opium of the people? In El Salvador, the murder of Archbishop Romero formed a focus for the developing struggle against the regime. Marxism and religion we couple that with defence of freedom of worship?
goods are being produced, why prices rise af employment occur. So, having little control ing people can casily accept the notion of thie SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 May 1989 banded over to the masses. All the Chuch's: osing the Church in any way whatever as a separation of Church and state. It is much more ready deeply rooted in the conscinusness of the masses. Religious propaganda finds its most fertile soil where social institutions do not allow people to understand the real nature of change of goods are not carried nut with full pen as though they were the result of clemen- tal forces. The market controls the producer. Workers excluded from decision making in production do not know if too many or too few one time and tall at another, why crises and un over such important events in their lives, work- tion in Russia in 19.17. One of the first decrees of the Soviet state was that concerning the separation of Church and state. All its landed estates were taken away from the Church and capital became the property of the working class. The Soviet state rejected all thoughts of However, its one thing to carry through the In capitalist society production and the ex- consciousness and in a planned way. they hap difficuit to combat the religious prejudices al- means for strengthening the proletarian state. Tiance of the Church and state. They thought it would be more advantagcous to come to terms Preobazhensky termed it, to 'buy its prayers on The work which the bourgeoise in its strug red to a conclusion by the proletarian revolu- since it owned territories which the bourgeoisie It is this conflict that explains why the demand for the separation of Church and state was made by the liberal bourgeoisie. However, it was never fully realised. Evcrywhere the struggle of the working class against the capitalists was growing more intense, and the bourgeoisie saw no reason to break up the al- with the Church, that is, as Bukharin and gle with the Church had left unfinished was car- ASIC S behalf of the struggle with socialism. wanted for itself. TO geoisie was in conflict with the feudal nobility. the bourgeoisie fiercely attacked the Church, the ruling class for the maintenance of During the period in which the urhan bour- which must be distinguished. On the one hand tenance of popular ignorance and religious enslavement. On the other hand, we have the grained prejudices of the majority of the work- The union between Church and state goes back centuries. The association between the church and the feudalist state of landowners, for example, was very intimate: the autocratic state was sustained by the landed interest. The Church itself was a major landlord, owning mil- lions of acres. These two powers were inevitah- ly compelled to join forces against the labour- Religion historically has been one of the most powerful means at the disposal of inequality, exploitation and slavish obedience on the part of sections of the The struggle with religion has two sides cial organisation, existing for religious propaganda, materially interested in the main- struggle with the widely diffused and deeply in- we have the struggle with the church as a spe- ing class and other sections of society. working class. The struggle ing masses. Page 28
revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for crealion of a paradise on carth is mote important to us than unity of paradise in heaven'. Thin never meant that Marxists should not wage a struggle against religion but that atheism was not a condition Rosa Luxembourg shared this opinion, but developed a proach. Although an atheist herself, she attacked, not so proletarian opinion on different and looser ap- for party membership. B A x society, on the other hand, production and distribution no longer hold any mysteries of production and will have socialism to communism, tion. Religion also teaches In organised, communist for the working class. The and individually participates in claborating a general plan ideas and proposals on the matter. The transition from will of God" as an explana- working class collectively from the socicty which them their station in life.
much religion, more the reactionary policy of the Church. In an essay written in 1905, called Church and socialism she claimed that modem socialists were more cipler of Christianity than the conservative clergy of gle for a social order of freedom and equality, priestr should welcome it When the clergy support the rich who explain and oppress the poor Luxembourg, predating tot example Tony Benn and Eric. Heffer tried to rescue what faithful to the original prin- today. Since socialists strug they are in open contradic- tion to Christian teachings. were varied and made use of freed fron all traces of class mistake if we thought we political struggle against the proletarial. The Bolsheviks made a point of continuing marks the end of capitalism division will bring about the natural death of all religion In reality, of course we would would make a big could sit back and watch the end of religion, In the Soviet Union, after 1917, the Church became central to the the the struggle against religious Their methods to the society completely and all superstition. dictatorship propaganda.
ment, rather than undertake a philosophical battle in the name of materialism. Amongst the more recent leaders and thinkers of the communist movement Gramsci showed the greatest interest in religious issues. His ironic criticism of the conservative forms of religion expecially jesuitical catholicism did not prevent him from seeing the Utopian dimension of religious ideas. Religion is the most gigantic Utopia that history has ever known. It affinns.. that man is equal to other men. hut it also affinis this is not of this He also pointed out "that every religion...in tradictory religions. There is a catechism for the she saw as the social dimen- sion of the Christian tradi- tion for the labour move- really a multiplicity of different and other con- world hut of another (the Utopia)." Marx wrote the above passage when he was still a follower of Feuerbach, a neo-Hegelian. His analysis is therefore without any class reference. But it none the less grasped the con- tradictory character of the religious isting society and sometimes a protest against Engels for his part, tried to explain concrete social expressions of religions. Christianity no longer appeared as a timeless essonce but as a cultural form undergoing changes in different historical periods, first as a religion of the slaves, then as the ideology of the Roman Em- pire, then tailored to feudal hicrarchy and last- phenomenon: sometimes a legitimation of ex- The Iranian revolution: religion used by Khomeini historical periods i to smash class mobilisation. knowledge to undermine the authenticity of: However, in marked contrast to later, cruder, religion. They opened up the shrines to exposc the incorruptible' relics, to show up the trick- sheviks was sensitivity. To thrust atheism on the masses, to interfere with religious practices and to mock the objects of popular helief would not assist but hinder the campaign against religion, If the Church was perseculed it could win sympathy amongst the masses. Persecution would remind them of the days when there was a link between religion and the defence of na- tional freedom; it would strengthen the anti- Stalinist efforts, the watchword of the Bol- ery on which religion war grounded. debates and the publication placed a big emphasis on putting out scientific of litcrature. They also putting
period but today new questions are poscd in this Page 29 peasants, a catechism for the petty bourgeoisie and urban workers and a catechism for workers In general Marx and Engels felr that the sub- ersive role of religion was a thing of the past without any significance in the era of the * modern class struggle. This was true for a Field. The methods of Marxiam still apply and will aid our understanding whether of libera- tion theology or the growth of Islamic fun- damentalism or the relationship between the Ann Potter and Graham Topley Catholic Church and Solidarose in Poland. and for intellectuals. an atheist, a materialist and an enemy of Later on Lenin insisted in Socialion and tween materialism and religion is not always identical with the struggle between revolution and reaction. Forexample in Britain, eighteenth century materialism defended absolute monar- chy. while protestant sects used religion in their struggle against the Stuarts While remaining religion, Engels, like Marx, understood the dual character of religious belief; defending social order on the one hand and protesting against it religion that atheism should not be part of the Party's programme because 'unity in the really Engels, dough, realised that the conflict be- ly adapted to bourgeois society. opium of the people is generally reckoned to he at the heart of the Marxist concept of pressed creature, the heart of a heartless world semitic movement and in general it would mobilisc all the remains of an ideology which The well-known phrase 'religion is the religion. However a closer lock at the issuc would revcal Marx's understanding of the dual •Religious distress is at the same time the ex- pression of real distress and the protest against It is the opium of the people. (Toward the Criti- que of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1844). real distress. Religion in the sign of the op just as it is the spirit of an unspiritual situation. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 15 May 1989 was already beginning to die out. character of religion.
who can be used to justify the most extreme attacks on civil liberties. 'If should be treated like animals.' The bracketing together of all working who need to be locked up in cages was directly responsible for the