MARXISM AND RELIGION—THE SANGHA KOMMUNE

I’ve written before about religion and revolution. It is hard to completely separate religion from Marxist politics. Religion is very important to some people and I see no value in refusing to let those people take part in a revolution. Mao Zedong was inspired by Daoism and Karl Marx was influenced by Epicurus. People have used those beliefs in place of religion. But neither Daoism nor Epicureanism was ever meant to be religion. And yet some people have found a kind of spirituality from those kinds of beliefs. Some people I have known have told me they have found a kind of spirituality from Maoism. Hardcore Maoist/Marxists are encouraged to be atheists. But putting any religious view to a political school of thought is dangerous. For me I find it hard to believe in an afterlife. I have chosen not to follow that kind of religion. But in my past I was a Catholic and I became a Marxist years before I dropped out of Catholicism. It is for that reason that I oppose keeping people out of a revolutionary movement only because they have chosen to follow a religion. –SJ Otto

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It all comes down to freedom of thought. We can all jockey for position but at the end of the day, who is to say what is or isn’t right? I mean, there’s certainly preferred thoughts – yes – and I understand Revelation and religious Authority – but it is a two-way street in secular society. Religions are a problem because they are intolerant by nature. As a Communist my function appears to be to encourage religious people not to give up their beliefs, but rather seek out a way of interfacing theology with Marxism. It’s that simple. When religions refuse to do this, it is invariably because a decision has been made by a man to align that faith with the political right-wing. Why? What is the point of this? Surely, aligning a liberating theology with a destroying political ideology is counter-productive? It makes no difference if Marx and Lenin believe that religion will die out if society becomes just and human beings evolve into Communists. If religions are right, then they will have the opportunity to prove Marxism wrong, and it will be Marxism that dies out. However, one or two Catholic priests have confided in me that in all probability, Marx is right and religion is nothing but living myth! A very lucrative living myth, I might add. The religious position is ‘why take the risk?’ Why let Marxism get the ideological upper hand, when the Church could just as well embrace fascism, defend its power base, and keep the masses impoverished and ignorant. This is why a number of leftists deploy an attitude that completely denies the validity of religion and seeks its immediate abolishment as a ‘class enemy’. This seems non-Marxist to me, and ignores education and social evolution. It is better for religions to ‘co-operate’ with Marxism than to oppose it. If anything, a Socialist Revolution generates the conditions whereby religions can assume their original emancipatory function when divorced from the political and educational processes. -Adrian Chan-Wyles (PhD)