The communist party USA and religion
What turpitude! The Communist Party USA, through its People’s World electronic daily bulletin is probing itself: “Religion in the evolutionary process: useful or useless?” The author is Dan Margolis, one of the leaders of the party. He says: “For the religion, the answer is simple: people naturally yearn for god. But for scientists, the question is more complex: is that some evolutionary benefit?”
Does he want to please those people who we refer to as the ultra
-religious rightist movements? As if, these groupings have the moral authority to speak on behalf of all Christians in North America. On the contrary, Living in Christ published in 2008 its Bulletin Board where it stated under the title of Human Rights: “60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recognition of the inherent dignity of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. (Novalis, Ottawa, October 2008, p. 178)
(Photo: Catholic Church in Montréal)
-religious rightist movements? As if, these groupings have the moral authority to speak on behalf of all Christians in North America. On the contrary, Living in Christ published in 2008 its Bulletin Board where it stated under the title of Human Rights: “60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recognition of the inherent dignity of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. (Novalis, Ottawa, October 2008, p. 178)(Photo: Catholic Church in Montréal)
By the way, according to Statistics Canada, there are more than 10 millions Catholics in Canada (out of 33 millions inhabitants), most of them live in the French speaking Province of Québec (7,8 millions); of course, the overwhelming majority don’t practice any religion.
While the Catholics are moving to the Left in Canada, the Québec Human Rights League denounces “the Harper government manoeuvres to strangle any dissident voice against its conservative ideology: cutbacks in the financial support for various [people’s] organizations, contempt for democratic institutions and information censorship.”
The crux of the matter
Margolis asks: “Why are we so naturally inclined towards religious thinking? It isn’t possible to rule out Bering's theories (Jesse Bering is a Belfast-based research psychologist); a great deal more study needs to be done. But there are other ideas as well. Some have suggested that religion was a byproduct of human consciousness. We are, as far as we know, the only animals that are able to think about the future and the past – and contemplate them. With that, it’s been argued, questions ar
rive: What happened before? After? And while we’re contemplating, other questions arise: Why does it rain? Why is the tree there?”To this, Karl Marx answered long ago: “It is clear that with every great historical upheaval of social conditions the outlooks and ideas of men, and consequently their religious ideas, are revolutionised. The difference between the present upheaval and all earlier ones lies in the very fact that man has at last found out the secret of this process of historical upheaval and hence, instead of once again exalting this practical, “external”, process in the rapturous form of a new religion, divests himself of all religion.” (Collected Works, Volume 10, International Publishers, New York, 1978, p. 244)
(Photo: Catholic Church after renovation in Québec City)
(Photo: Catholic Church after renovation in Québec City)
Lenin pursued this reflection and wrote: “Does this mean that educational books against religion are harmful or unnecessary? No, nothing of the kind. It means that Social-Democracy’s (communist party, Ed.) atheist propaganda must be subordinated to its basic task – the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters.” (Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Critical Comment on a Reactionary Philosophy, Marxists Internet Archive, tome 14, 1908- http://www.marxists.org/). Lenin adds: “To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e. truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth.” (idem)
Mr. Margolis brought as a conclusion the following comment: “This healthy debate (between People’s World and Bering, Ed.) won’t be settled anytime soon. [...] Any scientific inquiry into why we humans behave and believe [and struggle?!] the way we do can do nothing but help our species progress.” (2010-09-23)
Lenin wrote: “A Marxist must be able to view the concrete situation as a whole, he must always be able to find the boundary between anarchism and opportunism (this boundary is relative, shifting and changeable, but it exists). And he must not succumb either to the abstract, verbal, but in reality empty “revolutionism” of the anarchist, or to the philistinism and opportunism of the petty bourgeois or liberal intellectual, who boggles at the struggle against religion, forgets that is his duty, reconciles himself to belief in God, and is guided not by the interests of the class struggle but by the petty and mean consideration of offending nobody, repelling nobody and scaring nobody – by the sage rule: ‘live and let live’, etc., etc.”
Lenin also recalled, and it will be his last word: “To wit: Engels did this in the form of a statement, which he deliberately underlined, that Social Democrats (communists, Ed.) regard religion as a private matter in relation to the state, but not in relation to themselves, not in relation to Marxism, and not in relation to the workers’ party.
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