Karl Marx and the Transcendence of Bourgeois-Supporting Religion
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
Author’s Note: I follow in the Soviet academic tradition of studying the entire subject of religiosity – despite possessing no ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in any particular religion that I study and strive to understand. Indeed, through my interaction with colleagues in China, and Members of the Communist Party of China, this remains my primary function. As a modernist, (and despite being born a Chinese Buddhist), my mind is clear of the fog of religion, and I remain neither against nor for religion, but respect everyone’s right to follow any religion of their choice, or to follow none. It is important from a Socialist point of view that religion is a) understood, and b) religionists feel ‘heard’ and not ignored or side-lined. Religion has nothing to fear from Socialism and everything to gain. I find religion fascinating and a subject worthy of intense study and even exploratory practice (as did Marx). Marxist-Leninism opposes religion that is allied with the bourgeoisie and its capitalist system – but many (including some Marxist-Leninists) get confused over this point, and throw the baby out with the bath-water! Marx is not attacking religion per se, but only that religion which is allied with the bourgeois (or feudal) State, and which supports predatory capitalism, imperialism and racism! As this type of religion is very common in the West, indeed, it is the dominant force, this is exactly where Marx aimed his criticism. By separating genuine religious teachings (which are almost always anti-greed) from the capitalist system they are ensnared within, then it becomes far easier to assist those who believe in religion to accept Socialism as a governing ideology that directs the development of society. It is only through developing this innate knowledge of the ‘differences’ inherent in religion that conflict can be avoided and matters can progress in peace, understanding and friendship. Every Socialist society strives to support genuine religion that is free of ALL bourgeois influences!
ACW (5.9.2020)
‘The inner difficulties seem to be almost greater than the external obstacles. For even if there is no doubt about the “whence,” all the more confusion reigns about the “whither.’
Karl Marx: For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (1843), Letter to Arnold Ruge
The ideology of Classical Marxism, that is the theory of Scientific Socialism as formulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century, is not a religion despite various and numerous accusations to the contrary. Marxism is accused of being both a ‘theism’ and an ‘atheism’ by bourgeois ideologues, without any sense of irony or contradiction. This is indicative of the extent to which the bourgeois establishment fears Marxism and seeks to rhetorically destroy or diminish it at every opportunity. The illogicality of this bourgeois response further exposes the soft underbelly of capitalist hypocrisy. Irrationality is accepted as a ‘reasonable response’ which sees Marxism misrepresented and demonised. The Catholic Church has openly supported right-wing and fascist movements throughout recent history, and continues to do so. Marxism and ‘Communists’ are treated as demonic entities within Catholic discourse. Wherever the ideology of Marx emerges within abject poverty and oppression, the Catholic Church asserts the devil lurks in the shadowy background! Furthermore, religionists of all persuasions tend to also accuse Marxism of being a pseudo-religion, with god replaced by a veneration for Marx and theology dislodged by historical materialism. None of these views are true, but are prevalent and persistent.
What is Marx (and Engels) doing to illicit these responses? Marx analyses primarily Judaism and Christianity, although on occasion he does mention Buddhism and Hinduism, (his ‘Young Hegelian’ friend - Karl Friedrich Koppen - was a 19th century export upon Early Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, and is known to have given Marx a number of books on these subjects). Indeed, Marx once stated that in 1866, he had attempted Buddhist meditation whilst resting by the seaside (see: Marx Letter to Antoinette Philips). Marx also discussed (in an article) the presence and influence of Islam in India (in 1853). Although Marx understood that all these religions and spiritualities were not theologically or philosophically identical, nevertheless, they all pursued a very similar function within society, regardless of what stage of development a particular society existed within. All these assumed vehicles of development diverted the attention of humanity from observing, understanding and transforming the material world, by focusing awareness and attention upon the inner world of the interior of the mind. Quite often, this process of inner development is accompanied by a strict moral code, (inherently ‘conservative’ in nature), designed to regulate an external world that is being ‘ignored’. This is why Marx viewed religions as being ‘conservative’ in nature, and representing a certain snapshot of human psychological and physical evolution. The problem is that each religious scheme assumes its own insular correctness that does not recognise the validity of any other view of society (either secular or religious).
Religions conform to the outer structures of an unjust society and because of this are considered reactionary and counter-Revolutionary in nature. A religion (and its adherents) would interpret all injustice as arising from the unseen Will of a divine being, (and therefore ‘sacred’ in nature), and oppose any attempts to ‘change’ circumstances for the better through the agency of human effort. Whereas Marx understands that the history of humanity creates the historical conditions within which humanity exists, religionists refuse to recognise this reality, and ascribe all aspects of suffering to another-worldly divinity! For a religionist, it is an honour to suffer at the hands of god – even if no one has ever set eyes on these hands. The logic of this religionist model then glosses all Revolutionary Movements as being ‘evil’ - that is ‘other than god’ - and therefore an enemy of religion. Religionists understand that a successful Revolution is the end of all human-made suffering and injustice within society, exactly the same markers of injustice that push individuals and groups to embrace religion in the first place. Even so, Marx does not say that religion should be abolished, but rather that it should be stripped of all political power and not taught within mainstream academia, so that it becomes a ‘private affair’ post-Revolution, whereby a Socialist Constitution guarantees both ‘religious freedom’ and the right to be an ‘atheist’. What religionists really protest against with regards to Marxist ideology, is the loss of political power, but this can be countered by the fact that virtually all the founders of the world’s religions rejected worldly power and did not put much stock in it. As a ‘private affair’, many religions would be returned to the original status their founders intended, namely that of personal development and various forms of assumed salvation.
It must also be understood that Marx is critiquing religiosity as it exists, manifests and functions. He is not deploying a hypothetical critique premised upon mysticism or far-fetched idealism. As religion presents itself to the senses, this is the religious reality that Karl Marx is exposing. Whereas religion in the West is in the service of capitalism, in the East it is in the service of despotism, or so Marx wrote in the 19th century. Of course, in the 21st century an argument can be made that as the East is now saturated with capitalism, and the West infected with fascism, a juxtaposition and integration has occurred with the basic premise remaining the same. However, a point seldom or ever considered by Marx, is the possibility that an individual can arrive at an understanding of Marxist thinking through a religiously-inspired dialectical path of self-discovery, the result of which sees the transcendence of the restrictions normally imposed by the moral guidelines of the religion itself. Marx (and Engels) hint at this when they wrote glowingly of Buddhist dialectics, stating that its use of logic and reason is on a par with the ancient Greeks (see: ‘Dialectics of Nature’ by Friedrich Engels). Indeed, in his 1857 article entitled ‘Sepoy Revolt in India’ (published in the New York Daily Tribune), Marx refers to Buddhism as a ‘rational’ form of Hinduism. Interestingly, the USSR possessed at least three ‘Buddhist’ Republics, with Joseph Stalin founding an academic centre to study Buddhist culture and thought in 1928. Within Socialist Laos, Vietnam and China today, the traditional Buddhist establishment is supportive of Marxism and Revolution in general, as a means to improve the living conditions of the masses. Even within Socialist Cuba, Fidel Castro made attempts to bridge the gap between Marxist ideology and Catholic theology. These observations are not intended to imply that Marx was ever soft on religion, he certainly was not. In the Communist Manifesto (1847) he wrote:
‘Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.’
Karl Marx: Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847), Chapter III - 1. Reactionary Socialism - A. Feudal Socialism
Christian monasticism shares a number of common features with the far older Buddhist monasticism. Through meditation and contemplation (coupled with strict physical discipline), the aspirant ‘looks within’ and turns away from the observation (and participation) in the physical world. This self-imposed dialectical educational process can (and often does), lead to the clearing-away of the dross imported into the interior of the mind from interactions in the physical world, so that the ‘truth’ of Scientific Socialism (and what Marx ‘saw’ when he ‘looked within’), can be personally experienced by the monastic. Of course, this is not always the case as can be attested by the example of the popular Thomas Merton who - even as a Cistercian monk- often followed the dictates of the Catholic Church by making anti-Marxist statements in his numerous books and lectures. Evidence suggests that Christian monasticism might well be the ‘original’ form of Christianity, possibly evolving from the Jewish Essenes who retired into the desert in Palestine between 200 BCE – 100 CE – although the Christian Bible does not mention them. The Biblical Jesus went into the desert for forty days and forty nights to ‘look within’ (and ‘look without’) in his battle against the Devil. Some scholars have speculated that this might demonstrate an Essene influence upon Jesus Christ. The Essenes were Jewish men and women who retired to the desert and away from built-up areas of civilisation so that they could follow the Laws of Moses to a far stricter extent, often sitting in ‘cells’ and meditating upon the contents of Jewish scripture. Much of their activity can be gleaned from the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the fact that this Sect eventually died-out indicates that ‘monasticism’ was not favoured by the forces of mainstream Judaism. Christian monasticism, by way of contrast, developed during the fourth century CE with Peter the Hermit, St Anthony and many others. Sitting quietly in a cell, (often a small cave), eating little, resisting temptation and contemplating religious texts to cultivate humility and wisdom is how Christian monastics led their lives. This is very different from the ‘popularist’ Catholic Church which developed a stringent method of ‘interfering’ in everyday society and using ‘priests’ (as opposed to ‘monks’) to enforce the Will of the Pope and his Bishops amongst the masses. Although Marx is criticising the monastic establishment of Christianity above, it is clear that throughout much of his work critical toward religion, it is the ‘popularist’ Church and its habitual collaboration with monarchy, political power and in the modern era – capitalism.
In 1844, Karl Marx discussed the concept of ‘atheism’ and presented it within the context of ‘Private Property and Communism’. He stated:
‘But since for socialist man the whole of what is called world history is nothing more than the creation of man through human labour, and the development of nature for man, he therefore has palpable and incontrovertible proof of his self-mediated birth, of his process of emergence. Since the essentiality [Wesenhaftigkeit] of man and nature, a man as the existence of nature for man and nature as the existence of man for man, has become practically and sensuously perceptible, the question of an alien being, being above nature and man – a question which implies an admission of the unreality of nature and of man – has become impossible in practice. Atheism, which is a denial of this unreality, no longer has any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, through which negation it asserts the existence of man. But socialism as such no longer needs such mediation. Its starting point is the theoretically and practically sensuous consciousness of man and of nature as essential beings. It is the positive self-consciousness of man, no longer mediated through the abolition of religion, just as real life is positive reality no longer mediated through the abolition of private property, through communism. Communism is the act of positing as the negation of the negation, and is therefore a real phase, necessary for the next period of historical development, in the emancipation and recovery of mankind. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism is not as such the goal of human development – the form of human society.’
Karl Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) - Private Property and Communism
If the awareness of humanity was not distracted from the ‘immediacy’ of what the physical senses presented to the mind for assessment, then humanity would understand the truth inherent in a) its physical existence, and b) the physical history associated with this existence. Religion, of course, is the distraction, where an idea of a god in the mind is mistaken for a disembodied spiritual entity existing in the physical environment. The lack of material evidence is overcome through the agency of ‘faith’, or the idea that something might be there even though there is no evidence to suggest it is. Theism is distraction, whilst atheism is the recovery of a true and sensible identity and existence. However, within Socialism, atheism no longer carries any general meaning as the problem it was designed to counter has been removed. The proletariat has successfully seized the means of production (and control society), whilst a popularist Church no longer supports predatory capitalism or the class-interests of the bourgeoisie. In-short, there no longer exists anything to be ‘atheist’ about. Religion has not been wiped-out, but continues to exist as a ‘personal interest’, devoid of all political power and education interference. An interesting question is whether religionists can, through self-cultivation, arrive at a position similar to that held by Marx? Abbot Andre Louf – a Christian monk – teaches:
‘More than other believers, the contemplative ought to be an “expert in atheism.” Does he believe? Perhaps, yet without believing, it seems to him. He no longer understands anything except this one thing: that the God in whom he thought he believed is nothing but an idol invented by himself or fashioned by a culture still vaguely imprinted by Christianity; that the true God, the God of Jesus Christ, is a wholly Other who will surge forth elsewhere than where one expected him, and that one must above all abandon the attempt to reach him by one’s own efforts. And yet it suffices to let him remain unattainable and to let oneself be seized by him at the hour of his own good pleasure.’
Andre Louf: In the School of Contemplation, Cistercian, (2004), Page 12
What a person thinks a god ‘is’ or ‘is not’ is nothing but the inner importations of the competing myriad ideas, notions and assumptions maintained within the external world of conditioned society. Whatever else the Church might do as an establishment, for the true monastic teachers this shallow manifestation is simply not good enough and certainly does not accord with individuals supporting the ignorance of capitalism as a mere habit. There are many examples of this type of developmental thinking throughout the broad range of religious thinking, irrespective of the mythical structure of the religion concerned. As Scientific Socialism is a dialectical ‘science’, it follows that the dialectical reality that is contained within it, must already exist as an obscured strand of reality within all forms of existence, including the very religious thinking that Karl Marx viciously criticises throughout his work. The proletariat reality this strand represents is usually wilfully suppressed or deliberately attacked and driven underground. Nevertheless, regardless of the circumstance of its existential reality, it exists. Monastic and contemplative traditions may well form a special case of dialectical development that when stripped away from a capitalist-supporting Church, would fully support a Socialist System. Writing about the 1871 Paris Commune, Marx expressed an innate knowledge of Christian history when he wrote:
‘Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-power", by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.
The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.’
Karl Marx: The Civil War in France, (1871), Chapter III
The machinations of the Paris Commune became the model for virtually every modern Socialist State. Religion is a problem for a number of reasons. What is to be done with a population of people who follow a religious culture which they have no intention of abandoning or modernising (viewing all attempts to do so as an ‘attack’ upon their freedom of belief). Joseph Stalin, who originally trained as a Russian Orthodox priest, was very able (just after the 1917 Revolution), in travelling around the vast and remote areas of the USSR engaging the leaders of religious communities in discussions about life in the ‘new’ Socialist Society. Initially, Lenin had Stalin offer concessions and economic and cultural incentives which worked very well. In return, the religious populations could continue to pursue their culture whilst their young people attended school, colleges and universities to learn about science and secular thinking. This approach was reinforced by the Constitutional Right of ‘Freedom of Religion’ being guaranteed in Soviet Law (just as it is in every Socialist Society). What is happening after the proletariat seize the means of production, is that religionists undergo a transition from a primitive group mentality, through the stage of bourgeois individuality and into a ‘new’ Socialist Collective. A well-educated individual is empowered by the Socialist State to pursue their lives productively and assist in the development and transition of society into the position of Communist reality. If such a ‘Socialist’ individual feels the need to hold a religious view, then that is allowable and very different from religions that are still feudalistic, or modernised in such a way that support capitalism.
Moreover, Marx asserts that a devout belief in god is indicative of a loss of genuine knowledge in the real world. Humanity, as a physical-species produced through evolution within an ever-changing material environment, is ‘disempowered’ by the very god - the worship of which - is mistaken for ‘empowering’ those on their knees. The holding of a theistic belief leads to a loss of ‘presence’ and ‘functionality’ in the real world. Marx says:
‘All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labour as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.’
Karl Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) - Estranged Labour
Marx sees a connection between alienated labour and alienated worship. Both are acts of bourgeois oppression and control. Both are designed to generate profit at the expense of the well-being of the worker. Furthermore, any notion of god is empowered by the mind of the individual worshipper who falsely believes that what he or she ‘projects’ outward was already ‘independently’ there, as if turning the corner and encountering a tree. In this model, god only exists when formulated in the mind (of the individual) and mistaken to exist in the physical universe whilst possessing all kind of mysterious powers! Just so, a modern labourer puts all his or her heart and soul into producing a product they do not own, and which is taken from them as soon as it is completed. It is sold elsewhere, and the profit taken by the unseen bourgeoisie who own the means of production. God is ‘produced’ in the mind like an object in a factory. Why? Because the bourgeois Christian Church is always lurking in the shadows outside the factory, waiting to capture the mind of the worker whose body is already shackled to the machines of the bourgeoisie. Just as the body is enslaved, so shall the mind be enslaved. This is the reality of religion under the control of the bourgeoisie. What does this religion represent? It is a manifestation of oppression, but is viewed by those caught in its grasp as a ‘refuge’ or ‘oasis’ from the very oppression that it represents. Humanity is caught in the quicksand of religious ignorance, and whilst sinking is mistakenly interpreting events as something quite different. It is this truth that the Catholic Church, for instance, does not want those who are sinking to know about or become aware of. The sinking process is incorrectly viewed through a distorted vision that ‘inverts’ reality and interprets the ‘sinking’ as ‘rising’ and the inherent ‘danger’ as ‘safety’. The entire process of being ensnared, losing individual freedom and logical thought, and conforming to a disempowering and undignified religious ideology is understood to be ‘beautiful’ - like a great work of art! In the meantime, the class-nature of bourgeois religion shows its true colours with the millions of recruited minions running around and doing all the work and earning all the money and leisure time for priests, bishops and pope, etc. This is how Karl Marx describes this self-deceiving attitude that the ‘popular’ Church makes ample use of:
‘The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – 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 point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization 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.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask 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.’
Karl Marx: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843) - Introduction
Whatever goodness resides in religion (and Marx does not deny there is goodness in religion), it is made by humanity and not generated by an unseen theistic construct. Therefore, the goodness in religion is a reflection of the inherent goodness already existent within humanity, but taught by the Church to be imported from elsewhere. Marx firmly states that humanity under Socialism will be in-charge of its own destiny and not dictated to by the bourgeoisie through its corrupt and self-serving religious forms. Socialism will develop the goodness within humanity so that it is expressed freely for the development of humanity without arbitrary barriers of class or human greed interceding. Socialism does not necessarily imply the end of religion, but rather a ‘freeing’ or ‘revealing’ of genuine religious thought from its bourgeois enslavement. Corrupt religion will die-out, that is for sure, but its millions of victims will not mourn its loss. True religion will emerge as a form of individual expression that will be related to ‘art’ and high forms of proletariat ‘culture’. It will be pristine, transcendent and wholly committed to achieving Socialism and the transition into Communism. Perhaps the dialectical ‘beautiful’ aspects of a purified religion might well express an aspect of Communism, and will mainstream across society and no longer be viewed as ‘different’ to everyday reality. This may imply that religious structures might well fall away just because times change and they are no longer relevant to humanity, but the inner beauty that defines all art could well be a permanent feature. This is how Marx explains the process of the transformation of religion:
‘Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the sphere of public law to that of private law. Religion is no longer the spirit of the state, in which man behaves – although in a limited way, in a particular form, and in a particular sphere – as a species-being, in community with other men. Religion has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism, of bellum omnium contra omnes. It is no longer the essence of community, but the essence of difference. It has become the expression of man’s separation from his community, from himself and from other men – as it was originally. It is only the abstract avowal of specific perversity, private whimsy, and arbitrariness. The endless fragmentation of religion in North America, for example, gives it even externally the form of a purely individual affair. It has been thrust among the multitude of private interests and ejected from the community as such. But one should be under no illusion about the limits of political emancipation. The division of the human being into a public man and a private man, the displacement of religion from the state into civil society, this is not a stage of political emancipation but its completion; this emancipation, therefore, neither abolished the real religiousness of man, nor strives to do so.’
Karl Marx: The Jewish Question (1843) - Bruno Bauer
It would seem that Marx recognises a superficial religion (the target of his criticism), and a profound religion (which he ‘hints’ at from time to time). Of course, the world is dominated by this superficial religion which has ruthlessly acquired political and worldly power through vicious actions and deliberate violence. The same Church then teaches that all its power was acquired miraculously by an act of god, who awarded his faithful followers because of their ‘faith’ and ‘purity’. In reality, the Catholic Church lied and cheated its way to State power and behaved just like a typical imperialist power. There has been nothing ‘other worldly’ about its actions or successes. This is the same Church that supported Fascist Italy from 1922 and Nazi Germany from 1933 – and whose priests officiated at the executions of many of their former fascist allies in the post-1945 period. The Catholic Church also assisted many Nazi War Criminals to escape justice in Europe by relocating to South America, with the Pope asking Winston Churchill to save the lives of 10,000 Ukrainian SS soldiers who had committed numerous atrocities in the USSR – on the grounds that they were ‘good Catholics’. (These War Criminals were resettled in Scotland under the cover of being ‘Polish’ refugees). Both the Protestant and Catholic Churches fervently support predatory capitalism with priests from both churches being involved in the epidemic of child sexual abuse. This is exactly the ‘corrupt’ religious traditions that Socialism seeks to abolish and reform, with their criminality having nothing to do with the dialectical development of the individual or the discovering of Scientific Socialism. Marx was not anti-religion per se, but he was anti-capitalist. The religion he targets is comprised of those men and women who assist the bourgeoisie in its routine and habitual oppression and persecution of the working-class. As regards to those elements of religion that are useful for the building of Socialism, Marx has very little to say, and does not waste his time speculating.
Modern, secular society, in reality, is a lay-version of its previous Church-defined and ecclesiastical-dominated expression that functioned in the world unchallenged (and unquestioned), for over a thousand. To control the society under its domination, the Catholic Church imposed a discipline upon the laity, similar to that found operating within a Christian monastery. Whereas a monk or nun ‘volunteers’ to submit their mind and body to the rigours of a monastic Rule, the average lay-person, who was a priori considered a ‘Christian’, had no choice but to submit to attending Church on Sunday (and other times decreed by the Church), give money and food to good causes, and recognise and obey all the laws passed by the Church, whilst respecting all those empowered by the Church to enforce these laws, regardless to how unjust these individuals carried-out their official functions within society. The Church established a framework of lay command and control throughout society that ‘mirrored’ the Church hierarchy and which was controlled exclusively by priests or high-ranking (and trusted) members of the aristocracy. Public executions were designed to cause the most pain to the convicted, and inspire the greatest horror in those watching the spectacle! Killing those who opposed this ecclesiastical control of society was something of a national pastime for a Church which claimed not to engage in worldly issues, but which in reality mimicked dynasties and empires by exercising a ruthless form of tyrannical rule. Lay people were given just enough food to stay alive and ‘work’ for the Church, and nothing else. Most of the lay population were ‘forced’ by law to regularly attend Church (and serve the priestly caste like slaves), were illiterate and could not understand the Services all delivered in Latin – a language they could not understand. Quite often, whilst priests and nobles sat on chairs, the laity were ‘forced’ to kneel (for hours on end) on stone floors that were hard, cold and often wet! When the Church went to war (whilst espousing ‘peace’), the laity were rounded-up and forced into armies raised by local lords and sent out toward the ‘enemy’. Although the Church turned lay-society into a pseudo-monastery, lay-people had no access to monastic training (as this would have involved undergoing an ‘education’ that always carried the threat of ‘self-empowerment’ and the possibility of ‘rebellion’).
Whatever improvements that have happened in society have been accomplished through secular governments operating outside of Church influence. This observation does not absolve lay-society from criticism, as it operates solely through bourgeois-control, and mirrors the Church in its domination of the lay-population. Whereas the Church asserts that salvation remains only ‘an act of mind transformation’ (as do many religions), Marx states that any form of genuine liberation occurs only in the physical world, because this is the world that is lived in, and the reality directly available to the senses:
‘We shall, of course, not take the trouble to enlighten our wise philosophers by explaining to them that the “liberation” of man is not advanced a single step by reducing philosophy, theology, substance and all the trash to “self-consciousness” and by liberating man from the domination of these phrases, which have never held him in thrall. Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse...’
Karl Marx: The German Ideology, (1846), [II. 1. Preconditions of the Real Liberation of Man]
Christian monks and nuns, of course, although taking vows of personal impoverishment, and submitting to the numerous machinations of monastic Rules, are nevertheless existing within the confines of a fabulously ‘rich’ Church which has acquired obscene amounts of wealth through aligning itself with bourgeois capitalism and imperialism! Whilst living within this bubble of affluence, anyone could live a life ‘pretending’ to be ‘poor’ whilst a continuous supply of clothing, food, drink and medical supplies arrive at the door of a large set of buildings exempt from rent and belonging to the Church (involving no landlords). These coenobitical monks and nuns are not ‘homeless’ despite bizarre theological claims to the contrary. The notion of ‘suffering’ that these monks and nuns experience would be considered ‘luxurious’ for the average lay-person who lives on the streets, and who has been abandoned by both the Church and the State. To have access to a warm, cosy and secure small room that contains a comfortable bed and a window for ventilation, (i.e. the average monastic ‘cell’), would be considered (ironically) as a ‘blessing’. Having an endless supply of food and drink, whilst never having to pay rent would seem something like a fairy-tale existence, and yet this is quite normal for the average Christian monastic. On top of all this security and pamper, the monastics receive a ‘free’ education and learn to read and write. How different things are within the Church for the right kind of people.
Marx is of the opinion that there is a point where the inner-mind and the external-sense awareness integrate and overlap, and only appear to be two ‘different’ realities whilst an ‘inverted’ mindset is operating in the mind that habitually perceives the causation of reality the wrong way around. Phantoms in the mind are viewed as concrete objects in the environment, whilst the material environment is viewed as ‘non-existent’. Marx states:
‘In reality and for the practical materialist, i.e. the communist, it is a question of revolutionising the existing world, of practically attacking and changing existing things. When occasionally we find such views with Feuerbach, they are never more than isolated surmises and have much too little influence on his general outlook to be considered here as anything else than embryos capable of development. Feuerbach’s conception of the sensuous world is confined on the one hand to mere contemplation of it, and on the other to mere feeling; he says “Man” instead of “real historical man.” “Man” is really “the German.” In the first case, the contemplation of the sensuous world, he necessarily lights on things which contradict his consciousness and feeling, which disturb the harmony he presupposes, the harmony of all parts of the sensuous world and especially of man and nature. To remove this disturbance, he must take refuge in a double perception, a profane one which only perceives the “flatly obvious” and a higher, philosophical, one which perceives the “true essence” of things. He does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its social system according to the changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become “sensuous certainty” for Feuerbach.
Incidentally, when we conceive things thus, as they really are and happened, every profound philosophical problem is resolved, as will be seen even more clearly later, quite simply into an empirical fact. For instance, the important question of the relation of man to nature (Bruno [Bauer] goes so far as to speak of “the antitheses in nature and history” (p. 110), as though these were two separate “things” and man did not always have before him an historical nature and a natural history) out of which all the “unfathomably lofty works” on “substance” and “self-consciousness” were born, crumbles of itself when we understand that the celebrated “unity of man with nature” has always existed in industry and has existed in varying forms in every epoch according to the lesser or greater development of industry, just like the “struggle” of man with nature, right up to the development of his productive powers on a corresponding basis.’
Karl Marx: The German Ideology, (1846), [2. Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism]
Ever since the emergence of the bourgeoisie in the 17th century, their preferred social system of capitalist trade had been justified as ‘coming from god’, or being ‘decreed by god’, as if inherent in their greed is a blessing from god! Whereas the kings and queens of ancient times believed that their accidents of birth were ‘god given’, the exploitation perpetuated by the bourgeoisie is viewed as morally allowable because of its association with god and a Church that has changed its theological stance to support totalitarian rule and the amassing of wealth on the physical plane. Marx understands that there is no logic in overthrowing the bourgeoisie as a class, only to allow a bourgeois-supporting Church to continue to function in its absence! Once the working-class is freed of its religious conditioning, it may operate in a unified manner as a proletariat army that is able to psychologically see clearly (through the ‘fog of religion’ as Lenin termed it), and carryout timely action when timely action is required in the physical world. Religious indoctrination when aimed at the working-class is an ‘opiate’ which uses fear and ignorance as barriers to clarity of thought, and unification as a class. In this state, each working-class person exists huddled in a corner, shaking from fear and indecision. This ispointless individuality of squalor - the bourgeoisie term ‘freedom’. If it is freedom, it is the freedom to be disunited, weak and continuously afraid. This is how religion enters the vein of the working-class – a very different experience to that experienced by the bourgeoisie who find religion quaint, supportive, sentimental and self-empowering (providing capitalism as a controlling ideology is never questioned). Whilst Jesus turns-over the tax-collecting tables in the temple – the Church would have you believe that god loves a banker! In reality, much of the wealth owned by the Church exists as ‘private property’ - the very private property that will be ‘nationalised’ after the working-class seize the means of production! This vast portfolio of private property will be liberated and given back to the people from whom it was originally stolen, and perhaps this is why the Catholic Church opposes the ideology of Socialism. It is ecclesiastical greed; it is that simple. Those bourgeois priestly leaders of the Church do not want to put into practice the ‘true’ teachings of Jesus Christ – as such a development would share-out the wealth and have more in common with Socialism than the current Church policy of collaborating with predatory capitalism. Marx states:
‘The separation of the “spirit of the Gospel” from the “letter of the Gospel” is an irreligious act. A state which makes the Gospel speak in the language of politics – that is, in another language than that of the Holy Ghost – commits sacrilege, if not in human eyes, then in the eyes of its own religion. The state which acknowledges Christianity as its supreme criterion, and the Bible as its Charter, must be confronted with the words of Holy Scripture, for every word of Scripture is holy. This state, as well as the human rubbish on which it is based, is caught in a painful contradiction that is insoluble from the standpoint of religious consciousness when it is referred to those sayings of the Gospel with which it “not only does not comply, but cannot possibly comply, if it does not want to dissolve itself completely as a state.” And why does it not want to dissolve itself completely? The state itself cannot give an answer either to itself or to others. In its own consciousness, the official Christian state is an imperative, the realization of which is unattainable, the state can assert the reality of its existence only by lying to itself, and therefore always remains in its own eyes an object of doubt, an unreliable, problematic object. Criticism is, therefore, fully justified in forcing the state that relies on the Bible into a mental derangement in which it no longer knows whether it is an illusion or a reality, and in which the infamy of its secular aims, for which religion serves as a cloak, comes into insoluble conflict with the sincerity of its religious consciousness, for which religion appears as the aim of the world. This state can only save itself from its inner torment if it becomes the police agent of the Catholic Church. In relation to the church, which declares the secular power to be its servant, the state is powerless, the secular power which claims to be the rule of the religious spirit is powerless.’
Karl Marx: The Jewish Question (1843) - Bruno Bauer
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.