Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 23:05:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: Re: Are Jesus, Buddha & Company Enemies of the People?


        
Mr Wei En Lin has taken quite a fancy to Rakesh's claim that:

>'The views expressed by the modern-day Marxists in this forum condemning
ALL religious people to 
>be devils in sheep's clothing is STRIKINGLY similar to MIM's position that
the ENTIRE 'white' 
>working class is non-revolutionary and reactionary and to the Trotskyite
concept of the WHOLE 
>national bourgeoise to be traitors (although many of the national
bourgeoise in third word 
>countries earn in a year what an ordinary western worker makes in a few
weeks). This is
>due to a deep ignorance of the subject at hand and an absence of the
dialectical viewpoint.

And,  further

>So Jesus, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Father Roy Bourgeois (Maryknoll
priest who threw blood 
>on the US Army School of the Americas while campaigning for its shutdown
and may very well be in 
>prison at present), Father Damien who dedicated his life to the sevice of
lepers, Archbishop Oscar 
>Romero and hundreds and thousands of nameless nuns and priests executed by
the death squads in 
>Latin America, the dedicated nuns who look after the AIDS patients in San
Francisco and run food 
>and shelters for the homeless - all of these people, my friend, are ENEMIES
OF THE PEOPLE!'

The trouble with all this of course is that no one on the Marxism list said
or implied any such thing--and both Rakesh and Mr Wei know it.     But then,
to both of these masters of erudition,  it is sufficient merely to assert.
Indeed,  they would probably not care to admit how many hostages,  in their
anxiety not to be confused with "atheistic communism",   they have given to
the good old Protestant doctrine of the fit of absence of mind.    The
revival of "traditional values" is not an exclusively conservative
phenomenon.     Why this lingering attraction to the vagaries of the
supernatural for otherwise sensible people,  even those with a decided
left-wing bent?

Driving through Christ--cursed Mississippi last year,  I was reminded again
and again of the baleful effects that an "absence of the dialectical
viewpoint"  can have on a people.    A recent poll conducted by a Biloxi
daily found that more than 75% of the natives believe in Armageddon--the
death of the world by nuclear fire,  and in "Rapture"  (e.g the return of
Jesus Christ).     The position of labor,  women,  African Americans,  the
vast majority of the working class is well known and accepted by every
strata of the indigenous elite,  including those within the "religious
community".     Why so little active intervention in a society soaked in
racism,  misogyny,  homophobia,  and anti-working class ideology?     

The short answer is that the Church in Mississippi--it doesn't much matter
which Church--serves capitalism in the same way that it served the feudal
oligarchy of slavery and--when that was destroyed (by fire)--the regime of
Jim Crow and de jure racism that followed for nearly a century.     Nor does
not matter one whit,  Mr Wei and Mr Rakesh,   whether the hearts of a few
individuals were moved to protest by varying degrees against the more
conspicuous injustices that their dioceses were visiting on the poorest and
most wretched neighborhoods of the population.     Capitalism,  booted and
spurred,  remains mounted on the backs of the bewildered masses that is the
vast reservoir of Mississippi's humanity.     And the Church rides right
along beside it.

Again,  no one on the list can be accused of categorically--in Rakesh's
foolish phrase--"condemning all religious people to be wolves in sheep's
clothing".     However,  many are rightfully wary of embracing those whose
ethereal "faith" is in so many ways inimical to the program of struggle that
they themselves so earnestly wage.


Louis Godena 



 



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