God Building was a Russian Marxist school of thought that advocated the construction and organization of a religion of socialist humanity rather than the abolition of religion, as defended by a strictly materialist interpretation of Marxism. Its main proponents among the RSDLP were Anatoly Lunacharsky and Vladimir Bazarov , as well as the writers Maxim Gorky and Alexander Bogdanov .
The idea of a religion of humanity was developed by Ludwig Feuerbach . The idea of a Promethean construction of an individual replacing God is present in Nietzsche .
The superimposition of the plane of ideas and experiences, of idealism and materialism, was one of the fundamental theses of the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach, greatly admired by these Russian thinkers.
The French Revolution and its Cult of Reason and of the Supreme Being provided the example of a religion organized by the State according to the ideals that the latter had set for itself.
Finally, faced with a deeply religious Russian people, the preservation of religion seemed a guarantee of success for a revolution and a new societal project.
In the issue ofMarch 1907In the Mercure de France review , Maxim Gorky defends the position of the God Builders against the atheism of Georgy Plekhanov for whom religions are destined to disappear with the advent of communism.
Anatoly Lunacharsky developed these ideas: already in his first essay, *The Atheist* (1908), he showed that pure materialism inspired a pessimism and passivity that prevented any socialist construction. It was therefore necessary to rouse the people's enthusiasm by emphasizing values of well-being and joy ( naslazhdenie ) and to propose a religion of humanity centered on humankind and progress.
The two volumes of his essay Religion and Socialism (1908) definitively established his doctrine. Religious emotion is paramount and must be redirected to build socialism. People must forge a psychological unity among all individuals, recognizing the sole value of facts and bodies (thus proposing a commandment to love them) and the value of human action. Lunacharsky perceived the religious dimension of the belief in the inevitable advent of the revolution and defined the 1905 revolution itself as the action of the people's religious forces. Christ was not recognized as God, but revered as the foremost of the Communists.
Prayers would be offered to human and national genius, to humanity and progress, and would strengthen the desire to build this future society. The ritual apparatus would be completed by rites, temples and theatres where religious plays would be performed
>already in his first essay, *The Atheist* (1908), he showed that pure materialism inspired a pessimism and passivity that prevented any socialist construction.
Both psychology and sociology were scientifically underdeveloped fields during that time and even today’s research results are dubious and hardly replicable in either field. So no, this random, biased Russian peasant from the early 20th century didn’t prove shit in an essay of all things. Today’s China refutes his claim and any atheist individual who isn’t a pessimist and has aspirations they work towards already refuted his claim as well. We don’t need religion. The problem is primitive people who are very emotionally invested in their Harry Potter tier magic sky entity and make their personal psychosis everyone else’s problem.
It's just ACP guys trying to justify their religiosity through Cosmism, the new replacement paraideology now that Multipolarism hasn't panned out.
>>2698983>So no, this random, biased Russian peasant from the early 20th century didn’t prove shit in an essay of all thingsit's a bad translation of the French wikipedia article on the god builders , not my actual opinion. I was just introducing the subject matter. I do not think they proved anything either. I am sorry for not stating that explicitly earlier.
>>2698994I do not like ACP. And Lenin rejected the God builders.
Religgers should not be given power, but abolishing religion or spirituality as such is as futile as trying to abolish "the value form" directly.
It will be sublated in advanced communism
The whole premise of religion is it must be true and of supernatural origin.
If it's not then it's pointless building one.
Let's just wait until someone breaks the laws of physics.
>>2699963I've seen the slur "religgers" before maybe by you anon and I love how rude and crass it is. Excellent slur. So good that "Igger" is Yiddish for messenger, so it's not really tied so heavily to uiger.
>>2698968yeah i think its super based we need materialist community practices and rituals based on natural cycles for entry into like different stages of life or types of work like secret societies but open instead with like cool lore and costumes and stuff
>The French Revolution and its Cult of Reason and of the Supreme Being provided the example of a religion organized by the State according to the ideals that the latter had set for itself.
That was a complete failure though. I don't think it's really possible to invent a new religion out of whole cloth. They need to develop organically. The most you could do would be to sponsor and support a new interpretation of an existing religion, e.g. a pro-communist orthodox Christianity.
3 things are true about religion:
Firstly, it is a hindrance and curse on humanity, bringing division, repression, superstition, war, violence. It causes far more problems than it solves and has set human progress back to an incalculable degree.
Secondly, you cannot eradicate it. Like it or no the majority of people, billions globally, believe in some form for spirituality or idealism.
Even the most hardened of materialists still jumps at bumps in the night, cowers at the dark, or experiences unexplainable events and hallucinations that leaves them second guessing the nature of our reality. It's genetically hardwired.
Give a Marxist-Leninist LSD or DMT then ask them to explain his experience immediately after the fact.
And thirdly, it is a thing that cannot be proved or disproved. It seems impossible to know for certain the nature of this reality from within.
>>2698968Do you know anything about marxist humanism?
What I see of marxism in the west currently is more or less arguments of economic self-interest devoid of morality. At the same time there's a parallel current taken up by many on the left at the same time as marxism of reflexive anti-oppression morality. But this morality is often steered by liberal ultra-left positions in what seems like an attempt as sabotage. I have a vision of a future marxist morality based on a universal principle of solidarity people oppressed in all ways, the right of oppressed people to violence self-defense, and the goal of combination of all oppressed people (within the working classes) against oppression. Why does this not already exist? It seems to be a shared implicit moral baseline but it's not taken as an explicit moral framework that guides communists. I think it absolutely should be made explicit, and this should replace religious or conservative morality for people. (and conservative morality is the most heinous immorality which says that all violence and depravity unleashed is okay so long as it's done by the right person and against the right person, and that not even the smallest trespass can go unpunished so long as it's done by the wrong person against the wrong person)
I see that conservative morality is sometimes not challenged in people on the left, and anyways I think this is the god building task of our day
>>2700225>Give a Marxist-Leninist LSD or DMT then ask them to explain his experience immediately after the fact.I took shrooms once and my reaction was "wow whoop te do, my perception and consciousness are altered, this is boring af, can't wait to get back to concrete reality and continue painting my warhammer minis"
>And thirdly, it is a thing that cannot be proved or disproved. It seems impossible to know for certain the nature of this reality from within.Wrong, read materialism and empiro-criticism by lenin, read theses on feuerbach, read anti dhuring
>>2700284Opposite is the case, only morons experience something as banal as an altered state of consciousness and think that god is talking to them.
I experience hallucinations every night, they're called dreams, and I don't then start belirving that I have decyphered the mind of the universe
>>2700291Really uninteresting take, I think you should be a bit more openminded instead of trolling threads you are evidently uninterested in
Crazy how on one moment you say you can't wait to get back to playing with mass produced fascist toy soldiers, and soon after you tell people to read Lenin Marx and Engels, while attacking others in a thread you evidently have no interest in
>>2700225>>2700278I've also done shrooms, only shrooms though, and I think they might just not be as "profound" as LSD. I never had a sense of "one with everything". I wonder if that's just hippy thought priming. It's primarily an enhancer, you feel and experience everything more, even the hallucinations follow this. Tons of symmetry, seeing things in random patterns, stationary cars seem to lurch, melting textures, etc. And as far as epiphanies it only ever helped me understand what I already knew.
>>2700294>Crazy how on one moment you say you can't wait to get back to playing with mass produced fascist toy soldiersI play tau tho
>>2700276My hot take is that marxism is unextricable from humanism and teleology without making the whole endeavor pointless.
If religion is humanity's ideological cope for its own alienation, marxism gives us a conscious scientific method for overcoming the alienation.
That does mean though that concrete religious practice is obsolete, just like philosophy
>>2700295>>2700278>I took shrooms once and my reaction was "wow whoop te do, my perception and consciousness are altered, this is boring af, can't wait to get back to concrete reality and continue painting my warhammer minis"The ironing. The reason people turn to drugs instead of just straight meditation is to aid them out of their robotic consciousness like you display. Lol. You are so strongly attached it I think you need a much higher dose.
>Whoah I can't wait til I can do rote mechanical tasks again to kill the hours until my deathLiterally a machine.
>>2700340>le attachment to material things, just disconnect bro, find the Truth in the Eternal bro, experience ego death broPure idealism.
Marx started his analysis of capitalism by looking at commodities, because truth is found in the concretely mundane and mundanely concrete.
Seeking truth in purely mental and perceptual phenomena is for retards
>>2699972>The whole premise of religion is it must be truenot really, plenty of religions lack truth.
>and of supernatural originnot really, civic religions are lacking the supernatural element
>Let's just wait until someone breaks the laws of physics.Whenever it appears that someone "breaks" the laws of physics, historically, it led neither to proof of the supernatural, nor to a total abandonment of science, but instead led to a re-evalutation and re-writing of the particular laws of physics which were "broken", and the development of a new scientific paradigm in physics. Same with other fields of study. Thomas Khun's book
Structure of a Scientific Revolution goes into depth about this. There are long periods of "normal science" where scientists refine or add nuance to existing theories, and then scientific revolutions where old theories are modified or thrown out, new theories are embraced, and there is a "paradigm shift." Science is a self-correcting enterprise that undergoes evolution.
>>2700350I'm saying you lack the higher powers of analysis like self-reflection, that is why you turn to monoteny to keep your mind in a neat little circuit of nothing. I just thought that was funny.
>I couldn't get into psychedelics because all I could think about was about how I forgot to check all the locks in my house a 5th time tonightIt's funny
>>2700350You really think this kind of talk is going to be useful and bring about better knowledge for yourself or those reading your posts? The narcissism you display and the tilting at windmills is embarrassing
Have a but more humility and realize other people see things differently from you. Your straw-manning of anyone who disagrees with you makes you a waste of time to engage with. I'm just telling you this to illuminate you on why your interactions with others are probably regularly hostile and unproductive.
>>2700350>Seeking truth in purely mental and perceptual phenomena is for retardsI've been trying to figure out why I find your view so distasteful and I figured it out now. It's anti-human and anti-life. Spending time within your own mind is all we ever get to do. Alienating yourself from your mind by immersing in repetitive wage labor and commodity based hobbies is what we are compelled to do. Stepping back not just for a break from work, but stepping back from all your preconceptions about not just society but also your self, and taking psychedelics, is not just a human birthright, but one that is near universal among animals. From deer eating urinated-upon snow containing kidney-filtered amanita muscaria, to dolphins ingesting puffer fish venom, all animals of higher intelligence naturally seek mind altering experiences, whether they be chemically induced through psychedelics, or ritualistically induced through religion. Because you personally don't find this worthwhile means it's for "r
**" apparently. I think you're not contributing anything with your negativity.
>>2700746That is a good point about animals. Even simple animals, evolution ony ever cane about because an animal tried something different. We as humans have the ability to evolve the power to "evolve" our methods of survival and understanding of the world purely through the realm of thought.
A lot of scientific discoveries started as visions or epiphanies that came first in altered states or dreams.
>Scientific discoveries and breakthroughs have famously emerged from dreams, where the subconscious mind synthesizes complex information, resulting in structural, chemical, and mathematical insights. Key examples include the benzene ring structure, the periodic table, and atomic structure models. These moments often happen when the brain is free to make lateral connections that the waking mind struggles to find. >>2700295>I've also done shrooms, only shrooms though, and I think they might just not be as "profound" as LSD.it's hard to know whether a given batch of psilocybin is potent or not. there's too much variation in the level of potency. That said my experiences (a long time ago now) on shrooms were "profound" but also I was looking for a profound experience. I wasn't going in with a dismissive attitude. I also made sure to have actual profound experiences not just by myself but with others. We partied, we went into the woods, that sort of thing. I was with other people having the same alteration and speaking with them on those terms. If you do it by yourself in your bedroom and don't go outside, it's easy to be dismissive. Same if you're one of those corporate psychos who "microdose" in order to "innovate" at work.
I don't believe in the supernatural, but I do believe altered states of consciousness give you a temporary state of increased neuroplasticity which allows you to experience childlike wonder and gives a sense of novelty to the world that you may have lost through the ossifying processes of socialization and indoctrination.
>>2700776"It's fun with friends" but for drugs
>>2701544Wow look, 4 paragraphs of text of unknown origins without a single citation
>>2698968I don't understand religion but it seems inevitable. Pragmatically, the worst excess of religion is the earthly God-king. The veneration of living people should be strictly prohibited. Venerating dead people is not so politically risky.
>>2701544>The old Bolsheviks didn't really understand it, but Stalin understood the peasantry and their mentality better than any of them.actually in his 1937 interview with Lion Feuchtwanger, Stalin said he resented his own cult of personality, and insisted that the CPSU kept forcing it upon him even against his own will. For example Stalin voted against public celebration of his 55th birthday but the CPSU voted in favor of it.
>>2700225>Even the most hardened of materialists still jumps at bumps in the nightbecause it might be a real human coming to kill you?
>>2700225>Give a Marxist-Leninist LSD or DMT then ask them to explain his experience immediately after the fact."I was on drugs and it altered my state of consciousness"
>>2700225>And thirdly, it is a thing that cannot be proved or disproved.people making outlandish claims should provide evidence rather than expecting everyone else to disprove them.
>>2701544>Karl Marx once wrote that ancient mythology had sprung from man’s feeling of helplessness amid the blind forces of nature that he had not yet learned to control. It may be added that modern political mythology has its source in man’s sense of helplessness amid blind forces of modern society that he has not been able to master. If Stalinists had the courage to apply this Marxist idea to the Soviet Union, they would perceive that the flourishing of political mythology in that country was the unmistakable symptom of a moral enervation and depression of society. Stalinism throve on that enervation and did its utmost to deepen and perpetuate it.>The prostration came naturally in the early 1920s, after the titanic exertions of all social classes in the Revolution, the Civil War and the famines that followed. Exhaustion and the feeling of political helplessness made the climate of the formative years of Stalinism. In those years peasants working their tiny plots with antediluvian tools formed the overwhelming majority of the nation. The Marxist idea of socialism, as expounded by Lenin, was of Western European origin; it presupposed a modern, highly industrialised and civilised society. It did not and could not fit a semi-Asiatic nation whose emblem should have been not the hammer and sickle but the wooden plough.>The Revolution had to adapt itself to its environment, and Stalinism provided the adaptation. In it the alien socialist idea was wedded to the outlook of the barefoot and benighted Russian muzhik and to the primitive tribal magic of the Georgian highlander and the Kirghizian nomad. The marriage was as unnatural as it was inescapable, and its grotesqueness was reflected in all the antics of the Stalin cult. Marxian socialism, whether one likes it or not, has its highly modern inner logic. Primitive magic has its own poetic integrity. Stalinism, that mongrel of Marxism and primitive magic, has neither; it is a prodigy of incongruity. Sounds gay i dont go do religous stuff because its probably made up, so why would i go to something I KNOW was made up?
>>2700757> evolution ony ever came about because an animal tried something different. completely backwards. animals don't necessarily have to "try" anything other than to survive. It is changes in the environment, changes in the scarcity of resources, continental drift, climate change, rising and receding coastlines, weather patterns, radiation, and so on, which cause small changes which eventually snowball into macro-evolution and differentiation of species. What the animals "try" is determined by the environmental pressures.
Fuck bogdanov
>>2701765>>2698968is this the same A. Bogdanov that Lenin goes after in
Materialism and Emperio-Criticism?
>>2701750How is it backwards? Also an environment doesn't have to change. Naturally animals find new niches and means of survival in a static environment. Also, in other intelligent animals they can adapt behavioral evolutions in different communities of the same species.
>>2701858Yes the very same.
He was initially a member of the RSDLP but then joined the Bolsheviks later. He was accused of philosophical idealism for his support for the creation of a Marxist religion, for "God-Building".
He also believed he could greatly prolong life, or perhaps live forever via blood transfusions.
He died due to getting a blood transfusion from a medical student who was unknowingly infected with both malaria and tuberculosis. The student survived.
>>2698968The first wave of marxists had a distinct faith in the coming world proletarian revolution and of its inevitability (even if logically they knew there's always another outcome) that modern marxists can't have, because we've lived to see the coming world revolution smashed all over the globe, and at the very least drastically delayed. I think that was the one singular aspect of religion that was available to us, and now there are none.
If we look at what religion offers people, it gives a sense that the future will inevitably turn out how it should (no guarantees on good or bad for the humans), and small rituals for individuals to undertake that are supposed to help their situation, as well as large rituals undertaken by society. We can't help but want a future good for humans so there's nothing in "everything turns out how it should" for us, and we have no rituals that actually better our lives to offer (and we have no interest in psychological diversion away from activities which actually help and towards self delusion). At best you could try to romanticize organizing practices as spells or prayers, but they have a key difference and that's that other people are involved. Magic practices involving other people, against their will, is the domain of harmful magic, and lacks the peaceful innocence that rituals between oneself and a higher power give. They're in a different domain, the domain of technique, just at a very low level. There's really no psychological protection for us other than the psychological protection we build as we build the strength of global revolution. If we worship a god it's the oppressed people of the world, and this god has no agency yet - it's a god that we have to bring into this world by our actions. This could never be the basis of psychological relief like religion is.
>>2698983Every time you post a picture of Stalin, you're posting a picture of god.
Communism IS a religion
What are the actual supposed good things about religion?
Well in part it depends on the faith.
But generally, it's a sense of community and belonging, a shared space to meet with neighbours, listen to a lecture on some topic, and then have tea, coffee biscuits.
It's a space to engage in certain symbolic rituals, ceremonies, a kind of cathartic play acting representing important concepts, myths, or philosophy.
It's a place you can freely meditate on your life, on the situation in the world, on any difficulties you might need to work through, or to just empty yourself of thought for a while.
It's an organisation that (at least in theory) helps the local community in some form, supports people in need.
It's a coping mechanism and a psychological support for people who cannot cope with life and need a crutch to make things bearable. It is opium for the suffering masses.
None of that actually requires belief in idealism or God(s). You could apply all of that to a materialist, rational, even a Marxist temple.
The questions are - if religion is so hard to eradicate or has some genetic component to why many people crave it, then would a Marxist "religion" be easier to convince people of than traditional atheism?
Would such an organisation dissuade people from other forms of religion, from idealist positions, or would it encourage religion generally?
I don't have the answers to that, and I think it's too much of an unnecessary risk that could accidentally promote wrong ideas or be horrifically twisted over time.
But a shrine to materialism with incense flowing and big ass bells and gongs, chanting quotes from theory, statues of Marx, a hall for studying dialectical materialism is quite an interesting image.
I imagine it would make Marx roll over in his grave.
>>2702368>He died due to getting a blood transfusion from a medical student who was unknowingly infected with both malaria and tuberculosis. The student survived.LMFAO
>>2702989Social planners love religion as a "social technology" but then get freaked out when they realize people will expect you to follow the dictates the priests.
>>2702989Any ideology that is to be sustained has to offer a moral framework & sense of direction to people's collective lives. Importantly something beyond themselves that inspires them.
Further as you say, this includes community life, art, music, etc.
"Yes there was a cult! But there was also a personality!"
>>2703059Bogdanov would've loved adrenochrome
>>2698968Revolution comes first, then comes the religious Bonapartism. It's utopian to imagine the shape of a post-revolution religion.
>>2698968In the french revolution they tried a similar thing, they would parade an image of the goddess Reason for the populace to worship. Needless to say, religión, as a mostly irrational and mostly originating from a sort of spontaneus ideological strata of local common sense, is hardly engeneerable artificially. Most cases of such engeneering used already existing religious realities that spread slowly until some state endorsed it
>>2702633>The first wave of marxists had a distinct faith in the coming world proletarian revolution and of its inevitability (even if logically they knew there's always another outcome) that modern marxists can't have, because we've lived to see the coming world revolution smashed all over the globe, and at the very least drastically delayed. I think that was the one singular aspect of religion that was available to us, and now there are none.There are some anti-communist types who say (in a vulgar way) that "communism is just like a religion" as a way to dismiss Marxists as believing in fairy tales, but I think there's something to the theory that modern ideology filled in for traditional religion in the 20th century, and that has largely died out. Also it's a theme among people who grew up in the Soviet Union to say that a lot of people stopped believing in it. A factor that seemed important in eroding that system was the intensity of ideological commitment wasn't sustainable or at least reproducible down the generations. That is why the anti-communists are not quite right because communism didn't really have much to say about how to live your private life or how to raise a family. You were expected to have a good morality if you were a party member, don't cheat on your spouse, etc. but being part of that ideological project was not the same thing as just having a private life and wanting to be left alone either.
So it might be that ideology is dying like religion is dying. But some might think, that means communism can't return, but while that might be true for 20th century communism, Marxism is actually a critique of ideology. This is why Marxism can be turned around on itself as a critique of dogmatism. Also, I think one reason why religion is dying (or at least being replaced in the 21st century) is that it's competing with new forms of social activity enabled by technological and material changes. That could be Taylor Swift concerts, FIFA, video games, gym / MMA culture, Pride parades, creative hobbies, etc. Religion can "make sense" as social technology in certain circumstances. Like if you live in a rural area, the entertainment sucks, but there's a church and the families in the town bring their children there, and the children can play together while the parents network, pull strings, etc.
>>2702989>But a shrine to materialism with incense flowing and big ass bells and gongs, chanting quotes from theory, statues of Marx, a hall for studying dialectical materialism is quite an interesting image. >I imagine it would make Marx roll over in his grave.Here's a Chinese sketch comedy about a Church of Atheism. Doesn't have English subs (there used to be a version but I think it was deleted), but a guy comes across the church praying to the sky, and he's like what are you doing there's nothing up there. The atheists say, "exactly, it's a miracle, that's why we're the Church of Atheism." The guy is like huh, that makes sense, okay let me join your church. And they take him to a temple where they pray to scientists and sing hymns to the periodic table of elements. Later on, there are people getting married at the Church of Atheism and the priest is like "alright that's enough, here's a civil servant to stamp your marriage certificate," another guy confesses to molesting his little sister, and the priest is like "why are you telling me? That's a job for the police."
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