Thread: Extended Discussion 2009 Religious Affiliation Census

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

It started out as a cult, but it is big enough now to be considered a religion.

I disagree with both you and Ninja. Marxism started out as a philosophical school of revolutionary socialism. But it grew up. For a lot of people the philosophy basically functioned in people's life in a way that is indistinguishable from a faith.

In the Soviet Union Material Dialecticism became a dogmatic organised philosophy that I would say had the worst qualities of a religion without very many of the good ones.

But no, never really a cult.

It started out as a cult, but it is big enough now to be considered a religion.

:/

Originally Posted by My Other Brain

But no, never really a cult.

Why do you say that exactly? I am not really clear on your explanation.

I was making a joke about the blind and passionate devotion some people develop for Marxism. It is like a cult that became a religion, but technically it was never either. I was just using a metaphor to make fun of Marxism because I think it is such a retarded economic philosophy with so many cult like followers.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Why do you say that exactly? I am not really clear on your explanation.

I was making a joke about the blind and passionate devotion some people develop for Marxism. It is like a cult that became a religion, but technically it was never either. I was just using a metaphor to make fun of Marxism because I think it is such a retarded economic philosophy with so many cult like followers.

Hmm. How to start this?

First, I think a good basic start is to look at how to define religion. I go along with Feuerbach's thesis that religion is a projection of material values and desires onto something transcendental and conceptual. I believe that Marx would go along with this interpretation too. After all, he wrote:

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 encyclopedic 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.

The problem is, I think that by Marx's own definition, Marxism became a religion. It became a way of expressing a hope for a better world and, in the communist world, a hope for socialism to come even prevented people from attaining true class consciousness.

On a more positive note, the biographies of great Marxists read very similarly to the biographies of saints or religious believers. They have the same conversion experiences, faith communities, surges of hope and spiritual low points. There's also hymns, mythic characters, and no end of pomp and ceremony.

The thing is, Marxism grew out of its cult stage pretty fast. I guess because it grew out of an already very successful left wing movement. By the time it had stabilised into a dogmatic form with its own distinct culture it was already a highly significant world-wide belief system. Therefore, it kind of skipped over the cult stage because it didn't stabilise as a religion until it was too big to be a cult.

That's my flawed interpretation, anyway.

That's sort of my interpretation as well. One of my favorite quotes is by Marx: "One thing that I'm sure of is that I'm not a Marxist."