Comment by JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net on Another L for Roderic Day. Why bother going after Hakim when there’s a genocide going on?

Dude’s an ultra

Bonus: https://nitter.net/uncle_authority/status/1721967810241335347#m

I guess the Deprogram guys are the Three Stooges now? But the joke doesn’t really work

we will ultimately overcome and unfetter ourselves off the idealism that comes with religion

And if that doesn’t happen? China, North Korea, and plenty of AES have religious movements even when atheism is the official stance. China especially can be a guide as many religions were illegal for decades, and people did not stop being religious.

I think China’s dialectical decisions about this reality makes sense, at least for their regulation of it in place of encouragement. For Christianity, they utilize the three-self motto: self-governance, self-support (i.e., financial independence from foreigners), and self-propagation (i.e., indigenous missionary work) to keep practices as indigenous as possible which seems helpful to me.

The material conditions that made religion bury deeply into the cultures of the world will slowly fade as the world progresses.

As marx pointed out religion is the opium of the masses, not as in a party drug but as in a drug that eases the pain and suffering off the oppressed.

Sure, and he’s right as far as religions – and especially state-run bourgeois religions – hampering and preventing revolution. But we have material evidence that (1) religion can and does give voice to and even assist revolutions (Marx and Engels both used religious imagery in their writings) and (2) post-revolution, the desire for spirituality and forms of religion persist even with upheaval and reorganization of material conditions from feudal to capitalist to socialist. Maybe it will die off completely in the future, but that hasn’t happened in any AES country to date and that’s really important to note.

Maybe it will die off completely in the future, but that hasn’t happened in any AES country to date and that’s really important to note.

There was significant decrease in religiousness in all socialist countries and its a steady trend as long as state remain focused on proper materialist education.

Really, looking at all the current and former AES, i would say that getting rid of religion is easier than getting rid of petty bourgeois sentiment (something that Lenin said it would be the hardest thing to do, and which was also not successful but with some progress in AES).

Sorry, I don’t really have the capacity to write the long response that this deserves but I can add few things that complicate that overall picture.

Reported religiousness plummets when religion is outlawed but skyrockets when its re-legalized or tolerated again (e.g., China, USSR). This isn’t because a lot of people suddenly convert – proselytizing is almost always still illegal – but rather they feel safe enough to self-report and identify as religion followers on official and unofficial surveys. Religiosity has been resilient in most AES countries. See China and Cuba’s remarkably steady Christian population and folk religion adherents or Buddhism in Vietnam.
There are many reasons people claim religions including national heritages, family history, spiritual connections to some practice, or genuine superstition. Education can address the latter but struggles with the former. As I recommended below, I’d recommend reading China’s statement on this from 1982.

Agreed on the petty bourgeois sentiment. Religion overlaps with that in huge amounts, of course, so if religion is to be allowed in AES countries, it needs regulation and proper education that both re-educates indigenous populations especially those that were converted from, say, American evangelicals and makes sure cults like Shen Yun don’t pop up – this obviously happens outside of religion too but it’s particularly insidious within it.

You’re basically right, but note even in the formerly AES countries, despite plunging into deep crisis, the number of atheists remain at much higher levels than it was before socialism - even in country like Poland. It’s most visible in Czechia iirc. So it does work. Few more generations (it was like not even 2 basically) and much more would disappear, though probably not entirely (see Japanese christianity emerging after Meiji restoration, though it emerged 95% reduced and heavily influenced with buddhism).

I think there isn’t much problem with disorganised and decentralised religions, at least as the party remains strictly atheist, but something like the catholic church is immense danger, the worse that every move against them, even for completely nonrelated reasons (again look at Poland where some priests were arrested for spying and other antisocialist activities) will be always portrayed as attack on religion, so the socialist country would necessarily have aim to remove their political power, most likely by expropriation of their property - something that for example again Poland failed to do (PRL even gave them some of postgerman land!) which caused unending trouble.

There are many reasons people claim religions including national heritages, family history, spiritual connections to some practice, or genuine superstition. Education can address the latter but struggles with the former.

All those aren’t as immutable as you probably see it, there are historical examples of all this changing more or less rapidly. I think it’s again that socialism simply did not had enough time and had too much outside opposition to properly adress that.

Lenin once wrote interesting article “On the significance of militant materialism”

Czechia seems to be an outlier according to the data I’ve seen (link), but granted that Estonia also has a near majority of atheist. But yeah, observance of actual religions rites are very sparse. But I really care more about how people identify as that is a powerful form if self-identification, especially post-revolution.

Re: Catholcism, I agree 100%. In that document I referenced above, the Chinese government talks about the danger of imperial influences in religions:

Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, which occupy a very important place among our national religions, are at the same time ranked among the major world religions, and all exercise extensive influence in their societies… At the present time, contacts with international religious groups are increasing, along with the expansion of our country’s other international contacts, a situation which has important significance for extending our country’s political influence. But at the same time there are reactionary religious groups abroad, especially the imperialistic ones such as the Vatican and Protestant Foreign-mission societies, who strive to use all possible occasions to carry on their efforts at infiltration “to return to the China mainland.” Our policy is to actively develop friendly international religious contacts, but also to firmly resist infiltration by hostile foreign religious forces.

We must be vigilant and pay close attention to hostile religious forces from abroad who set up underground churches and other illegal organizations. We must act resolutely to attack those organizations that carry out destructive espionage under the guise of religion. Of course, in doing so, we must not act rashly, but rather investigate thoroughly, have irrefutable evidence at hand, choose the right moment, and execute the case in accordance with lawful procedures.

The entire document is worth reading, but this in particular was pertinent to avoiding reactionaries within religions. It still asserts that Marxism and religions are contradictory but that religion isn’t going anywhere even though it’s been illegal for over a a generation.

But as I mentioned to the other poster, we’re basically in agreement. I just don’t think that religiosity will ever just fall away like Marx & Engel’s optimism, but who knows. I’d be glad to be wrong, especially if China’s model of the long game in followed.

Most people who identify as Christians in the former Soviet Union visit the church about 1-2 times a year at most. In more developed Muslim areas situation is the same. Actual religious faith survived only in underdeveloped rural communities, and even there it is slowly bleeding support.

Yeah, Pew’s Report calls that “believing and belonging, without behaving” which I thought was a funny way to put it.

While Pew Research Center’s survey shows that majorities of adults across the region believe in God and identify with Orthodox Christianity, conventional measures of Christian religious behavior – such as levels of daily prayer and weekly worship attendance – are relatively low.

This are my thoughts.

(1) religion can be used as a tool for our cause temporarily pre-revolution and early socialist development, but ultimately it has to be left behind because it is not compatible with the dialectical materialism outlook. Also for religion to work in our cause we need to adapt it, a great example is the liberation theology synthesis developed by latin american priests.

(2) is simply not the reality, in developed nations the trend is that newer generations are less religious than the last one. The transition to an atheist society is, just like everything in nature, dialectical. Religions will slowly wither away to give place to materialism.

We are mostly in agreement here. Yes, I 100% agree that liberation theology and other grassroots religious movements that incorporate dialectical materialism has to be incorporated at some level, superseding the bourgeoise strains of religions in totality. My username’s namesake is named after the guy who is credited with black liberation theology after all. No disagreement here.

But my argument is that we can’t look at capitalist countries to tell us what will happen in communist countries. Its the wrong dataset. We need to look at folks in AES countries to determine how materialism and religion have interacted post-revolution. China’s Christian population has grown significantly in the last two decades. North Korea has had presbyterian members of the upper cabinet, even having a Christian political working group at one point. Vietnam’s folk religion continues to grow, and over half of Cubans are religious. The theory that religion will eventually disappear post-revolution simply hasn’t happened and, in fact, many people have embraced religion post-revolution.

Lets remember that the conditions of these AES countries are still relatively bad, it is understandable that religion is still popular. It is still a fundamental contradiction that has to be resolved.

China’s conditions are not bad, and their dialectic has already taken reality into consideration as it seeks to solve this contradiction. Read “The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question during Our Country’s Socialist Period” released in 1982.

We Communists are atheists and must unremittingly propagate atheism. Yet at the same time we must understand that it will be fruitless and extremely harmful to use simple coercion in dealing with the people’s ideological and spiritual questions–and this includes religious questions. We must further understand that at the present historical stage the difference that exists between the mass of believers and nonbelievers in matters of ideology and belief is relatively secondary. If we then one-sidedly emphasize this difference, even to the point of giving it primary importance–for example, by discriminating against and attacking the mass of religious believers, while neglecting and denying that the basic political and economic welfare of the mass of both religious believers and nonbelievers is the same–then we forget that the Party’s basic task is to unite all the people (and this includes the broad mass of believers and nonbelievers alike) in order that all may strive to construct a modern, powerful Socialist state. To behave otherwise would only exacerbate the estrangement between the mass of believers and nonbelievers as well as incite and aggravate religious fanaticism, resulting in serious consequences for our Socialist enterprise. Our Party, therefore, bases its policy of freedom of religious belief on the theory formulated by Marxism-Leninism, and it is the only correct policy genuinely consonant with the people’s welfare.

North Korea has had presbyterian members of the upper cabinet, even having a Christian political working group at one point

This seems fascinating, do you know a source where I can learn more about this? Everything I’ve found about NK’s relationship with religion is filled with “you get executed if you have a Bible”-style propaganda.

Sure. Kim Il Sung grew up Presbyterian, his maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, his mom was a deacon and lifelong Presbyterian, and his family especially his mom worshiped at a presbyterian church in DPRK. Several members of the dprk cabinet (or whatever it’s called) were Methodist or presbyterian ministers. As long as they were anti-imperial and supported the dprk, there was no issue. There was a Presbyterian seminary in Pyongyang until 1938 that resumed training in the 1970s though I don’t think it’s specifically Presbyterian any more, but it’s still open and training ministers within DPRK. Kang Ryang-uk was an incredibly important figure in the early DPRK. He was the vice chair and chair of the KSDP, the 2nd & 7th Vice President, and secretary and vice president of the People’s Assembly. He was a Presbyterian minister and maternal uncle of Kim Il Sung and studied theology at the Pyongyang Seminary. Kang also helped found the Korean Christian Federation which continues to this day.

You can read more here (best bits at the end): https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/48.3.659

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Another L for Roderic Day. Why bother going after Hakim when there’s a genocide going on?(hexbear.net)

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