Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 12:48:40 -0700
From: cwellen <cwellen-AT-pen.k12.va.us>
Subject: Marxism and Religion:  Work with Progressive Religionists.


--------------------------------

Greetings to all comrades from Wei En Lin.

What should the precise attitude toward religion be for those who 
support worker's control of the means of production?  Neil suggests the 
following:

<<In the course of ongoing class struggles, 
while communists do not  mock 
religious workers or spit on religious 
icons a la bourgeois idealist 
reform atheist groups. They do not, as 
left- tailists do, give the 
religionists a free hand to peddle 
their spiritualist/idealist  dope 
and the political backwardness that 
flows from it,  a free ideological
reign to stupify and bamboozle the 
masses. The workers have paid a
heavy price already for neglect on 
this front. The struggle on this 
front no doubt will come up from 
time to time again .

If we really want marxism and materialist 
dialectics to be taken up by 
workers and not just intellectuals, 
we have to fight for it politically
inside the actual motion in the the 
class and for combativity  and
NOT pacifism or "turn the other cheek" 
class collaborationism of 
organized religionists.>>



I have noticed that in the West people have very strong feelings on the 
religious question.  Perhaps militant anti-religious feelings are 
inevitably tied up with the role which repressive dogmas and repressive 
ecclesiastical institutions have played in European history.

In some parts of the world, and in some social contexts, the religion of 
a given culture can play a progressive role, and it does not make sense 
to alienate religious believers.  Many members of the working class will 
have a hard time changing their attitude toward religion while having no 
difficulty in supporting a working-class political program for action.

This is a fascinating issue which raises many questions.  For instance, 
in Nicaragua should we say that the Religionists (like Miquel D'Escoto) 
were 'using' the Marxists; or that the Marxists (like Tomas Borge) were 
'using' the religionists.  I would suggest that neither is the case;  a 
fruitful collaboration between the Liberation Theologians and the 
Marxists allowed the Sandinistas to thrive.  Their impact on Latin 
American class struggle cannot be underestimated.  

In Libya, Colonel Kaddafi has managed to merge numerous aspects of 
Marxist-Leninism with some of the tenets of Islam.  He has done this in 
such a way as to avoid the climate of religious tension which prevails 
in such countries as Algeria, Tunisia and even Turkey.  He has also 
avoided the dogmatic Stalinist approach which prevailed for a time in 
Yemen, but which ultimately failed.  I would say Kaddafi has been more 
successful than any other leader in introducing socialism into the Arab 
world, precisely because he has been cautious on the religious issue.

Marx and Engels both condemned religion, but primarily in those 
instances where religious hierarchies sided with the ruling elite.  Marx 
and Engels both praised religious leaders when they were socially 
progressive.  In 'Das Kapital,' Marx praised the Catholic church and 
Thomas More for the role they played in the struggle against Henry 
VIII's spoiliage of the poor communities in England.  Engels praised 
Munzer in his opposition to Luther, who eventually betrayed the 
interests of the German peasants.

The moral high ground is everything.  The Bolsheviks won in 1917 because 
of the blatant hypocrisy of those who wished to continue the war while 
the masses cried out for bread.  The Bolsheviks would not have succeeded 
in crushing the corrupt "orthodox" church, if the church had come out 
on the side of the poor instead of supporting the tsar.

Castro, visiting an African church in Harlem recently said, if he had, 
during his youth, spoken to radical pastors like those in New York, his 
attitude toward priests would have been much different.  

My conclusion:  We should always keep an open mind toward people, 
whatever their religious views.  If people's actions are revolutionary 
or progressive, they should not be subject to condemnation on account of 
their religious views and affiliations.

Most Chinese rejected Chiang Kai-shek, not because he was a Christian, 
not even because he was religious--in China there have been virtually no 
religious wars.  Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist party was rejected 
because it was reactionary and tied to Western Imperialist interests.

In the case of the Taiping rebellion, which broke out in the middle of 
the last century, we find it was widely suppported by the people, even 
though Founder Hong was a Christian.  Chinese communists are unanimous 
in seeing the Taiping rebels as their forerunners.  The Taiping rebels 
preached social and economic equality, granted equal rights to women, 
and smashed the hierarchical power structures wherever they went.  If 
the West had not intervened on behalf of the Chinese Emperor, the 
Taiping revolutionary movement might have very well succeeded in 
capturing the whole of China. As it was, an estimated 20 million died, 
as imperial and Western troops did their utmost to stamp it out.  
Nothing frightend the West more than seeing their own religious 
doctrine--Christianity--being used to support a radical social 
revolution which threatened imperial and imperialist interests.

Let religion flourish when it is radical and creative; fight against it 
when it is tied to traditional feudal or capitalist power structures.


Sincere Regards,

Wei En Lin

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