jj

Communists were not theists, but they did hold a religious political view, to be specific, they held the view that despite all the evidence of human history, individual humans would keep working as hard as they could even in the absense of any tangible reward whatsoever.

Communism was a religion, just not a deific one. Please do not confuse Communism with atheism, which is merely the absense of a belief in a deity.

Were the communists also a-green-cheesists? Does it matter?

Oh, and I'd say they weren't successfull, either.

Silent Acorns

Yes, but it's a relatively minor point when it comes to implementing his ideas. It would be easy to adapt them to a theistic point of view.

That was a mistake on my part. I was trying to summarize too many ideas in too few sentences. I think there are two basic types of "communistic" faith. One being the belief in the inevitable cummunist utopia, and the other being the "cult of ______". As much as Marx may have believed that the utopia was the obvious result of an objective science, many people believed it on emotional grounds. I strongly suspect that Lenin tried to instill such a belief in the Russian populace. I agree that the cult of Lenin was primarily postumous, and probably manipulated by Stalin to fit his needs.

demystifier

I'd like to add just one thought on the idea of charismatic socialisms (i.e. cult of Lenin, cult of Castro, etc.).

I think a mistake is made to presume that these types of leaders were powerful (in their societies) solely for their charismatic capacity. Take Castro for instance. There is no doubt that Castro's charisma has granted him a certain level of cultural authority in his time, and continues to be a part of what grants him internal legitimacy within Cuba today. But understanding socialism in Cuba goes beyond this. Socialism in Cuba in the past 40+ years is a much more profound thing than one charasmatic person being a leader. While Castro started out as being primarily one of charismatic authority, in his time as president his basis of authority has been one tied up with having the legal-rational authority of an organized state system. The process of altering the entire social structure of Cuba (whether you think it is good, bad, or mixed ultimately) is simply more complex than to be tied up only with Castro.

This doesn't erase the strong social prestige and internal legimitacy that Castro has, but it is an important considerations if one wants to understand social change in Cuba since the revolution.

HELLO

Marx described a sysiphean cycle of oppression and technological progress, not the inevitability of revolution or communism.

Sorry but I dont say much when I do say anything about something like this.

HELLO

Communism\Socialism today has a few "gods" that we look to to understand the general ideals of communism\socialism, but too often those people turned into fascists.

Communism\Socialism is the product of years of antiprogress and oppression and should be revived through the experience of said socioeconomic characteristics by the people of the nation that is experiencing those characteristics. Not through the glorification of false communists\socialists. It should not be the religion it has turned into.

that is all.

copernicus

Socialists and communists have always tended to be anti-religious because the state churches in Europe have always tended to meddle in politics. This was particularly true in the Russian Empire, where Rasputin represented something of a lightning rod for the anti-religious left. Today, the Orthodox Church is back into politics again.

In 1965, I was studying Russian, and I got a chance to visit the SU on a language study tour. And I was an atheist, as well. So I paid a lot of attention to atheism in the SU (even subscribing to Nauka i religija "Science and Religion" for a brief time). There was no mistaking the fact that the Soviets ran their party as if it were a religious institution, complete with icons and "prayer" meetings. Where you might have a cross or a religious statue on a mountain in the West, you had statues of Lenin or other Communist icons everywhere. I remember seeing the slogan "Slava KPSS" in big letters on a mountain outside of Sebastopol--"Glory to the CPSU" (CPSU = Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

I had many run-ins with attitudes about religion. On the first day of the trip, we were taken to see an atheist play called "The Divine Comedy", in which God said "Let there be light!" and immediately donned a pair of sunglasses. Even the "believers" in our audience enjoyed some of the humor, although they were unswayed by the barrage of atheist propaganda. Unfortunately, I missed a trip to the Museum of Atheism, but I did visit St. Isaacs Cathedral in 1997, after the foucault's pendulum had been removed by church authorities.

On the waning days of our 5-week trip, we visited Lenin's estate outside of Moscow, which he had expropriated from the former Moscow Chief of Police. For an orientation, we were escorted into the little estate chapel for a propaganda lecture. As we sat in pews, we gazed upon a marble bust of Lenin set squarely in the middle of the altar. Nobody could get over how much it had been like being in church. On the day we departed Moscow, I remember the bus passing a large propaganda poster (icon) with Lenin's benevolent smiling face above the caption "Today Lenin is more alive than all living things." Life after death. Amen, comrade.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Marx knew well the appeal of religion (yeah, the 'opiate of the masses', thing). Communism, in many respects, places 'the state' or 'the party', in place of God.

That's why it was so hostile to religion. It wasn't because God isn't real, it was because the Communists didn't want any competition (kind of like 'thou shalt have no gods but us')...

Keith.

demystifier

I'm still interested in hearing about mysticism in Marxism.

I've heard plenty of nice things about how bad and/or religious (state-religion I guess) Soviet Russia was, but that isn't the same thing as mysticism in Marxist writings. I'm still looking for these...

Thanks,
Paul