Today i had the misfortune of encountering a western “leftist” on Twitter. He stans Podemos (a spanish demsoc party, very liberal and proNATO, they are now in a coalition government with the socdems and they love Zelenski). We discussed the Ukraine War and Russia. I thought he would do the typical “ok the US and NATO are very bad, but Russia is bad too!” so i brought up the NATO invasions of Yugoslavia and Libya to show how the west is manufacturing consent now with Ukraine just like they did with Yugoslavia and Libya, which i assumed he would say were bad. Well the motherfucker goes and says “akchually those invasions were good, we stopped genocides and evil dictators”. WTF. How are these people “leftists”? They are straight up NATOist warhawks. How is this “the left” now? And this is in Europe, where the left is much stronger than in the US! I cant stand this. HOW IS THIS “LEFTISM”? Im so angry right now, what a piece of shit human being, defending imperialist genocides while calling himself a “leftist”. He even had the gull of saying “you arent a leftist, you defend genocidal regimes like the USSR, Putin or North Korea, youre a fascist!”. Fucking unbelievable. Ok rant over.
Oh and he also defended finnish and baltic nazis of WW2 and said “bolshevism is just like nazism”. Plus he said holodomor was real and when i showed him that expert historians on the subject like Mark Tauger, J Arch Getty and Stephen Wheatcroft think otherwise, he said “youre wrong, the historical consensus doesnt agree with you”.
I mean, i said what i said because in some socialist countries religion was very heavily suppressed imo, in Albania for example or USSR at times. Getting a Bible or a Quran was very hard and so on. I think assets of churches should be expropiated indeed. Churches should become like a kind of mass organization imo, with all its assets owned by the state and the organization also controlled by the state. The church functions as a church but is subordinated to the party and takes orders from it. Again, i think religious people who can think in a materialist way should be allowed to join the party. Ofc there should be high standard requirements, but if they meet them and are believers, i think its ok. I understand why you think this is impossible, since your country is full of religious nutjobs (no offense), but i can guarantee you its true. Here in Spain religion has much less influence in society than in Poland, and youll find many people who consider themselves catholic but dont appear like it at all. They rarely go to church, follow no restrictions associated with catholicism and dont care about what the Pope says about abortion, gays or some other thing. My mom is like that, shes a scientist so she can apply rational thinking, but she still believes. I often ask her why (im atheist), and she says it makes her feel protected during hard times. I think that these type of people, which believe me are very common here in western europe, should be allowed to join the party.
I also think you shouldnt discard the progressive potential for religion. I think religion is a tool, so its not bad by itself. Sure religion is very often used by reactionaries, but it can also be used progressively. Again what China did in Tibet, they picked a loyal Panchen Lama, and now he uses his strong influence as a religious leader to promote socialism, friendship with the chinese government and fights the tibetan CIA opposition. Indeed, the beliefs of the mainstream religions (islam, christianity, judaism and buddhism) are often quite compatible with socialism, since they promote friendship with others, helping the poor, solidarity, etc. Hell if Jesus Christ was alive today hed be 100% called a “communist” by the libs. Thats where christian socialism and islamic socialism comes into the picture. In countries with strong religious influence it can be a great way to strenghten socialism i think. Ofc you should be able to control the religious leaders for this to work, otherwise the reactionaries can use the religion against socialism. For example i think in Poland it wouldnt work, because the religious leader is the Pope, and hes in Rome so you cant control him. It could work tho in Russia for example, where you have the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church there. You put someone loyal in charge, control him and use christianity to promote socialism. I think its an option as valid as state atheism. Both options could work in the appropiate material conditions i think. What do you think?
Yes and no. While state should control it, it should be matter of security services, not official part of the state, and the control needs to be excercised carefully. Religion turned into state puppet bring plethora of its own problems. I see it more like every other NGO under socialism, just a club. Agree on the property, the historical sites should be property of nation anyway and the nonhistorical as much as any other club.
No, churches should not be directly subordinate of the party. It would create dangerous precedent of party abandoning materialism and dabbling in religion.
This is what i’m trying to say, religion is INHERENTLY reactionary. It can be used as weapon against something even MORE reactionary, like imperialism nowadays, but it’s playing with fire, leave it unchecked and you will burn everything. Not to mention even the most progressive religion will never turn to marxism, because marxism is antithetical to every religion philosophically and every religion is in a nutshell philosphy + worship practices. It may coexist, but again i’m just reiterating Lenin.
And also very important part - when religion and marxism met, it’s not relgion that need to be controlled more strictly. It’s party, to not be infiltrated by idealists.
Yet historically they always oppose marxism. Clerical socialism is a thing, but it isn’t the right thing. It’s just opportunism. Note they are always negating marxist class thory, that should tell you everything.
That is low bar considering even libertarians are calling eachother “communist” over minuscule differences in what pass for theory for them. Also Jesus WAS communist, he was heavily influenced by essenes sect and they were archetypical primitive communists, but as you can probably guess, primitive religious communism is not the right thing too.
Yeah it didn’t. During PRL every priest had his own papers, and there was no other society as heavily infiltrated by the state security. That’s why i’m sceptical about that control you speak of, and not because the pope, in practice local churches can just ignore him totally and he will not do anything because the fear of schism. It’s because we tried it and it didn’t work, catholic church organisation, at least in Poland, resemble mafia more than anything.
No, state atheism is the only possible option.
Funnily enough, your idea was was tried already. I don’t think i need to elaborate on Robespierre attampt to create new revolutionary religion, or more importantly on american civil religion as example what happenes if state is too close to that. And neither of those is even marxist. But i just want to mention this very debacle happened in bolshevik party around 1910, with resolt obvious - people attempted to were treated as more dangerous than mensheviks and trotskyist because they strike at the very heart of marxism.