Ferrinus posted:

https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/

There is a fundamental contradiction in many of the Marxist studies that are produced in the West. Every time that they speak of Marxism in Asia — in China, Korea or Vietnam — or when they speak of popular movements in Africa such as in Egypt or Libya, they highlight the influence of religion on these political movements and the national adaptation of Marxism. When any Marxist researcher studies, for example, Chinese Marxism, they are obliged to address the influence of Confucius’ philosophy on Chinese culture in a general manner and on Chinese Marxism in particular. Likewise, the influence that Islam has on many African countries is always taken into account in analysis of socialist nations such as Algeria.

When the time comes to look at Marxism in Western politics, however, the influence of Christianity in the construction of the symbolic, subjective and theoretical universe of this Marxism is rarely taken into account. It is as if in Asia, Confucianism has an influence on politics, in Africa, Islam has an influence on politics, but in Brazil, in the US, in France, in Portugal, Christianity does not perform a similar role in forming historic subjectivity. This is a mistake for a very simple and objective reason, which Antonio Gramsci points out in several different passages of Prison Notebooks: the Catholic Church is the longest operating institution in the West. No other institution has managed to stay alive for so long with the capacity to disseminate and circulate ideas and concepts, through a body of intellectual priests, bishops and theologians, organized within a bureaucracy like the Catholic Church has. So it is impossible to speak seriously about Marxism, politics, subjectivity, culture, and the symbolic field in the West without incorporating the role of Christianity in each social formation, in each specific country as elements of analysis.

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Another factor that is very common in the western left is to treat suffering and extreme poverty as elements of superiority. It is very common in Western leftist culture to support martyrs and suffering. Everyone today likes Salvador Allende. Why? Salvador Allende is a victim, a martyr. He was assassinated in Pinochet’s coup d’ etat. When Hugo Chávez was alive, many sectors of the left turned their nose up at him. If he had been killed, for example, in the 2002 Coup attempt, he would be adored by the immense majority of the western left today, as a symbol of suffering and martyrdom. Since he continued exercising power as leader of a political process which, by necessity, had various contradictions, he was increasingly abandoned, as time passed — I don’t even have to mention what has happened to Maduro here. These same sectors which celebrate and support the idea of Allende because he defended democratic socialism do not see or do not want to see that Allende governed almost entirely through decrees. At the time, the Chilean constitution had a legal mechanism which enabled the executive branch to govern by decrees that did not have to be approved by parliament or the Supreme Court. So Allende was able to make laws through decrees which bypassed Congress and the Supreme Court. Since Allende did not have a majority in Congress and suffered a lot from the bourgeois opposition, he basically governed through decree throughout his entire mandate. This kind of action today is enough justification to label any left leader that practices it as authoritarian, to compare him to Trump, Bolsonaro, or Orban. If Allende was alive today he would also be criticized, but he died.

Another example of this is the situation with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. To most western leftists, Che Guevara represents a rebel dreamer. In real life he was not, but they have built this image around him. Che Guevara died immolated in the jungles of Bolivia, so now he is a symbol of sacrifice, martyrdom and the agony of defeat. Fidel stayed in Cuba as leader of the Cuban Revolution and all of the contradictions of this process. Today he is viewed as a bureaucrat, without charm or appeal, by many if not the majority of the western left. Che Guevara is an eternal symbol of resistance, of dreaming, of utopia that is unfulfilled because of death.

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What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Gideon and Esther are cool stories, and The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is a perfect rebuttal to a lot of the grinding and microtransaction bullshit in MMORPGs

gradenko_2000 posted:

MLs = catholics
anarchists = evangelicals

VictualSquid posted:

This guy: We to critically analyse the influence of Christianity on existing and historic Marxist movements.
Also this guy: There are no differences between catholic, protestant and orthodox Christian thought.

GalacticAcid posted:

analogy fails with the recognition that evangelicals actually have powerful, disciplined institutions that exert real world power

Ferrinus posted:

where does he say that

VictualSquid posted:

This guy: We to critically analyse the influence of Christianity on existing and historic Marxist movements.
Also this guy: There are no differences between catholic, protestant and orthodox Christian thought.

GalacticAcid posted:

analogy fails with the recognition that evangelicals actually have powerful, disciplined institutions that exert real world power

GalacticAcid posted:

analogy fails with the recognition that evangelicals actually have powerful, disciplined institutions that exert real world power

VictualSquid posted:

It is implied in the part you quoted.

gradenko_2000 posted:

MLs = catholics
anarchists = evangelicals

Ardent Communist posted:

purely speaking as a lapsed catholic, there's a big sacrifice yourself for the greater good undercurrent through it, as well as going for the gorier crucifix as opposed to the barebones cross.

Ferrinus posted:

reading things through a marxist lens kicks rear end

Ferrinus posted:

reading things through a marxist lens kicks rear end

GalacticAcid posted:

analogy fails with the recognition that evangelicals actually have powerful, disciplined institutions that exert real world power

Ferrinus posted:

reading things through a marxist lens kicks rear end

Ferrinus posted:

reading things through a marxist lens kicks rear end

Ferrinus posted:

reading things through a marxist lens kicks rear end

Lady Militant posted:

i mean in the sense you have a greater understanding of how the world works than most but it also means you will probably lead an intensely miserable life because you understand how the world works.

Lady Militant posted:

i mean in the sense you have a greater understanding of how the world works than most but it also means you will probably lead an intensely miserable life because you understand how the world works.

VictualSquid posted:

This guy: We to critically analyse the influence of Christianity on existing and historic Marxist movements.
Also this guy: There are no differences between catholic, protestant and orthodox Christian thought.

i say swears online posted:

the reformation emphasized a personal individual relationship with god and that probably has implications in derived political thought

Lady Militant posted:

i mean in the sense you have a greater understanding of how the world works than most but it also means you will probably lead an intensely miserable life because you understand how the world works.

Lady Militant posted:

i mean in the sense you have a greater understanding of how the world works than most but it also means you will probably lead an intensely miserable life because you understand how the world works.

Ferrinus posted:

i feel much better for understanding how things work rather than just vaguely absorbing that they're bad honestly

THS posted:

start thinking everything is good and print some positive psychology affirmations and put them on your wall. try opiates. get into collecting funkopops

Lady Militant posted:

i mean in the sense you have a greater understanding of how the world works than most but it also means you will probably lead an intensely miserable life because you understand how the world works.

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0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a poo poo-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself *sad*. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov *hosed him over* personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.

Ferrinus posted:

i say swears online posted:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/05/mcconnell-corporate-america-woke-parallel-government-479042

reading this quote via a marxist lens and lollin'

Ferrinus posted: