>>799796This is called atheism, not communism, retard.>1. Sacred Texts and InfallibilityMarx's "Das Kapital," the "Communist Manifesto," and Lenin's works are the Bible. They are cited as authority, interpreted, and "correctly interpreted."
Deviations (revisionism, Trotskyism, "Eurocommunism") are declared heresies. As in the church: the Inquisition = purges, the Gulag, the cultural revolution.
>2. Prophets and SaintsMarx and Engels are the founding fathers.
Lenin is a prophet and messiah (a mummy in a mausoleum, like the relics of a saint).
Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara are saints/martyrs with icons and portraits in every home and parade.
The cult of personality is a direct analogue to the veneration of saints or leaders in theocracies.
>3. Original Sin, Salvation, and ParadiseOriginal sin is private property and exploitation (class struggle as an eternal battle between good and evil).
Redemption is the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Paradise is a classless, stateless communist society, where "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," work is joy, and alienation disappears. This is millenarianism (the thousand-year kingdom), typical of many sects.
Marx directly borrowed Christian motifs (via Hegel and the utopians), but "inverted" them into materialism.
>4. Rituals and SymbolismRed flags, the hammer and sickle, anthems (the "Internationale"), parades, and May Day demonstrations.
Pioneers and the Komsomol are the initiation and education of the "new man." A mausoleum, an eternal flame, mass processions—liturgy.
>5. Faith in Contrary to FactsReligion rests on faith, not evidence. Despite tens of millions of victims, famines, economic failures, and the collapse of the USSR, true believers say, "That wasn't real communism" (just as they say "not true faith" after the church scandals). Marx's predictions of inevitable revolution in developed countries didn't come true—but the doctrine lives on.
>6. Philosophical ConfirmationsNikolai Berdyaev: Communism is "Russian religiosity inside out," a secularized Orthodoxy with a messianic calling for the proletariat instead of God's chosen people.
Reinhold Niebuhr and others: "Communism is a religion of mixed ethical values."
Many note that atheistic communism aggressively displaced traditional religions precisely as a competitor—because it itself claimed the same totality of explanation for the world, history, and the meaning of life.