WSPUS statement on religion
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Our Attitude to Religion
The World Socialist Movement is opposed to religion. Why is that?
There are many religions. Many more existed in the past. What they share is a belief in one or more powerful supernatural beings, usually called gods or goddesses, who demand that human beings should revere, fear, obey, and worship them.[1]
Unlike science, which relies on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, religious belief rests on blind faith alone. Theologians may try to buttress faith with reasoning, but the conclusions that have to be reached are set in advance.
Comparative study of religions and their history leads to the conclusion that religious beliefs are products of the human mind and imagination. It was not the gods who made human being, but human beings who made the gods.[2]
Our species cannot hope to extricate itself from its currentperilous condition without engaging in rational thinking on the widest possible scale. Religion is one of the main barriers to such an expansion of rational thinking.
Religion may undermine people’s confidence in their individual and collective capabilities. It diverts their attention from the material problems of life in this world.
Religion is one of the main forces that divide the global working class, setting one group of workers against another. The divisive effect is heightened when religion combines in a toxic mix with nationalism – a phenomenon observed in recent times in countries as far-flung as the United States and Poland (Christianity), Israel (Judaism), Iran, Iraq, Arabia, and Pakistan (Islam), India (Hinduism), and Myanmar and Sri Lanka (Buddhism).
In all these and other ways, religion impedes the growth of global working-class and human consciousness and also therefore of the movement for world socialism.
We realize that religion can have positive as well as negative effects on the life of the believer. On the one hand, it fetters and humiliates the human personality. Especially harmful is the terror inspired by fear of divine punishment. On the other hand, religious beliefs are often a source of solace and consolation. They may give purpose and meaning to a life that would otherwise seem chaotic, cruel, and absurd. However, participation in the struggle for a better society can also provide these benefits.
These words of Marx still ring true today:
“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.”[3]
While we are opposed to religion, we are also opposed to any persecution or harassment of people on account of their religious or philosophical beliefs. We stand for complete freedom of religious belief and practice, except in those instances where it violates human rights, especially the rights of the child. We stand for the freedom safely to leave as well as join any religious community and the freedom safely to give public expression to religious as well as anti-religious views.
Notes
[1] In some religions, such as Confucianism, spirits of ancestors are worshipped. Some religions demand that God be loved as well as feared. Many require the performance of rituals. In the past it was common to make sacrifices to gods; this is rarer today.
[2] See: John Keracher, How the Gods Were Made (1929).
[3] From the Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1929/how-gods-made.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
Also, all religions had a materialistic origin, and they were the best explanation that human being found to explain his/her surrounding circumstances, the universe, and death, and most religions have been attached to an economic system, such as Christianity was part of the classical slavery society, catholicism was part of the feudal society, and Protestantism was the ideological vehicle of capitalism, and Buddhism, Shintoism was part of the Asiatic mode of production.
The critique of religion is also the critique of capitalism and vice versa, and there are many famous so-called atheists who support capitalism, therefore, their critiques are not enough. Religion will exist until the original conditions which produced their existence continue existing in our society, it can not be eliminated by state degree and by atheists imposition, it must be eliminated by mankind, and despite that many peoples will continue believing in religions
“Our species cannot hope to extricate itself from its current perilous condition without engaging in rational thinking on the widest possible scale. Religion is one of the main barriers to such an expansion of rational thinking.”
The pragmatic case for amending and softening our approach to religious applicants for membership is persuasive. A sizeable chunk of applicants are rejected because they hold religious beliefs in one form or another. Typically the response on being rejected is one of dismay, particularly in the case of individuals who are very enthusiastic about what we have to say and agree with us on more or less everything else, barring the question of religion. So they drift away , never to be heard of again. By our actions, we have probably driven them into the arms of some reformist political organisation and caused them to become completely disenchanted with socialism as an objective. We have thus strengthened our political opponents.
For a tiny organisation whose numbers are shrinking this is not a rational approach to take – ironically! The above statement is based on a caricature in equating religion with irrationality and science with rationality. But every single human being on this planet, socialists included, is a mixture of rational and irrational thinking. We wouldn’t be humans if we were not. Ever since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s work <i><b>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</b></i> (1962), it has become impossible to seriously maintain that the practice of science is not also profoundly influenced by irrational motives
The only form of materialism that should be of any practical interest to socialists -since we are, supposedly, a practical movement, not a philosophical debating club – is historical materialism. Philosophical materialism is just academic navel-gazing. It is perfectly possible to be a historical materialist and hold religious beliefs
It is quite true though that many religions can have pernicious social effects. It is this that should be our sole concern as socialists , not the metaphysics of religion as such which is more or less irrelevant
We can address this question effectively by excluding from membership
- individuals who belong to organised religions
- individuals who subscribe to theistic notions of divine intervention in human affairs
One beneficial consequence of this is that this will encourage individuals to abandon their membership of an organised religion and so we will be able to contribute in a much more effective manner to the decline of organised religion by adopting this stipulation. As things stand, we reinforce the power of organised religion by denying religious applicants the choice of having to abandon their particular church or whatever in order to become a member of our organisation
Finally, it should be remembered that applicants have to meet multiple requirements in order to become a member of this organisation. For example , they cannot support nationalism or the principle of leadership/vanguardism. If some metaphysical belief in spiritual energy or an afterlife or whatever, seriously impacted on these core socialist principles, this would “come out in the wash”.
It all likelihood such beliefs would have zero impact on those principles of ours that really matter. So to that extent our current blanket an all religious applicants is completely superfluous and redundant
We need to focus only on what is obnoxious about religion – that is its social consequences. Arguing that it is irrational or “encourages irrationality” is completely irrelevant and springs from a bourgeois Enlightenment belief that reifies rationality and depicts human beings as fundamentally rational entities whereas the older Medieval view saw rationality as something embedded in the universe itself- the Great Chain of Being. The bourgeois Enlightenment philosophers , as it were, simply relocated or transferred this rationality into the human mind itself, thereby despiritualising Nature and reducing it to dead inert matter available for capitalist exploitation.
How ironic that a revolutionary socialist organisation should follow in the steps of the bourgeois Enlightenment philosophers in reifying “rationality”!
Robbo203 – I get item 2 on the exclusion list but item 1 ‘individuals who belong to organised religions’ is pretty nebulous. What defines a member of an organised religion? Regular attendance at church, synagogue, mosque, temple, chapel? Weekly, daily, occasionally? Having a shrine in the back bedroom? Putting this in a box is not going to be easy so a more specific definition is needed in order to avoid any misinterpretation.
In principle I agree with you about religion – let it be private and have no place in socialist discussion and practice as long as it does not impinge on our human rights and freedom of expression/speech.
We will end up with this kind of nonsense being advocated.
It is bad enough with closet Leninists.
Psychologically those who believe in a deity still rely on some supernatural parental substitute to sustain them emotionally. Such immaturity makes them irrational and unreliable and subsequently no help in the struggle for socialism.
Perhaps, considering the impact of recent resolutions, this is not the best time to bring this issue up? Just a suggestion.
“We can address this question effectively by excluding from membership
- individuals who belong to organised religions
- individuals who subscribe to theistic notions of divine intervention in human affairs”
This would allow the Roman materialist philosopher Lucretius to be admitted, as although he didn’t deny that the gods existed somewhere he insisted that they had no influence on the course of human affairs. He’d make a good member.
It would also admit some of those “bourgeois Englightment philosophers”, the Deists, with their “Belief in a god who ceased to intervene with existence after acting as the cause of the cosmos”. Not sure we would want to admit creationists, would we, but then the Deists did have the excuse that they were living in the 18th century. Maybe tighten up 2. to say something like “to theistic notions of divine intervention, past or present, in the universe or human affairs“?
Then there are the “Nontheist Quakers” but they might fail the first test. I believe one, who called himself a “Quaker Atheist”, was turned down for membership a couple of years ago but I don’t know on which precise ground.
Point 1. goes without saying as it’s the same as belonging to another political party, with mistaken ideas and policies.
But would all those covered by the above be able to be described as religious anyway? Might it not be better to argue that such people weren’t religious in the sense we are using it (to sort out creationists and believers in divine intervention)?
Incidentally, Robbo, if your proposal is to have any chance of success I wouldn’t tie it to a head-on attack on “science” and “philosophical materialism”. That will get people’s backs up and is a separate issue.
Incidentally, Robbo, if your proposal is to have any chance of success I wouldn’t tie it to a head-on attack on “science” and “philosophical materialism”. That will get people’s backs up and is a separate issue
I am emphatically not attacking science or the scientific method. What I am attacking is the ridiculous nonsense that scientists – the same goes for socialists – are 100% rational and that people who believe in some deity or whatever must therefore be 100% irrational.
We are, all of us, without exception – you, me, the Pope, and Mr and Mrs Smith next door – a mix of rational and irrational. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves
If Lucretius and those Deist bourgeois philosophers you refer to accepted our goal and our democratic method of achieving it along with our opposition to nationalism , sexism, and racism then why the hell should we not admit them? What is more important – achieving socialism and growing the movement to achieve socialism or engaging in some arcane pointless philosophical debate about the meaning of life and whether some entity called god exists?
If we were serious about wanting to achieve socialism, we would want to remove any and all obstacles in the way of growing the movement to help achieve socialism. As it is , we are turning away people who could join this movement and make good socialists and who pose no threat whatsoever to the socialist integrity of this movement. More to the point by our intransigence we are driving them into the welcoming arms of other organisations that dont share our socialist objective
So who exactly is being rational – or irrational?
We are, all of us, without exception – you, me, the Pope, and Mr and Mrs Smith next door – a mix of rational and irrational. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves
_________
So anyone who thinks they’re totally rational, is by definition irrational?
_______
As an aside, I have always taken the view that an applicant to the party must agree with the Party’s case on religion, not that they must not be religious. There is a subtle difference.
We will end up with this kind of nonsense being advocated. It is bad enough with closet Leninists.
I dont agree that the comparison holds at all. We have more than enough built-in safeguards in the guise of our comprehensive membership test to ensure that even individuals who held personal religious beliefs were genuine socialists. If they held closet views that were in contradiction to our basic principles that were subsequently revelated after they joined then there is a simple remedy to hand – you invite them to leave the Party or expel them
I suspect such a situation is very unlikely to arise and if it does arise we have the means to deal with it. In the meanwhile at least we might start growing again as an organisation that is quite possibly facing extinction in a few years time.
Of course people can and do change after they join the Party. Normally they resign if they do Holding atheist views is no guarantee whatsoever that they will not gravitate towards a non socialist point of view whilst in the Party. I know of at least two ex members, both devout atheists, who left the Party to become anarcho-capitalists.
Does that mean on the basis of this evidence that we should require that anyone joining should not hold atheist views? Of course not. So why do we automatically assume that people holding personal religious will not make good socialists?
As an aside, I have always taken the view that an applicant to the party must agree with the Party’s case on religion, not that they must not be religious. There is a subtle difference.
I dont quite get that, Bijou – what is the subtle difference?
The Party’s case on religion amongst other things holds that anyone joining the Party must not be religious. Or I have missed something?
Hi Robbo
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The question on the website for applicants, and from memory the same question is used in branches is:
<b>What are your views on religion and its relation to the Party’s case for socialism?</b>
The question asks about religion, which I would say includes the development of gods and god like figures by primitive humans to explain an unexplainable world, the realisation by some (the priest class) that this is an easy way to gain status within the community and dodge getting dirty hands, the development of this into a form of social control by successive ruling elites and the present day use of organised religion as a bulwark to protect the ruling class. In addition to this the idea that we do not need to worry or try to change things is it is all part of god’s plan (divine intervention), is a useful tool for the ruling class to subdue the rest of us. In short religion has no place in the struggle for socialism.
To me, if someone agrees with the above, they’re in, if they don’t they’re out. If they happen to have a few superstitious remnants and think there is something out there that might have started the universe, I couldn’t give a toss, if they in panic say a few Hail Mary’s just before they’re about to be breathalysed, I understand (it might be worth a try and what have you got to lose) and if (like me) you enquire as to the health of any magpie you might see (and his wife) and feel a little uneasy about putting new shoes on a table (which if you think about it would condemn most shoe shops to a gruesome end) what the fuck.
In the 1998-98 football season me and a mate went for a curry before the 1st match of the season, possibly, (possibly) as a result of the two of us going to the same restaurant and ordering exactly the same food, Newcastle were 12 points clear by Christmas, then the restaurant closed. I’m saying nothing after that (bloody Cantona), but does that make me less of a Socialist
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