I went to Vietnam a couple times. If you hang out downtown in the city, you might get a random Jehovah’s Witness or Seventh Day Adventist* try to chat you up. “Oh, we can’t do missionary work out in the open, so we just do one-on-one conversations like this”. Despite the lack of “Jesus saves, die sinner” signs in Hanoi, you can definitely find Catholic and Protestant churches in Vietnam.
The Western press likes to piss and moan about settler nation missionaries that go, without proper visas mind you, to spread their Western versions of Christianity to the DPRK, only to get deported. So am I allowed to enter a white people country without a visa to stir up trouble and expect no consequences???
I’m the furthest thing from an expert on Myanmar. I get everything I know from Burmese friends. But if you look into the minority people situation, many of them are being heavily proselytised by the worst of the Amerikan type. I don’t want the Pat Robertson’s the world anywhere near struggling people.
*I’m definitely not saying that JWs and SDAs are anywhere near the worst as Christian sects go.
I think it’s pure idealism to think that a social phenomenon that predates class society will somehow go puff as soon as class society is abolished. Religion predates class society, so obviously whatever human need or social function it fulfills isn’t attached to class society.
Religion predates class society
Not exactly. Worship yes, but religion as institution everywhere tended to be the cornerstone of class society, archeological findings in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Americas clearly points on priests being the first unproductive class that started to exploit others and eventually also got political and military power and became aristocracy. Getting rid of classes and private property will not liquidate religion but it will greatly weaken it. On the other hand there would be very much need to help this process before liquidation of classes, since religion could be very much again a catalyst for the class society.
I guess my question would be what’s the difference between organized worship and (organized) religion. In a communist society, people would be far less alienated from each other and much more likely to participate in collective activities. This would range from creating art to playing sports to cooking to to collective study, but this could easily be applied to something like worship. It’s extraordinarily unlikely that people would do so many productive and recreational things collectively but choose to worship individually. And with any collective activity, there’s always going to be de facto veterans and leaders, so in the context of collective worship, this would lead to a de facto clergy.
I don’t really want to speculate anymore since we obviously aren’t close to a communist society, and I’m not making a definitive claim that worship/religion is an inherent part of the human condition. I just think people are getting way ahead of themselves when they say, “let’s abolish religion lmao.” Let’s focus on getting to socialism and communism first before we even think about abolishing religion.
In a communist society, people would be far less alienated from each other and much more likely to participate in collective activities
Yet this is exactly the condition that born religion once. If you didn’t noticed, most religions is based on collective activities and this is the base of their organisations and the danger they pose. We WANT religion to be purely individual, that would means its withering and removed danger from it.
It’s extraordinarily unlikely that people would do so many productive and recreational things collectively but choose to worship individually
Yes that’s why this needs to be at most, even in most basic stage of socialism, treated just as the art or sports or cooking club, anything more and you get religion undermining socialist state and leading to what happened in East Europe. At least because they WILL try to organise and EVERY religious organisation will by its very nature be against marxist state.
this would lead to a de facto clergy.
Yes, and during socialist stage, state having monopoly on violence could keep them in check, but what about later, in communism?
I’m not making a definitive claim that worship/religion is an inherent part of the human condition
We can see a time in the past where nothing like this existed, religion is as much natural as capitalism is, and just as we can eventually eliminate the latter, there’s no reason we can’t do it with the former, just we don’t yet know any successful methods, though some experiments were promising, for example in Czechia atheism stays high even despite dismantling socialism - in other words, state supression of religion works, we just did not did it long enough and made mistakes in it (For the records, i think both China and Cuba are making a mistake with current supportive politics, they just freeze and push back the reaction, once some kind of trouble stands, those will rise as center of opposition, just remember how churches acted as snitch points during the revolution in Cuba).
I just think people are getting way ahead of themselves when they say, “let’s abolish religion lmao.”
Depends what they means about it. Just press the button lol nope, just as in case of the class society which were born from and alongside religion. But i am of strong opinion that religion should be, just as class, combated by socialism with its eventual elimination actively sought of. I think Lenin was on the right way in his article about militant materialism (note the word chosen, not atheism, not antitheism, but militant materialism, as in promoting better alternative to combat trash of history just as promoting socialism to get rid of feudal and capitalist dregs).
Let’s focus on getting to socialism and communism first before we even think about abolishing religion.
No, as above we should strive to do it at the same time, i don’t belive communism could even be reached without getting rid of or at least completely neutralising religions.
The changing base recreates the superstructures upon it. I don’t disagree that it may not go “poof” and disappear, however the liberation of production and centralization of power in the hands of the workers creates new paradigms that may or may not undermine the foundation that foments religious belief I the first place.
This is also what i think, but note that historically religion was catalyst for class society, so i ccanot imagine classless society with priesthood existing in any form.
religion was catalyst for class society
It’s the other way around. Class society is the cause, not the effect, of religion.
Or rather, they both cause and result from each other… but the base is always more fundamental than the superstructure.
Otherwise we’re getting into territory where the basis of society is not economic, but religious. Which is not materialist but idealist, essentially Hegelian rather than Marxist.
AES states are not classless, therefore not without religion. But definitely working toward religious abolition indirectly through class abolition.
