/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2443698
Yeah many of these have problems. I'm an atheist if you care, but this part of Marxism always seemed dubious to me. Fight against the reactionary religious instituions, sure, but the idea of abolishing religion itself is quite the aim. About on par with abolishing the concept of luck.

>Religion is the opium of the people.

You could say that about many things, all kinds of entertainment and treats. I remember one American elite called TV/movies "tittytainment" (not because it's sexual, but because the rabble latch onto it and become pacified).

>Religion justifies an unequal social order.

Some do but not all. "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

>The problem of an afterlife gives people something to look forward to after death.

Or something to fear. Or it just keeps going forever in cycles of reincarnation.

>Religion makes a virtue out of suffering.

As do many great projects including revolution. Unless you think you can overthrow existing society without suffering.

>Religion offers the false hope of supernatural intervention to improve current conditions.

Some but not all. Sometimes the gods/spirits are hands off or don't care or they expect humans to attend to human affairs.

>Religion is not necessary under socialism or communism.

Socialism will get rid of everything that's "not necessary"? Sounds rather austere. And for all you know spiritual togetherness will be required for the revolution. Gotta find some way to convince people to potentially sacrifice themselves for dubious future prospects they may never enjoy. Religion is good at that.

>Religion has no purpose if there is no longer clas society since its purpose is to justify an unequal social order and to provide the exploited with a coping method with their misery.

Religion may help balm the misery of class society but many of life's miseries don't have anything to do with class (disease, accidents, death, romantic jealousy, the existential pain of being an intelligent animal). Religion predates class society, unless you want to call what hunter-gathers do "spiritual" even though they often have explicit religious figures, stories, and rules. That's not to mention all the "complex hunter-gatherers" that weren't the stereotypical egalitarian band.

>With communism and decent working conditions controlled by the workers religion will wither away.

After thousands of years of civilization and 200 years of industry, people are still religious, or they reject the institutions and call themselves "spiritual." Wasn't there some guy who went to "atheist" China and was frustrated to discover all the woo they believed? People aren't religious in the same way as medieval peasants, so it might change more in the future, but maybe not in the way you like. Maybe "futuristic" religions will take hold, like UFO worshipers.

Doesn't it seem a little presumptuous to think that something that's (probably) been around as long as our species will disappear when we produce industrial goods in a different way? That's a big claim ya know?

Not to mention how humans seem psychologically primed for religious thinking. I'm not well read on any studies on that, but it seems like people readily detect agency in all kinds of non-human affairs. People start finding faces and patterns and evidence of "fate" in all kinds of crazy things. Or feeling a "presence." Don't forget spiritual experiences from drugs, fasting, meditation, and extreme physical feats. Or near death experiences. Sleep paralysis. Hearing voices. Feeling like something is communicating with you. Seeing something weird in the corner of your eye in the dark. Good luck getting rid of all that.

>Religion mystifies material phenomena.

Many scientists are still religious and do fine work. But the socialist bureaucrats, err excuse me the "administrators of things" will have to be atheists to run civil society or else it all falls apart.

>>2443889
>Wasn't there some guy who went to "atheist" China and was frustrated to discover all the woo they believed? People aren't religious in the same way as medieval peasants, so it might change more in the future, but maybe not in the way you like. Maybe "futuristic" religions will take hold, like UFO worshipers.
Yeah, based on my study of the psychology of religion, it's heavily supported that religion will almost always exist in some form or another. In a pure communist society, it will probably evolve into a highly personal and abstract belief system, or some recreational activity (such as sports, literature, gaming, sex, etc) will play the same social role as religion.

I'd say marxists should focus on stripping political power from the religious reactionaries, and everything will fall into place

1. Football is the opium of the people.
2. Football justifies an unequal social order.
3. The problem of football coaching gives retired players something to look forward to after death.
4. Football makes a virtue out of suffering.
5. Football offers the false hope of supernatural intervention to improve current conditions.
6. Football is a form of social control.
7. The bourgeoisie and religious authorities also support other more overtly brutal methods of control.
8. The bourgeoisie fund the religious institutions.
9. The religious institutions are class-collaborationist and legitimize bourgeois power through ideas like "Saudi sportswashing."
10. Football is not necessary under socialism or communism.
11. Football has no purpose if there is no longer clas society, since its purpose is to justify an unequal social order and to provide the exploited with a coping method with their misery.
12. With communism and decent working conditions controlled by the workers, football will wither away.
13. Football creates false consciousness.
14. Football mystifies material phenomena.
15. Football teaches that human misery is a result of divine will.

Can these theses on football be refuted?

>>2444582
truth supernova

>>2444882
>fringe groups that are hated by their own theological currents
>Marx was wrong because:
>Liberal social science
Grasping at straws. Ngmi.

>>2444882
it'd be nice if you proved any of this, and yes religion is withering away, you can just look at charts, in my home country of australia, no one goes to church, religion is only kept artificially alive through immigrants from religious nations, you see churches get converted into all sorts of shit on a regular basis, and soon the non-religious will simply outnumber the religious, why you might ask? because there's no point in religion in the 21st century in anywhere with an advanced economy, the numbers are climbing even in the heartlands of the most religious places like latin america too, and that doesn't mean he wasn't wrong on this sort of thing, but he certainly was closer to the truth than whatever bullshit you're pushing, secularization theory is real

>>2444919
Every passing day on this shitty planet makes more people believe that no supernatural beings exist. It's just stupid shitty humans with their stupid shitty brains.

Stirnerite angle is simpler: religion is an othered ideal fossilized and held above and against oneself, with the only path forward being the destruction of the ideal in the attempt to move forward despite it.

>>2444934
no it does not, unless you are talking about that new religious movement bullshit, it is not innate to humanity, it is not some "human trait" that makes religion popular, marx is at least right in the sense that it is class society allowing this, he is right that society will get less religious as it gets more developed, and you are wrong for thinking this is some heckin epic misanthropic bullshit, you are anti-human, and you are anti-social

>>2444939
>Implying anti-human is a bad thing
Humans fucking suck.

1. Marx meant this as sympathy not criticism. He did opium himself.
2. Only organized religion with a hierarchal structure.
3. So? Some people look forward to nothingness after death too.
4. Politics also can make virtue out of suffering.
5. Who is to say what is and is not false hope? You're outing yourself as a gnostic atheist neckbeard here.
6. Organized religion is
7. Probably
8. Yes but so do proles
9. This isn't religion as a whole just a few specific Abrahamic sects
10. Is anything in life necessary?
11. Again this only applies to organized religion.
12. Organized religion maybe or maybe not but people will always believe what they want.
13. Only organized religion but so does blindly following political ideology
14. Material phenomenon itself is mystical
15. No. Even in Arbahamic religions they often say suffering is the result of people falling from God. Only some of them claim it is divine will.

>>2444882
> It’s central weakness is that there’s no consensus on how to define religion
pomo does this kind of semantic breakdown to everything and how convenient that people can always point to it to say marxism is too rigid and certain in its definitions.

"like what even is a prole anymore. there's no academic consensus so ummm …."

>>2444966
yes? even if you say "humans are flawed" this dogshit reasoning leads to dogshit conclusions, if you truly hate humans, you may as well become an ecofascist, and get off this website, because that is an ideology that is openly anti-human, openly anti-social and is everything you'll ever like

People here need to defend Islam no matter what do they will make an exception for Islam.

Yeah? So? And?

>>2443698
no it's all based and trvthnuke, i kneel

>>2443698
>Can these theses on religion be refuted?
does it matter?
what are you trying to argue?

>12. With communism and decent working conditions controlled by the workers religion will wither away.
yes the solution is to change the material conditions of society and religion will die out on its own

which is quite different than militantly persecuting workers who happen to be religious for all the reasons marx explains

which is yet again different from suppressing organized religion in league with capitalists counter-revolutionaries and foreign agents

The reaction of "Marxism actually doesn't teach that every religious person should be killed" led directly to this "well actually, you can be a religious communist!" No, you can't. You deny the natural laws and metaphysical justifications for suffering and link them directly to real, social relations.

>>2445222
>No, you can't
Yes you can, what a stupid ass thing to say.

>>2445182
>Communities that live under material conditions that Marxist theory suggests would not produce religion
such as?

>>2445222
i mean, you can, but it depends on the material conditions. you probably shouldn't be religious and a communist if by that you mean a member of a communist party and a religious organization at the same time. but if you have like a rogue catholic priest or imam breaking from the main org and living in some undeveloped country targeted by imperialism and they are a founder of that party then its a little different

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_liberation_theology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_socialism

>>2445977
which is of course different than if you have the orthodox church allying with the whites against the soviets or the catholic church working with nazis and the cia against spanish and italian workers

>>2445965
I mean you could look at America rn. People everywhere are converting into increasingly extreme religious sects like Trad Catholicism, Salafi takfirism, neopaganism, or even absurd combination between all of them. The assumption that everyone will become a giga brained atheist who used proofs and science to look at the world just doesn't happen, because for all its worth religion is the most effective way of replicating value systems and ethics. Humonke brains are not developed enough to adopt the Liberal principle of live and let go and scientific utilitarianism

marxism is also a religion with its mythology, eschatology, prophets, scripture and dogma.

>>2446156
Isn't it more accurate to say that religions are like Marxism, in the sense that they are both attempt by humans to analyze the world around them and develop coherent value system

>>2446159
no, since the will to faith is itself irrational. people call themselves marxists without even reading marx; the faith precedes any positive belief.

>>2446162
>People i disagree with don't have a rational basis for their beliefs, only i do
This is the same condescending shit religious people project towards atheist btw, when they say that people reject God just because they want to have gay sex or something. In both cases the agency of the Other is denied in favour of some irrational explanation

>>2446164
you clearly misunderstand. marxism does not begin or end as an intellectual curiosity, but as a confession of faith. you can be a marxist and be right, but your loyalty to the signifier itself has no rational basis. why not just take what is correct in marxism and discard the rest if there is no imperative to believe? blasphemy is always selective; there is no universal revolt.

>>2446146
>I mean you could look at America
i thought "conditions that Marxist theory suggests would not produce religion" meant communism
like religion withers away like the state withers away

>>2446234
Communism is achieved huh

Religion is the hopium of the masses

>>2446346
lol

It's not 2010 anymore, what's the point of "le ebin deboonking of le sky fairy worship"?

>>2446146
>look at the decaying burgerreich, the most reactionary country on earth, this is proof people will always be retarded religoids
umm but look at State-Atheist China though

>>2445987
>Islam's grandpa detected
Abrahamism is silly
>>2444979
>People here need to defend Islam no matter what do they will make an exception for Islam.
not true, stop seething about hamas killing pissrahellis
>>2446383
>secularism is just a hecking reddit millennial generational trend from 2010
are you stupid or just trying to turn the clock back on religoid dominance?
>>2446156
>marxism is also a religion with its mythology, eschatology, prophets, scripture and dogma.
Marxism, unlike religion, is rooted in materialism and historical analysis, rather than faith-based beliefs or supernatural claims.

>>2446400
This particular variation of atheism is Reddit faggotry and hasn't been relevant in over a decade.

>>2446400
>Marxism, unlike religion, is rooted in materialism and historical analysis, rather than faith-based beliefs or supernatural claims.
the entire marxist dogma is a faith-based belief in end-times prophecy. the supernatural claim is that there's an invisible power called "history" working through the communist church, not to mention the supernatural belief in an entity called "value" which magically exists in objects, even when it cannot be physically measured.

>>2446472
>closed-book
the open-book pantocrator iconography fits marx way better

>>2443698
>2. Religion justifies an unequal social order.
This is religions function in the superstructure. It can also have the function of upending the existing order, like how Calvinism created the superstructure for upending feudalism

>>2446472
Explaining to the cashier that exchange value can't be seen under a microscope so I should just get a carton of marb reds for free

>>2446573
the merchant doesnt need to read textbooks to make a living, yet the economist must invent phantoms to explain what the merchant is doing.

>marxism is religion
I swear, people who say this are trying way too hard making up a strawman to project against them.

>>2446600
just call them heretics or blasphemers like you want to

>>2446605
>economics is science
🤣🤣🤣

>>2446596
I'm an electrician and I know fuck all about the physics of why copper is such a good conductor. So what?

>>2446703
are you implying that theres a deeper "science" to making money than buying and selling stuff?

>>2446704
Depends on your opinion of the social sciences

>>2446713
>social "sciences"
gobbledygook

>>2446234
>Marxist theory dictates that there would be no religion under conditions of primitive communism.
r u sure about that?

>>2446736
Ok why come prices are predictable

>>2446746
you tell me.

>>2446472
>dude the number 7 isn't actually out there in real physical space, so numbers aren't real
how smith-anon sounds when he breaches his containment thread to complain about the concept of value

>>2446434
the marxist criticism of religion is not "reddit faggotry." Imperial core new atheism was always imperialist and liberal while the marxist criticism of religion was neither imperialist nor liberal. I swear imageboard retards always define everything they don't like as "reddit" with zero evidence.

>>2446234
religion is not simply unfounded supernatural beliefs but a codified and disseminated social system of religious practice based on those beliefs. hunter gatherers do not build churches or write bibles when they eat mushrooms and hallucinate their ancestors.

>>2447102
right, you need faith to feel the presence of value in your life, otherwise its an imaginary concept.

>>2447259
Ok this is just dishonest. You can very easily distinguish between hunter gatherer animism and organized religions because the organized religions define themselves in opposition to animism and paganism. How many times have you heard Muslims talked derisively about the 'idol worshippers' or tradcaths dismissing indigenous spirituality as demon worship

>>2447259
you were right until you flinched at the end:
>The history of early Christianity has notable points of resemblance with the modern working-class movement. Like the latter, Christianity was originally a movement of oppressed people: it first appeared as the religion of slaves and emancipated slaves, of poor people deprived of all rights, of peoples subjugated or dispersed by Rome. Both Christianity and the workers’ socialism preach forthcoming salvation from bondage and misery; Christianity places this salvation in a life beyond, after death, in heaven; socialism places it in this world, in a transformation of society. 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/

>>2447103
Current day Marxists are Reddit fags, though.

>>2446472
Either you die with the capitalist mode of production as does everything else or you live through it so we can shoot you in the head. All historical questions are settled.

>>2446346
Lel

Marxists proclaim to be atheists until they see a factory or a warehouse, then they get on their knees and repeat the holy mantra. Work or die, they say, just like the capitalists.

>>2449781
so deep! makes me want to retvrn to a time when medicine didnt even exist

>>2449787
That's what the medicine men are for. But you're right, work or die, you know that's good and progressive because they got it from the Bible.

What if instead of unhappy Mr. Peel it was unhappy Mr. Marx, frustrated that the industrial zeks abandoned the "administration of things" to go hunt and fish instead. Except when he dreamed of his splendid future society he imagined hunting, fishing, herding – what is he, some kind of sack of potato ruraloid? Thankfully we've destroyed those places so we don't have to worry about that anymore and we can worship INDUSTRY our real God.

>>2449797
>But you're right, work or die
yeah thats what life already is like for the immiserated wage worker, its not a matter of opinion :)

>>2449834
Why do you think that utopia is unachievable? The reason we work so much is because of horrific inequality/consumerism, not 'worship of work'

wdhmbt?

>>2449965
Fuck off liberal

>>2449965
>Marx fantasized about a non alienated world where the average person can hunt, fish, and relax all in one day and nobody would be hungry, nobody will suffer, nobody will have unfulfilled wants and everything will exist in abundance.
wow really he just fantasized about it and didn't offer a materialist framework for how to achieve it? did he really just think it would happen because of ideas and willpower?

>>2449781
>Work or die, they say, just like the capitalists
I'd like to point out that this is true for pretty much all life on earth. Birds hunt for food, fish hunt for food, bacteria wiggle around for food, just as humans do. In general, you don't really get to do nothing and survive. There is a criticism to be made about marxist ideology taking on the role of some surrogate religion but this aint it.

>>2450239
I think you make the mistake of thinking of marxists as rigid dogmatists who seek to simply enforce a specific order of things which isn't the case. The primary objective of communists isn't to fulfill a utopian vision pre-prepared and laid out beforehand, marxists precisely oppose such utopian thinking. Rather, it is to neutralize class and continue the development of human society free of it's fetters. Marx doesn't have specific plans for what policies to enact under communism because it is impossible to know the fine particulars, only the general characteristics. That is, a stateless free association of producers. There is no contradiction between this and sustsinable living with the earth.
>(…) so achieving communism is really just a matter of more efficient resource exploitation, higher productivity, better technology, and a more efficient means of distribution than market economies.
You're missing the key difference, detaching from profit driven production for exchange and the search for new markets. Where the capitalist must always expand regardless of need, that isn't the case for the communist. There is no reason why the vast productive forces now in existence cannot be turned to the common good of all people.
Also
>told to work themselves to the bone for the state to build socialism and reap benefits that would never come
Is a silly thing to say considering the massive advances that socialist nations made in regards to quality of life across the board. When people work for socialism, they get benefits.

>>2450239
>That there’s a seemingly infinite supply of resources
wrong
>so achieving communism is really just a matter of more efficient resource exploitation, higher productivity, better technology, and a more efficient means of distribution than market economies.
correct
>In actual fact, the resources on Earth are finite and we’re already running out of them.
correct
>It doesn’t help that Marx’s idea of a communist society is vague and fantastical.
wrong
>It seems to offer an aristocrat’s life for everybody
>correct
>but there’s no way literally everybody can have that life because of basic geospatial limits.
wrong

the key point is:
<a more efficient means of distribution
thats the only problem in advanced states

>just look at all the environmental disasters the Soviets had a hand in
now look at all the environmental disasters capitalists have had a hand in, now compare

and dont forget who is actually doing something about it

>>2452303
>this is just impossible and unrealistic.
25 to 50 years to practical humanoid robots
Suck it up buttercup

Marxist anthropology sucks ass, simple as.