Marxist rationality. Marxism and Marxists should not create a presence that compels religionists to retreat further into the world of theological imagination, and cling with an ever stronger determination to the outer (physical) structures of the church. The church is a psychological construct made physical, with its ignorance inspired rhetoric equating the exploitative bourgeois state with its imaginary construct of a theistic entity. With the exploitative bourgeois class system firmly equated with god, it is no secret that the church views a rebellion in the former as a direct attack on the latter. The logic (and for that matter, compassion) contained in Marx’s critique of religion is far stronger than any theological construct, and this should be the basis for the deconstruction of religion. Although the church can be directly combated on the social level, it can also be effectively dismantled on the psychological level. This psychological approach removes the need to ‘believe’ from those infected by the taint of religiosity. Marx explained the historical psychology of the development of religion, and herein lays the key or antidote for its transcendence. Marx explains what a false consciousness is in relation to religion, and furnishes (through this explanation) the means to correct an inverted psychology. Marxists should follow this example and strive to self-educate on every aspect of reality so that no corner of bourgeois excess is left unrevolutionised, and no aspect of the theory of Karl Marx remains undeveloped.
Marx criticises the psychology of the Judeo-Christian church, stating that its idealism is an inversion of reality, directly implying that reality is not represented by Judeo-Christian theology. Lenin develops this theme through his interpretation of Marxism by emphasising that the church, (as an exploitative social entity) must be permanently excluded from the political process, and stripped of all such existing power still in its possession. This is not an attack upon the church per se, but rather a form of direct action designed to remove the unnecessary politicisation of theology. For Lenin, the church should have no political power, and religious belief relegated to the concerns only of the private citizen. Lenin conceived that the Communist state, when fully established, would bring every forward thinking and progressive state of existence to the physicality and psychology of humanity, and that as a consequence, the alienation caused by the bourgeois system would fall away. This evolutionary process from Capitalism to Socialism, and then to Communism, would remove the physical and psychological conditions that have in the past produced the development of inverted religious teachings. If the stimulus is removed, the response does not occur; but this is not the sudden eradication of the psychology of religion, as such an ambition would take generations (and decades) to fully achieve, even if temples, synagogues, and churches were destroyed, and religious teaching banned. Over 70 years of Communist education in the Soviet Union failed to eradicate religious thinking, and the Christian church found it a relatively easy task to re-establish itself in Russia and surrounding countries post-1991. Communist China, for instance, since the 1980’s has essentially allowed the re-establishment of traditional religious teaching, providing those traditions are suitably modified to assist the building of Socialism in that country, and do not behave in an independent, counter-revolutionary manner. The official, state run Buddhist Association of China (中國佛教協會 - Zhōngguó Fójiào Xiéhuì) defines Buddhist practice in Communist China as;
‘Activities: The BAC was founded in 1953 and the current President is Master Chuan Yin (传印法师– Chuan Yin Fa Shi). The BAC is a patriotic association and an educational administrative organization, which unites all the Buddhist practicing nationalities in China. Its objective is to assist the People’s Government by implementing and protecting freedom of religion, whilst safeguarding the legal rights and interests of the Buddhist community. The BAC maintains Buddhism as an honourable religion, supports the establishment of Buddhist enterprises, and perpetuates the excellent Buddhist tradition. Buddhism is encouraged to be patriotic to the flag, keep its teachings relevant and up to date with the progress of the world, and become self-sufficient and strong; whilst striving to unite the ethnic groups of China, as well as working toward the building of a Socialist Stateand the reunification of China.’
In Article 52 of the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (Part II the State and the Individual), Lenin’s attitude toward religion is clearly formulated into state law;
‘Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship or atheistic propaganda. Incitement of hostility or hatred on religious grounds is prohibited. In the USSR, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church.’
Whereas China focuses state control primarily upon Buddhism, Lenin emphasises the control of religion in general. Buddhism in China is perceived as a foreign presence from a different country – even though it has been present for around 2000 years. Daoism, by way of comparison, an indigenous form of Chinese nature worship, does not have applied to it the same level of state control; and Confucianism, whilst nolonger being state creed (and the vehicle of feudalistic oppression), nevertheless has been re-constituted as a language education institution that has spread throughout the world. Daoism and Confucianism, as distinct but fully ‘Chinese’ belief systems, are not subject to the same legal restriction as that applied to Buddhism. The Chinese state applies Marxian inspired law differently, toward different belief systems, although as within the USSR, freedom of religion is legally protected in the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese approach adapts state law (dealing with religion) to prevailing local conditions. An example of this adaptability may be viewed through the different policies pursued by the Chinese state toward the (Arabic) Hui and (the Turkic) Uighur ethnic minorities. This position has to do primarily with the fact that China’s Communist Revolution had to transition from feudalism to Socialism without an intermediate capitalist phase. This meant that the minds of the populace functioned primarily through a religious view of the world that was encouraged and justified by the hierarchy of the feudalist state. The emperor was the son of heaven, with the nobility sharing in this presumed divinity that diminished as the social status lowered, until the popular masses, possessing no divine essence, were left to their own devices in the formation of their religiosity. Buddhism, entering China from India via the Silk Road, tended to give the masses a religious focus that was not premised (or directly linked) with the Chinese imperial state. The presence of Buddhism amongst the masses was officially perceived as a problem that violated the top down hierarchy of the state, and which threatened the hegemonic power of that establishment. Overtime, the state (in the body of the emperor) reacted to this presence through the polarity of acceptance and rejection. At certain points in Chinese history the state embraced Buddhism and showered its adherence with rewards and accolades; whilst at other times Buddhism was banned and its followers persecuted.
The issue for Marxian thinkers is what has to be done to transform the psychology and physical habits associated with religiosity and its practice. This is a historical issue. Marx, in The German Ideology, clearly explains how the environment, (operating through socio-economic patterns), creates the conditions for the formation of religiosity;
‘Division of Labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc.’
Marx adds (as a margin note in the original manuscript), the following commentary to the first line; ‘The first form of ideologists, priests, is coincident.’ Those who possess the leisure time created by the hard work of the masses, and who are freed as a consequence from the need to work hard for their subsistence, possess the conditions whereby their physical bodies receive appropriate nourishment without effort. The basic need to survive is supplied by the labour of others, and this frees the human mind to disengage from the activity of competing in the environment for resources, and instead look into its own interior. This is the inversion of the mind compounded by injustice, inequality, and suffering (through working conditions) in the environment. Despite the inherent psychological dangers involving religiosity within this situation, human beings being freed from the immediacy of the fight for survival, have used their minds in a positive manner to formulate science and technology, develop medicine, and create progressive and advanced philosophies such as the theory of evolution, and the Marxian critique of political economy. This ability to free and use the mind is not denied as an important development within human evolution by Marx, but his stringent critique of religion is based upon what he views to be a distortion of this otherwise positive attribute. The mind departs from a clear (and real) perception of its own inner state and functioning, and deviates away (or loses touch) with the material reality that surrounds it. This concrete knowledge of psychology and material analysis is replaced with an elaborate and often sophisticated world of imagination. Natural inner and outer processes become viewed through a filter of false images and pseudo-knowledge. This is true alienation whereby humanity loses touch with the very reality that gives it life, and through which it lives. The psychology of religiosity is self-defeating and self-perpetuating; it cuts off any chance of psychological or material progression, and traps the believer in an unending cycle of dependence based upon fear and superstition. Once the mind of an individual is infected by theology, a dark cloud of ignorance descends and the light of reason is diminished. Religion, (unlike the material science it mimics), promises to solve all of the mysteries of life, and yet fails to solve a single one. This is why a blind faith in the teachings of theology is a crucial corner stone for religion. It amounts to a faith in nothing. Marx reveals, through his progressive teachings, that the ‘mystery’ of life, if it can be called that, is nothing more than the human mind evolving to ever higher levels of awareness so that it can cognise and understand the world it inhabits, and how that world affects its own inner workings.
How are Marxists to engage religion? Working from within a bourgeois society that misrepresents its self-interest as universal law, religiosity is guaranteed as a human right. This is because it inherently supports the bourgeois system. As a perceived ‘right’ in law, and considering the aggressive proselytising of the Judeo-Christian religion in the West, it assumes a default position of resisting any and all attacks aimed at it through any type of criticism. This effectively gives its adherents immunity from common sense and progressive thinking. The bishops and priests strictly control the flow of knowledge to their flock, ensuring that they, as the ecclesiastical hierarchy, are continuously privileged by their knowing, and that this knowing always appears superior to those less educated beings under their control. The faithful flock is truly reduced to the psychological status of ‘sheep’ and as a consequence, has to have every aspect of their life defined, controlled, and limited by shepherds of the church (i.e. priests). This situation persists in the West despite the relative wealth that exists, and the continuation of the spread of secularism. In the East, Indiais a secular democracy that is still controlled by the caste system (outlawed in 1947). The caste system, held in place by a rigid social demarcation based solely upon skin-colour, dominates India’s secularism to a remarkable degree. The pull of this inverted psychological view of the world is often stronger than the forces of progression and advancement, despite the presence of Communism in that ancient country. Despite the development of wealth amongst the middle classes, by far the greater number of Indian people live a life of grinding poverty which allows for an escape through religiosity. Brahmanic religion is preserved in this poverty, and even those who attain wealth tend to support a religious system that raises them above the struggling masses. Despite the progressive nature of Buddhist philosophy, in countries throughout Southeast Asia many of its monkish adherents preserve ignorance in the masses through cultivating a sense of indifference to external conditions, and holding back advanced knowledge of meditation techniques. All in all the Marxist critique of religion holds true around the world.
To undermine the monopoly that the upper priestly echelons of religions hold over the suffering masses, Marxists should learn the minutiae of religious teaching and use this knowledge to encourage the faithful to develop their opinions away from religiosity and toward a progressive Marxist perspective. This can be achieved through isolating the ‘universalisms’ contained in all religions, and relating these teachings to Marxist thinking. This requires that an interface be developed that is psychologically remedial in nature and apparently non-confrontary. It requires the establishment of a Marxist Institute of Interreligious Affairs that facilitates the development of religiously minded individuals in a progressive direction away from the cul de sac of religiosity. To do this, the inherent belief systems of different religions must be fully understood not only from a Marxian perspective, but also from the psychology of each respective tradition. Marxism can only succeed if its cadres demonstrate a superior understanding of religious thinking, which includes the aims and objectives that each religion believes it is pursuing. Respect for the beliefs of others facilitates a two-way dialogue that does not necessarily equate to agreeing with those beliefs. Such an approach easily counters the default position inherent in each religion of rejecting criticism at the point of encounter. Marxian knowledge, when used in this way, dismantles ignorance and encourages an inner process of learning that moves the individual beyond the religious mind-set. Marxism possesses the means to work with religion through a progressive dialogue in a manner suitable for the times that does not betray the thinking of Karl Marx, or remain stuck in the past, but develops it into a new area of analysis and functionality. In this way, the universalisms found within religions can be developed (and transformed) into the progressive thought development associated with the construction of Socialism and Communism.