Date: 06 Jul 96 01:55:12 EDT
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Religion, ideology and class struggle


TO:	Marxism list-e-mail, INTERNET:marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
CC:	J.S.Daborn, INTERNET:J.S.Daborn-AT-Sheffield.ac.UK
	Mauro, INTERNET:Mauro.jr-AT-iol.it
	curtis price, INTERNET:cansv-AT-igc.apc.org
	SLP, 75702,1036

Re:	ISO/US & SWP-UK= Cliffite muddle on ideology

DEar friends,

In the Socialist  Worker/US  dtd. May 24th , paper of  trotskyist  Int'l. Socialist Org./US,
their is on Pg 7 , a muddled explanation of Ideology from Duncan Hallas .

In "How our rulers keep their Grip". Hallas I think , while making a some good points
of how the exploiters bamboozle workers to keep  us stupified and in the dark ,
also makes some key blunders.

First of all Hallas underestimates the role of religious mystifications todayamongst 
the workers and the petit bourgeois.  He seems to have a economist notion
that religion became passe as a weapon of reaction when the bourgeois 
revolutions prevailed over feudalism .
This is a serious error, true for a time the bourgeois fought it out with the reaction 
with fuedalism/mainly catholicism  in capitals  "ascendant period" up to about 1900.
But the bourgeois, in their present period of decadence  have made peace with the 
 catholic church and the other  churches/religions,
be they Christian, Judaic, Mohammedin, Shintoist, etc, have been reunited with the 
rulers and policies of the various  capitalist rulers of the nation states. The religions
themselves have a huge material stake in the continuance of capitaist  exploitation 
and wage slavery and alterations of their doctrines and practices prove this.

Also Hallas/ISO have a wooden view of ideological struggle . They seems to thinthat 
ALL ideology constitutes "false consciousness" . I don't think this consistent with 
dialectics . In fact ideological struggle is part of the class struggle in societal 
superstructure connected to the economic basis of class contradiction.

Marx/Engels never stated that ALL ideology  was false consciousness as the 
Cliffites assert . They pointed out that the dominant idelogies of ever class society 
were ever the concepts of the ruling classes.
But this did not leave the workers helpless, they could combat this not only by 
their industrial unification/combination in the class struggles agaisnt wage slavery,
but by their own self- controlled political/ideological groups and parties that would 
imbue the workers with the antidote of proletarian ideology - ideas that are 
consistent with workers collective class interests and prepare better to wage war 
on bourgeois ideology which corrupts and stunts workers class conscoiusness.

This is a front of the class war we cannot neglect any longer . but with the ISO views 
dominant , the rulers have secured the weak points in proletarian line of battleand if 
marxists  cant help fill the breach, the bosses and their media  will continue 
to  blow right through these parts of the class war fronts with devastating 
consequences!

Neil






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