Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] Religion and Marxism: Thinking Through the Human Condition

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Apr 13, 2023 In this unlocked patreon episode, Breht, Adnan, and Henry from Guerrilla History discuss their thoughts on the relationship between religion and Marxism, how Marxists today might think differently about religion compared to Marxists 100 years ago, religion and spirituality as a terrain of struggle for the Left, how to think about science vs. religion, the material basis of religion, what form the religious impulse might take under communism, demystification and meditation, and much more. ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use

the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckamacki, joined as usual by my two co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, which will come into play, I promise you. Hello, Adnan, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be with you. Yeah, it's always nice to see you. and also joined as usual by Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett.

How are you doing? I'm doing great today. Excellent. So we don't have a guest today. This is an intelligence briefing. So we've not had as many intelligence briefings recently as we had in the past, but I think we're going to try to change that,

get back to the format of having a couple of intelligence briefings per month. So these are our slightly shorter, more conversational, discussions, sometimes with just the three of us, sometimes with the guest, today will be just between the three of us, but we do have a really interesting conversation in store on a really fascinating topic, one that some people tend to shy away from, which is religion and Marxism, or as Brett reminded us from a famous quote, which I'm sure we'll be discussing more later, the heart of a heartless world. So on that note, and as we said, with Adnan being, director of the School of Religion at Queen's University. I'm sure he has many insights, but I want to

open with Brett on his thoughts with religion and Marxism. Sure. Now, religion and Marxism have had a sort of fraught relationship historically. There are obviously periods of time in which atheism was seen as synonymous with communism. That was true for the opponents of communism, like the Reagan era evangelical Christians who saw communism as a threat to everything they believed in. But it was also true for the communist who stressed from Marx and Engels through Lenin and Mao stressed the combating of superstition, stressed the importance of science, and basically amounted to an atheism that, you know, took different forms or was emphasized to larger degrees in different areas. Of course, in a place like Russia or China, there were

these, you know, semi-feudal remnants. There was lots of superstition, you know, coming out of feudalism. And so emphasizing atheism and science in the face of centuries of religious belief, and superstition probably made more sense than I believe it does today. And the kind of way that I would like to frame this conversation, and I've said this in other places many times, but Marxist should not treat religion as something that needs to be dismissed or combated. We should rather see it as a terrain of struggle, that we cannot cede the religious ground over to the right and give them that huge advantage of being able to appeal to people

based on their religious commitments and religious faith and everything that that implies, culturally, historically, and personally for people. So instead of over-emphasizing atheism, I think we should treat religion as a terrain of struggle and advance liberatory, revolutionary elements of religion because I believe that every religion has a political spectrum, right? Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, there are far-left revolutionaries operating in those things. They're center-left reformists and social Democrats. There are neoliberals, you know, masquerading as Muslims or Christians or whatever. And, of course, we know the fundamentalists, the far-far-right spectrum of these various religions where they're very dogmatic, very violent, and pretty much amount to fascism in practice. And so when we seed that territory to the right, we're giving them a huge advantage. And I think we should treat it as a terrain of struggle and as dialecticians, we should remember that religions are not metaphysically static.

things. They are processes in and of themselves. They are constantly evolving and morphing. So if we don't take a metaphysical view of religion, but a dialectical view, I think that feeds in well to treating religion as a terrain of struggle rather than something that needs to be dismissed or combated. And so that's kind of where I'm coming from. I would love to hear your thoughts on that basic outlay of how Marxists should approach religion in the 21st century. Well, I completely agree that it shouldn't be seated. So a character. it as you did, Brett, as a terrain of struggle is, I think, a very useful, not that everybody has to engage it, but it shouldn't be seated, you know. And I guess I'm thinking that, you know,

all these different religious traditions, they're so complex and they have so many different components. They're also not static, as you pointed out, they change and develop, they react and respond to changing conditions and circumstances. And so as a result, there are a lot of avenues through which one can make the case for a radical understanding of religion that leads to it being an asset in social transformation rather than an obstacle. Now, it's fair to understand that, historically speaking, institutional religious power has often aligned itself with conservative reaction, with establishment forces, and has

opposed radical change. But most of these religious traditions developed in a context as some kind of protest against the status quo, against the social structures that existed, against the abuse of political power, against the oppression and inequality and hierarchy. They may then ultimately have accommodated themselves in various ways, especially as, you know, we're pointing out when they establish an institutional relationship with power. But very often they are oppositional because they start with a moral or ethical position of critique. There's something wrong with society and the way we're behaving that needs to be corrected. So that is something we should always be tapping into. That's very much part of radical politics and Marxism is a critique of the injustices of our contemporary world.

So to the extent that it can be leveraged morally and ethically in emboldening people to combat inequity and injustice, it is actually a potential tool. I think part of the problem for many is that, you know, people see. see a division between science and religion, and to the extent that religion involves metaphysical or cosmological kinds of claims, although I would think that they're less really claims than they are attempts to understand and to characterize the world in language that could communicate, you know, some sort of relationship to the order of the cosmos and so on, you know, that there is inevitably in modernity some kind of conflict. here between the truth claims about metaphysics and about, you know, the cosmos. But to my mind,

that's only one small component of what religion does for people in their actual lives. And we have to be able to see that it provides some sense of community. It provides a kind of moral or ethical core or it gives expression to our kind of innate sense of like recognizing that there are basic ethical principles and giving some kind of greater texture and force for those kind of genuine human ethical orientations. And also that it has an emotional and spiritual component that can't be ignored when we're thinking about what the real dynamics of struggle for justice and building a social movement and creating a society that's healthy, it doesn't mean that everything that religion has to say about all of these things we would agree with at all

times, but it clearly serves more than just this kind of explanation of physical metaphysics and cosmology that can be at variance with scientific. you know with scientific you know knowledge and what we've come to discover but it also does other things and without those things you don't have successful you know movements you don't have a sustainable you know kind of culture there's clearly we see in the kind of emotional and spiritual crisis of today people feel so isolated they feel like um they don't have any power in their in their over their lives and they find something beneficial in a sense of community and in a sense of trying to connect themselves with some purpose

and that's not necessarily in variance with Marxism. There are just so many parallels actually in those things. So I'll just say that that I just riffing off of what you said, Brett. You know, that's what it kind of made me think initially. Yeah, and I think that's a really important point because especially your point about putting them in their proper place, right? Religion and science often are at odds, especially in modernity, but they need not be if they're properly categorized. And I think both atheist and religious people can make this error where, like, the new atheist will say, hey, science has displaced religion. Religion was just this failed attempt to understand objectively the natural or supernatural world.

science has displaced it therefore there's no need for religion and then there's religious people who insist on advancing their dogma as if it's scientific no charles darwin's theory of evolution isn't true creationism is true we're pretending that religion is doing science now so i think putting them in their proper places understanding what they're meant to address and not confusing those two things are important because i do still think that marxists should hold the line for a scientific analysis of natural phenomena and society. So when a religious person comes along and says this hardcore proven objective third person fact that science is pretty clear on is not true because of some metaphysical claim that I have in my head, we should reject that. We should be ready to push back on superstition and push back on when religion tries to overstep its boundaries, but also vice versa. Because I think the religious impulse, you know, and perhaps it has been used historically to try to understand the world. Of course, humans are going to try to understand. But the religious impulse for me is fundamentally about one's own relationship as a finite being to the mystery of the cosmos,

to the infinite, to how do I relate to everybody around me, the entire world, and this amazing, infinitely strange cosmic universe that we find ourselves in. There's a wall of ignorance where even science can't penetrate. I don't think perhaps we'll ever get to the point where science can peer behind the veil of the cosmos, see beyond it, what gave rise to it, what came before the Big Bang. Is there any other structures exist? thing up here. For practical science, we have to set that aside as metaphysical speculation and focus on what we can know in the methodology that science presents, which again is a third person attempt at objectivity of the natural world. And that's what it can do and it shouldn't pretend to be

able to do anything else. And when it pretends to displace religion, it's pretending that it can do more than it actually can because it is, you know, science is not even making any claim, you know, positive or negative about the metaphysical. physical because that's um hum told us you know the metaphysical claims they're just they're just speculation by by necessity and so you know you shouldn't try to uh advance science into those realms and i think that's important so marxas should hold the line for science for what it does but we should not make the category error that certain religious and atheists make separate these two things see what they're really about and keep them in their proper places and when they're in their proper places

I think they can actually inform and create a synergy that can be positive for both sides. Yeah, I would agree. And I think also even going further, I would say that science has a difficult time providing a sense of meaning or purpose use very hard. Or I would be very frightened by ethical systems that claim to be applying scientific principles to, you know, ethical questions. you know, that's where you get, you know, extreme utilitarianism. You get like, you know, eugenics, you know, you get these perversions where they supposedly are applying scientific, you know, insights to these social or ethical questions. They always have to be mediated by real analysis about, you know, human, you know, social dynamics and, you know, other paradigms of ethics. And likewise also in terms of emotion and personality and, you know, And some of these hard to quantify aspects of the psychic spiritual makeup of human beings, that, you know, this is where like forms of spirituality, religious traditions, you know, why does a sense of community matter? I mean, there are pathological people who, you know, really believe. in libertarian philosophy and approach it from a perspective of the only thing that matters is

oneself. But these are very socially destructive. I mean, so, you know, where do we get these other dimensions of, you know, that may have emerged from, you know, the long, you know, evolution of human beings and so on. But there is some sense of solidarity, of some sense of community, the need for that. Capitalism is at war with these things because really it requires, especially consumer capitalism, it requires us finding meaning in consumption as individual consumers as people who are separated and isolated from any other sort of kind of fealty or, you know, ethical value or principle. It's, you know, it really, you know, it really, you know, relies upon, I would say, a war on solidarity in all its forms. And one of its first victims has

always been, you know, forms of religious community, you know, which isn't to say that we should all go back to, you know, nothing being open on Sundays and, you know, this kind of stuff. But the point is, is that a lot of the current right-wing critique of, you know, the loss of certain kinds of cultural forms and experiences of community that, you know, are romanticized about in the past, those were destroyed by capitalism. Capitalism respects no, nothing sacred, right? Nothing is sacred for capitalism other than the pursuit of capital accumulation. And so if that means, you know, we're going to, like, undermine, you know, the idea that

Sunday is a day of rest, you know, then they do it, you know. So what they fail to recognize is that the most vicious anti-communitarian force in the history of the world is really the rapaciousness of capitalism. But also, I guess this, you know, makes me, you know, also want to introduce another kind of topic on this, which is that, you know, there is a big Marxist critique of religion, and we should probably read the kind of quote or the passage and, you know, parse it a little bit. But one element that I think people on the left often forget is that Marx sort of thought it seemed that once the social conditions changed for which religion really met the needs that it would kind of wither away and the old forms of religion would be gone. Now, this doesn't mean, however, that there wouldn't be some other form of spirituality, perhaps, you know, that would be envisioned when we're actually free and liberated in the kind of society that he's talking about. It doesn't mean that there wouldn't be some sense of, maybe we wouldn't call it formal religion in the same way, but some meaningful sense of spirituality, solidarity, connection between people that actually, cultivates our emotional awareness personally and interpersonally and, you know, releases some of those kind of dimensions of human existence in their fuller, you know, kind of form. In just the same way

that Marx, and this is, everybody seems to forget this, Marx also basically says philosophy is unnecessary. And the future philosophy is a bankrupt discipline because it's been part of the hitherto existing societies. And, you know, it's a different version. Maybe it's religion for intellectuals. I don't know what he exactly thinks about. But he essentially theorizes that, you know, philosophy will be obsolete, you know, in a kind of future system. Does that mean people aren't going to think very seriously and critically about their world? Of course not. It means that they would be released into rational kind of understanding and thoughtfulness in a way that doesn't really have all that much to do with the tradition of philosophy as it has developed in the Western canon.

And likewise, you could say, you know, that's very parallel to the idea maybe of religion, that maybe the forms of religion that we have in a classless future society would not be similar to the traditions we have. Maybe they would evolve into something else. But it's not because he was against those elements of human need. and human spirit that are part of our, part of our makeup. You know, I'm going to take this opportunity. I think that this is the perfect place to have the reading of the quote that we've

referred to several times already, but haven't actually touched on. And if you two don't mind, I would like to read a more extended version of this quote, because typically it's boiled down, and I know finally we're going to be saying what we've been talking about, typically it's boiled down to religion is the opium of the masses, which, of course, is highly, highly condensed and also loses all of the context, both historically and contextually within this work, which is Marx's critique of Hegel's philosophy of right. So if you don't mind, I'm going to read a slightly more extended version of it, and then perhaps we can chat a little bit about what this means and how this ties into the conversation

that you two have been having thus far before we try to advance the conversation further. Otherwise, we're just going to keep referring to this without having people actually hear it. So, listeners, I do apologize that you're going to be hearing my voice for a little bit of time right now, but I do think that this is important. The foundation of irreligious criticism is man makes religion. Religion does not make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who is either not yet one through to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society.

This state and this society produced religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world. It's encyclopedic compendium. Its logic and popular form. Its spiritual point d'honour. Its enthusiasm. Its moral sanction. It's solemn compliment.

And its universal basis of consolidation and justification. it is the fantastic realization it seems that Henry is frozen I'll continue reading it is fantastic yeah the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality the struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion

as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness to call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo, the criticism of that veil of tears of which religion is the halo. So I finished off the quote for Henry. Henry thankfully is back with us. Yes, I apologize. Actually, there is one more paragraph that I'd like to hit quick and then we'll have open this discussion. So the following paragraph from what Adnan beautifully read, much nicer than I could have, criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain, not in order that man shall

continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolidation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his sense. so that he will move around himself as his own true son. Religion is only the illusory son, which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself. So now I'm going to open this up for you,

but I just want to say, as we do open this up, that there are a lot of confusions about this quote because typically it is truncated to its absolute barest minimum. And again, we're talking about missing historical context here in terms of what did opium mean at this time, where it had a very different context than it did now. At that time, it was a life-saving medication, one that would alleviate suffering, some suffering that would be absolutely unbearable, would make life bearable for these people.

Now we hear the word opium, and of course, we think of addiction. We think of suffering that is caused by opium, not suffering that's alleviated by it. So even this, like, very simple historical context is typically law. when you're quoting that one line in isolation. But I do think that it's very important that we bring this into it when we're talking about why we shouldn't be seeding ground, going back to Brett's original point, of religion to the right, because while we may have thoughts that religion is this form of solidarity and community in the face of oppression that Adnan had been mentioning, and that if we were able to

supersede the system that is causing such oppression, we would supersede the necessity for religion in its entirety. We don't achieve that by pushing away religious groups and religious communities. People that have over centuries really consolidated themselves into these groups, pushing them out of a potentially shared struggle against the system that we're fighting against. There are religious groups that are people that we could hold hands with, like very genuinely. We've talked about liberation theology a little bit on this show. Brett, I believe you have an entire episode devoted to liberation theology on Rev. Left. It's been a while, but I do recall that being a great episode.

In India, there's Dalit theology, which is a branch off of liberation theology, a very fascinating thing, which I've only read a little bit about, but really want to get more into. We have other groups. Of course, there's been numerous Jewish groups through history that have meshed themselves with socialism and communism, going back. well over a century, we have even Islamic groups that have embraced communism or socialism, not only institutional parties like the two-day party in Iran, but also very revolutionary,

like full-out communist individuals like Mirzai Sultan Ghalyev, which Adnan, I know you and I want to do an episode on at some point. I'm still gathering materials, but, you know, he was, for listeners who are unaware, he was a Bolshevik of Tatar origin and extraction. So from the exact place where I am currently living, who was marrying Islamic scriptures with the tenets of communism, which is absolutely fascinating. There's many religious groups that have joined and struggled against the oppression of capitalism that if we're just saying that, well, since we have individuals like Lenin saying, that religion is the organ of bourgeois reaction.

We cannot work with individuals within religious groups. We're also misunderstanding what Lenin was saying. We're saying that religion is an organ of bourgeois reaction as it's currently constituted, but that doesn't mean that we are inhibited or prohibited from linking arms with these people in a shared struggle. And then hopefully, by superseding the system that's causing the oppression that we're fighting against, that we would supersede the necessity of religion as the one form of solidarity and community that these people are therefore exposed to. So yeah, that's my piece. Feel free to

jump in, guys. Yeah, yeah, just a couple things I wanted to address, and I'll get back to that quote. But one thing Adnan said earlier was about capitalism being antithetical or antagonistic to religion. And that's certainly been true. And we've seen with the rise of capitalism, especially post-industrial capitalism, a rise in atheism, but more specifically hardcore scientific reductionism. And, you know, I think that there's a lot of hubris in that as well. It makes sense scientifically to investigate things in that realm, but you can also see how, again, not materialism, but hardcore scientific materialist reductionism, where everything is reduced to material, how that could actually play into the ideological superstructure of capitalism.

where there is no greater good. There is no sense of community. It's the individual consuming as the highest priority within capitalism. And you can kind of see how hardcore scientific reductionism could feed into that. But broadly about the quote with what Mark said and then Adnan was, you know, bringing us into it. That was actually my second point, which is, you know, and I totally agree with what you're saying, that religion as we know it will fundamentally alter under different material conditions. But I think my argument would be, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, even under communism, even under a context in which all material scarcity was abolished. I'm not talking socialism. I'm talking full communism. The religious impulse would still exist.

The way it would manifest itself would be fundamentally different. I think the way it would manifest itself would get around many of the critiques aimed at it from Marx, or what Marx is explaining how it operates in our current situation. But that religious impulse, which is, as Adnan was saying earlier, right, if science is third person objectivity, religion can kind of be talked about as the subjective relationship one has to the infinite or to their own existence as a finite being. So there's objectivity of the natural world and there's a subjective relationship we have with our own existence. That religious impulse is still going to be present. And again, it will manifest in different ways.

One of the things I'm personally interested in is that I think Buddhism, as it is as it is in some forms, is currently quite situated well to be married to, and not just Buddhism, but Buddhism as it is, is kind of well complementing to Marxism, even to a scientific understanding of the natural world. Buddhist meditation is, in a lot of ways, a scientific investigation of subjectivity. and it is a first person, subjective exploration, but with a scientific rigor that often is lacked in other manifestations of religion, most notably the forms of religion that manifest as a specific set of metaphysical belief claims. Do you believe that Jesus is literally the Son of God, that he literally arose after three days, and that he's literally coming back? Those are objective claims about the natural world that we can be skeptical of. But, and I think, I think this. this potentiality perhaps lies in all religions or there'll be new religions. We can't even fathom yet that will manifest under these conditions. But the reason I like Buddhism is because I do think it is well aligned to have a genuine expression of the religious impulse, a genuine path of spiritual development, but all within a worldview that can still be scientific and does not rely on believing things that nobody can prove. Now, there are forms of Buddhism that, of course,

do that. There are more religious forms of Buddhism that talk about metaphysical claims about the nature of the world. But the Buddhist practice and the philosophy itself need not fall into that. So I just think that's an interesting thing. It's not to say Buddhism is superior or there's no other options and other religions, but that's why I'm personally interested in both Buddhism and Marxism. So yeah, I would just toss it out there and see what you guys think. Well, Brett, didn't you recently give a talk about this subject? You know, what was your main, you know, thesis apart from this potential symmetry, you know, between these? What did you particularly see as the kind of bridges between these apparently very separate, you know, one, a religious, you know, tradition from the East and the other, a modern kind of socioeconomic ideology and theory of history?

So, you know, what did you actually see as ways of relating the two in your presentation? The thing I really centered was that both approaches are apprehending phenomena dialectically. So I think both Buddhism and Marxism share not always a dialectical materialist worldview because there are forms of Buddhism that can be neutral on the question of idealism versus materialism or even idealist full on, but that they apprehend the world as an ever-changing, ever-flowing, dialectical outgrowth phenomena, continuous process, as opposed to metaphysical, static, changeless things or objects. And that that fundamental way of apprehending the world, even though they're concerned with two very different sort of magisteria of human life, right, the socio-political economic for Marxist and the spiritual, existential, and psychological for Buddhism, those two things both apprehend the world dialectically. And if Marxism is the outward political interest of

transformation. Buddhism can be the inward spiritual. Same exact interest with radical transformation, but on the inward terrain instead of the outward terrain. And so I said in these ways, they complement each other. What I don't say is that they need to go together all times. What I don't say is that we should take Buddhist ideas and make them Marxist ones or vice versa, but simply that there's a synergy in the way that they apprehend the world, that they cover two different realms, the outward and the inward, and that they have a really complementary idea. ideas that we could engage with as Marxist or that Buddhist, I would argue as well as I did in the speech, that Buddhists should take Marxism seriously because of these shared realities, because of the shared way of apprehending the natural world, that Buddhist, and because Buddhists want to end suffering, right, that Buddhists should not go to default, lukewarm liberal reformism, but should take the revolutionary liberatory project inherent in Marxism more seriously if they really are serious about alleviating suffering. not just on the individual level, but on the collective and communal levels.

So that was kind of the main thrust of that speech. And I think that aligns quite well with what we're saying today. But again, there's no, there's no mutually exclusive claims here. There's nothing pushing out other religions or just centering Buddhism as the only way, just a way of sort of bringing these two traditions that I deeply love and have benefited from enormously together and see the synergies and the ways that they dovetail. And I think that's a interesting road of investigation for those interested, not just in the social transformation of Marxism, but genuinely interest in how a spiritual path might be developed by people who are inclined towards the scientific and the material. Fascinating. Yeah, that's really very interesting and productive to see that relationship. I think basically in one sense, what we're suggesting is that, you know, for those who are engaged in certain religious practices,

they should understand that Marxism is a compatible in many ways, compatible way of seeing the ethical core actually come into action in the world, you know, beyond the individual's sort of sense of spiritual salvation and so on, but that those same ethics then can be, you know, implemented in the world through a kind of compatible ethical, social, and political ideology like Marxism, and for Marxists to recognize that if you were genuinely a materialist, religion itself is not the problem. It's the conditions, the social and political conditions. And where it has been a problem is precisely not on the idealist level. I mean,

why would you concern yourself with that is institutionally, that it's connected with forces that are retarding the possibility of social change, economic change, political change. I mean, so when, of course, it's imbricated in those structures as an institution or as a, you know, kind of political force in a feudal society or capitalist society, of course, then it is a barrier, but it's only in that aspect, that it really is that concerning. In the other aspects, that consciousness, if you're genuinely materialist, then you think, think that ultimately changing those social conditions, changing those economic and political structures and realities, that's going to transform the culture that's going to transform,

you know, what kind of religion, you know, actually makes sense to people. And so religion itself isn't the barrier. And that's why in most, I think, Marxist movements, while even looking back at Lenin, you know, who had plenty of good reason to be, you know, hostile to the, you know, way the Orthodox Church was buttressing, you know, czarist, you know, state didn't necessarily think that you couldn't be a Marxist and, you know, be religious. Like, that isn't itself the issue or the problem. And we've kind of taken, you know, a narrow interpretation of this quotation rather famously where Marx discusses religion and its function, you know, in human social evolution from his perspective, taken that in a kind of, you know, almost prescriptive

way, whereas Marx is actually trying to describe what he thinks religion is and what it was historically. So I don't think, I mean, I think, you know, maybe there's a little bit of tension when, you know, you've got this kind of argument, you know, he's making that, you know, the abolition of religion is the illusory happiness of the people is. the demand for their real happiness, right? So he's saying, look, like, you know, we want people to be happy in this world. And the qualities of some elements of religion, say Christianity, Islam, maybe to a lesser extent, Judaism, but these kind of monotheistic religions that posit an afterlife, for example, can be, you know, that's the inversion of the world, right? Is that heaven is

where, you know, the classless society exists, right? But we need it on this earth, right? So he's not, he's not saying that you have to abolish the whole ethical kind of core and belief system of these religions is that you just have to rematerialize, you know, where that cry of the oppressed needs to be directed. And the one problem is, is that very often it is a consolatory kind of element, he mentions that, that it provides this consolation, when the radical program of religion is stopped and stymied, right? When it doesn't, you're not able to transform the world with this ethical kind of, we must have the kingdom of heaven here, you know, then suddenly it does become a kingdom of heavens further away because of the failure to actually transform.

And he doesn't blame, you know, these previous, you know, kind of historical episodes and of religion and religious movements, you know, for that failure. The conditions weren't appropriate in his analysis to allow for the full, you know, freeing of human beings from the oppression of, you know, exploitative labor power, you know, exploitation of their labor power, you know. So in some sense, there's kind of an endorsement that this was where that ethical kind of critique was still present, but it was sublimated because it gets projected into heaven and the afterlife because of the failure of these movements to actually be able to fully remake the world in such a way because of the social and modes of production and had not achieved a level where it would. have been possible to realize those dreams of an equal society. But that's always been the dream. And I think that's what's important about his understanding of religion. Absolutely. And the great point you made about illusions, right? We want to build a world that doesn't require illusions. And I truly believe that this is also where Buddhism is quite

interesting and compatible, because what is Buddhism, if not rooting out various illusions and delusions we have about who we are at the deepest level? And so if we're serious about ridding the world of the need for illusions and ridding the world of these false illusions, Buddhism precisely does that internally. And so I think that makes Buddhism particularly interesting to Marxists because we don't want to reinforce illusions. We want to overcome a material society and the conditions that it propagates that requires people to cling to these illusions. And as we're ridding ourselves of these illusions, I think Buddhism is really uniquely placed, but also I would say mystical branches in all the major religions also get at this.

I think Buddhism is the most systematic way. It's just so much of like, here's the exact path and you can find it so easily. And these mystical traditions in Islam and Judaism and Christianity are a little more vague, they're a little more fuzzy around the edges, purposefully in a lot of cases. But I really truly do believe that they're getting at something like the same thing and a stripping away of various illusions. So I really, again, I didn't even include that in my speech, this whole notion of illusions. But I do think that the dovetail is really front and center between Buddhism and Marxism when we talk about the dismantling of these various illusions and building a world that doesn't require them. That's great. Yeah, I don't have much to add on that.

I just want to throw in when we're talking about religion. It's also important that we disaggregate religion as a way of organizing oneself against the, oppression as disaggregated from it being a structure or an organization. I think that there is a very strong distinction that needs to be drawn between religion as an impulse and religion as an organization. And in numerous contexts, we see where religion is essentially conflated with the organization that is the most

popular religious tenant within that society. And therefore, when you're trying to deal with religion in your struggle, you're having to deal with the organization that is, or the structure in your society, that is basically the figurehead of the religious impulse. This is true in many contexts. I know in the United States, we have, of course, I say we, Brett, you're the only one in the United States right now. In the United States, there's, of course, many different confessions.

There's many different faiths, but we are seeing an entrenchment in organization of fundamentalist Christian groups. They're not, you know, the majority of religious people in the United States, but they are the structure that is starting to build itself up as being like more of a hegemonic structure. In the past, of course, we've seen the vehement anti-communism of the Roman Catholic Church in the struggle for socialism. In the lead up to the Russian Revolution, of course, the Orthodox Church was an incredibly

strong institution here. And that colors a lot of the ways that we analyze what needs to be done with regards to religion. So we have a tendency where we want to view religion as an impulse, but we have to analyze it using the structures that are present within our own given society as a result of this is the struggle that we're currently engaged in. And I think that this is something that we actually see, in the case of the Russian Revolution, solution, quite clearly with some very prominent individuals. So Anatoly Lunacharski, who wrote, I know we're titling this episode, Religion and Socialism, or Religion and Marxism, he wrote, I believe, a two-volume work of the same title,

religion and Marxism, or Religion and Socialism. I don't remember the exact title. But what he was trying to do, and this is somebody who had some very, very prominent. I don't want to say followers, but people that were kind of enmeshed within his ideas. So Alexander Bogdanov, who we've done an episode on his art in the working class with Taylor Genovese, Maxim Gorky, who of course, the name is probably familiar to the majority of the listeners, even if they haven't read his work. These were like pretty big proponents of Lunacharski's, a godbuilding program. And just to pull out a quote and then to describe a little bit about

what was going on here. He said, scientific socialism is the most religious of all religions. The true social Democrat is the most deeply religious of all human beings. His idea was to harness the human impulse towards spirituality, towards faith, towards religion, and harnesses it towards the goal of building socialism, which is kind of what we're talking about. In an ideal world, and when we're talking about the religious impulse, in general, this is probably a very smart way to go about things. But again, contextually, you have to consider what is the context, what was the context of the Orthodox Church in Russia at this time, which is why despite the fact that these

individuals, Lunacharsky, Bogdanov, Gorky, they were, well, Gorky wasn't, I don't think, a formal member, but Bogdanov and Lunacharsky were Bolsheviks. And they had many supporters. They even basically took over the island of Capri, not by force, but in terms of they had like a little commune on the island of Capri where they had these literary people and other like-minded Bolsheviks that would go for some warm weather, you know, lectures and writing symposia. This is where Gorky spent a lot of his time at this point. And some great photos have come out from this. They were talking about this God-building project and utilizing the

religious impulses to further socialism. Lenin basically tore them apart. for many reasons, but, you know, one of the things that was having to be considered was, of course, the conditions that they were operating in. And this is then, along with his criticisms of Bogdanov's philosophy and the God-building project more generally of Lunaticarsky in materialism and imperial criticism, Lenin's work. So without getting any deeper into it, because I am kind of taking us a field of where the conversation was at the time, I'll just refer listeners to those works, Lunacharsky's work as well as materialism and imperial criticism to get into that debate within the Russian revolutionary context.

But I do think that it's important. This is my long way of saying that it's important that we understand that there is going to be religious impulses even after socialism has been one, even as we are on the road to communism, there are going to be religious impulses from people that were very religious, as well as people who still have not fully enmeshed themselves within some sort of community. They haven't emmeshed themselves within the socialist project, the communist project. There is going to be this impulse amongst people, but it's important that in the lead-up to this, that we understand that while that religious impulse is not any fundamentally different,

this impulse exists as a result of the oppression on people and a need for community, that within individual countries, states, you know, communities even, there are structures and there are organizations that are emblematic and, as I said, more or less a figurehead of what is religion in this area, what is the religious impulse, what is that funnel too? And so keeping those two things separate is important, understanding that when we're struggling, we are struggling in large part against the ruling structures of what is given to be religion in a certain community, but that we do have this religious impulse with people that are going to be fully committed within our project that is not necessarily going to be directed into

this organization, into this structure that's present. We have to really tackle these two tracks, you know, how do we deal with this impulse that's pretty much inevitably going to be present in a large number of people, even in socialism, and how do we deal with the fact that the structures and organizations that are in place in virtually every community where religion is a fairly sizable part of people's lives, they are going to be, as Lenin said, the organs of bourgeois reaction, very important that we that we grapple with that two threads there. Well, definitely, I mean, I think, you know, Henry, that's a very, you know, useful point

to remind us. I mean, I think one of the problems is that perhaps in some ways, and this is a larger kind of issue, is that a lot of Marxist sort of and communists maybe have approached Marxism as a religion. You know, Marx's texts are like Holy Scripture, and we spend a lot of time kind of interpreting and debating, you know, those ideas. but sometimes we do still also treat them as like holy books almost or with the same kind of authority when clearly they're very important in the formation of consciousness, but also lots of things have

happened since then that couldn't necessarily have been foreseen and do we want to turn them into a complete profit, you know, that's kind of an odd position to take. But I think that's part of the problem is that in some ways there's been a displacement and you can see why. Like, you read the, you know, Communist Manifesto, and if you read it as predictive, it does sound like a kind of, you know, it understands history in much the same way of salvation history. It's like a millinarian treatise. I mean, there's a reason why so many Marxists like Karl Kautzky, you know, even Engels wrote, you know, about some of these kind of reform, radical Protestant Reformation thinkers, Tomas, Munzer and, you know, social changes taking place and peasants revolts that, you know, and we've had episodes that dealt with peasants' revolts and, you know, dissident priests who were their main spokespeople, there is a reason why millinarianism as a structure, a kind of religious sort of sense of the end of history and the end of this debased, corrupt, unequal,

oppressive hierarchical order will will you know be uh you know replaced by an age of grace of you know sharing you know all of these millinarian visions are a lot like communism in the sense that they posit that everything will be held in common you won't have property and there won't be lords and there won't be you know kind of this kind of social hierarchy so there are kind of symmetries between what's posited as the end is a kind of millinarian sort of vision of the change, fundamental change, dramatic change of society, and that it has this kind of teleological, instead of it being just individual or religious salvation, it's sort of human salvation in a way that is the object of the change. And so what I think is this isn't

to discredit Marxism by comparing it to having religious structures. It is to say that there is a fundamental human desire and part of human imagination is to posit and to aspire to an ethical society of egalitarian freedom. Like this is what, you know, what, you know, everybody has always wanted and we still want it. But the other kind of point that I would just say is that much of the kind of work on religion and Marxism, of course, has been framed within Christianity because that was the most obvious cultural, you know, location and context for Marx's ideas and what he would be meaning when he's talking about religion. And so there's been such good work, people like Alistair McIntyre or Roland Bohr scholars who have kind of looked at thinking about the relationship

between Christianity and Marxism and more broadly religion. But I did want to just pick up a little bit on the historical sense of how important socialism has been in Muslim reformist movements. These do not get a lot of attention, and very often they are seen as hostile forces, because when you look at the 70s and 80s after the era of, you know, Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, you know, the sort of secular national socialist kinds of movements that took place in the Arab Middle East and the Middle East more broadly and in the Islamic world, those projects, you know, ended up failing by, you know, the era of the 70s. And instead, those societies then had a resurgence of new forms of Islam or Islamic revivalism. And in fact, actually, during the

Cold War, the United States sponsored and supported, you know, religious movements, Muslim conservative religious movements as an antidote to communism, socialism, you know, which were very strong, you know, in these societies. But in fact, actually, you mentioned Mir Saeed Sultan Ghaliev, and we definitely want to go deeper at some point into his sort of history and ideas. But, you know, there were actually a lot of people like him in this Jadidist era of late 19th, early 20th century, Muslim reformists thought. and social movements, and they always absorbed, or almost always absorbed socialism as the most appropriate, you know, forget about the theology, forget about the kind of secular, atheistic kind of orientation of it, but that program of social justice and of building a sense of society that was, you know, organized around these important values of justice, equality,

and freedom and also the problem of anti-imperialism, which was the ideology that was most consistently anti-imperialist. It was like, you know, the Leninists. So that Sultan Mir Ghaliev is saying, well, this is the best thing for the Muslims. These people have fought against British and French colonialism and imperialism, Dutch colonialism and imperialism. They are our natural allies and also the idea that national development, social development of the societies after the devastations of colonialism, what was the pathway out towards freedom, prosperity? This was seen very much as compatible with socialism. You have people like Dr. Ali Shariati, a kind of Marxist-inspired sociological thinker who really was very important, you might say, in what would become the social revolution. that would lead to the Islamic Republic, but the kind of ideology that was inspiring many people

was a harmonization between socialism and Islam, a kind of a socialism grounded in a Muslim vocabulary and in Muslim kind of values. And so there's a long history that has often been suppressed here in other religious traditions as well of compatibilities between, historically speaking, of attempts to try and create those syntheses. And these are projects, I think, that need to be studied, thought through, and revived today, because if there is to be, you know, a broad-based social revolution, it's not going to come if you just dismiss, if you just only want to speak with people who have the same secular humanist kind of orientation that we have in the liberal kind of elite in the West.

I mean, you're not speaking to people. And so we have to be able to engage those. And perhaps studying these histories may be ways and points of re-eastern. energizing and recreating some of those kinds of solidities and thinking that can galvanize a broader move to transformation, social transformation in the future. Just very briefly before I turn it over to you, Brett, for the next topic or whatever you want to say on this, just since Adnan was mentioning that Mirzai Sultan Ghaliev was not isolated. This is absolutely the case, and I do want to underscore that, that there, this was

like a flourishing school of thought, particularly in the area that I am around that period of time, of the Russian revolutionary period of time. And I mean, some very interesting ideas coming out, including what kind of was like a predecessor of dependency theory in many ways. But again, we'll save that for a future conversation. But just so that the listeners are aware that that is something that we can talk about. Brett? Yeah, we only have a few more minutes because I think Adnan has to get to class. A couple things. One, it really excited me when you're talking about that adan because it's one element of the world in history i don't fully know but i'm very interested in i'm having on i think your colleague um soon to talk about islam and anarchism

and i would all i really wanted to balance that out um with uh islam and marxism so maybe we need you and i could do a follow-up not to not to confront or attack or disagree with but just to say okay here's some here's some interesting things with anarchism here's some interesting things with um marxism in fact i'm doing the i did the speech on marxism and buddism I reached out to a comrade on Instagram who runs the page Anarcho Spirituality, which I highly recommend. And he's going to come on and talk about Buddhism and anarchism, which he's writing his dissertation on. I like these. I like doing these things in these conversations. So that's interesting. Getting back to the point about, and I'll be quick with this, but the point about

Marxism as a religion, that's often something you'll hear, especially from critics of Marxism, that this is just a religious faith masquerading as like a scientific social analysis. And you're really just putting heaven down on earth and trying to get to it there. I did do, I address that argument in full on Rev. Left on December 15th, it's called, is Marxism just religion by another name? So if you want to hear about like a, what, an 18 minute breakdown of that argument and how you can respond to that coming from anti-communists, you can check that out. One way in which Marxists can hold Marxism as a religion in the negative sense is sometimes there's this idea that Communism is the end to all problems and, importantly, the end of all contradiction.

And this is sometimes implicit. People think that once we get to communism, the contradictions in society will disappear. And that's like an end state. And I think we should be suspicious of that and at least think very deeply about what that would actually mean and if that's even truly possible. Certain contradictions will definitely be transcended. But, you know, if we understand dialectics, we understand that contradiction is the motor of everything. So this idea that we can fully wrinkle out all contradiction in human civilization, I think, is sort of treating Marxism more as a religion in the negative sense. And we should be skeptical of that.

But the last thing I would say is just the points about institutional religion is really important. I think of Franco's Spain and the, you know, the church, the Catholic church in Spain. And like literally the anarchist and Marxists sometimes would go through churches and actually, you know, like kill nuns and priests and shit. because it was very much like the religious orthodoxian institution is on the side of fascism, and it very much was. But on the other hand, in every religious tradition, there's never been a prophet that's been conservative. Every prophet is bringing radical change, doctrinally, socially, you know, Jesus, Buddha, I don't know as much about Islam, but Muhammad. These are not people coming down to say, everything's fine, the status quo is actually great. They are radical challenges to the status quo. So the

institutional church, I mean, in the U.S., the evangelical church is on the forefront of the developing fascist process that we see taking place. So we have to be able to challenge these institutions and these structures while also keeping the flame going of the mystics and the prophets and these revolutionary edges that call for more humanity, that call for universal brotherhood, that call for egalitarianism. The point I wanted to get into, and those are my main points, we're not going to have time today. But I wanted to get into Nietzsche's critique of Christianity and socialism, because very quickly, Nietzsche's saying that they're kind of the same thing. This is where egalitarianism comes from. Christianity in Europe gave, and he's saying this as a bad thing, but Christianity

in Europe gives people this idea that we're all equal under God, you know, in God's eyes, all human beings are created equal, that liberal democracy and especially socialism and communism are taking this idea of egalitarianism given to us from Christianity and trying to apply it in the world, he hated that. He believed that some people were naturally superior, you know, the aristocrat of the soul, that some human lives were genuinely worth more than the lives of the herd, right? Which is a very pejorative way to talk about the masses. So I'm not going to be able to fully explore that here, but I am doing an episode with Matt McManus, who just did a new essay collection on Nietzsche and his reaction and his relationship to reactionary thought and what he thought about

Christianity and socialism. And, you know, I think that's a very productive philosophical world to enter into, particularly if you're concerned with this discussion. But again, that's going to have to be for another time. Well, and you also do touch on that in the Red Menace episode on one of Nietzsche's works, which came out sometime last year, I think. Maybe it was the Julius Ovola episode. Oh, you're right. It was that, because you referenced Nietzsche's in the Ebola episode. So, yes, it was the discussion of Nietzsche within that. So Adnan, I know you have to go.

So why don't you take us out, tell the listeners how they can find you, and we'll wrap up. Okay. You can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And, you know, listen to the modulus, M-J-L-I-S, other podcast on Middle East Islamic World, Muslim Diaspras. Hopefully you can check it out. Brett, how can the listeners find you very quickly? Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. Great. As for me, Huck 1995 on Twitter, follow Gorilla History on Twitter,

Gorilla underscore Pod, G-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-E-R-I-L-A-U-R-L-A-U-R-L, and on Patreon at Patreon. On that note, listeners, and as we speed on out of here, solidarity. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.