Honestly an important example for communism being anti-religious. This idea gets thrown around a lot as if it means communists will oppress you for being a Christian or something, but they don’t mention that there were fucking geomancers and mud idolatry cults taking people’s income to throw in the river to get a blessing and not die from drinking dirty water. This is still a huge issue all around the world, like in India with the Brahmin mafia needing to get cut in on everything that happens in society to just burn some incense and say some words or else everyone will be punished by this god or that god, or the so-called Hyenas in Malawi who are hired to sleep with kids after their first menstruation in order to “cleanse” them, or the Catholic church for, well everything they’ve done. It makes sense that communists would fight these things, and they are religious things, but it doesn’t have to mean that a communist must be anti-religious to fight specific examples of abuse from metaphysical thinking that they see around them.
yeah maybe so, I feel like people were practicing animal husbandry under primitive communism though right? I would assume the first instance of having a class divide socially would have required a religious concept to justify it
That’s not true. Animal husbandry was not meaningfully present in primitive communism until it became the end of it. Agrarian/pastoral society is the foundation of most class society throughout the world, and the traditional Marxist account is that in Europe it produced patriarchy because “estates” of a sort are now in existence and systems wherein women were obliged to only have sex with one man in order to be sure of whose the child was became important for inheritance, and maybe more importantly fields and pastures made having more workers a much more economically valuable thing than in a hunter/gatherer situation, which means that you want more reproduction, which resulted in women being forced to reproduce more and even women being kidnapped from other tribes in order to have more people producing future workers, so now women are a brutally-oppressed underclass ruled by the patriarchs.
Religion existed in primitive communism and throughout human history thereafter and was never the origination of a class divide even if it would go on to be useful for perpetuating class relations (as all ideology is used to perpetuate class relations). We should not be so over-zealously anti-religious that we fall into idealist explanations that blame religion when one of the most basic pitches of this community is that religiosity interferes with materialist analysis. Class divides originate from material conditions, religion supportive of class divides comes after, as the ruling ideology developed by the new ruling class.
communists wouldnt have to be anti-religious if religions didnt immediately start foaming at the mouth and joining the forces of reaction whenever the status quo is even slightly threatened
hey fuckers, why didnt yall join the movement? what’s up with that?
Honestly an important example for communism being anti-religious. This idea gets thrown around a lot as if it means communists will oppress you for being a Christian or something, but they don’t mention that there were fucking geomancers and mud idolatry cults taking people’s income to throw in the river to get a blessing and not die from drinking dirty water. This is still a huge issue all around the world, like in India with the Brahmin mafia needing to get cut in on everything that happens in society to just burn some incense and say some words or else everyone will be punished by this god or that god, or the so-called Hyenas in Malawi who are hired to sleep with kids after their first menstruation in order to “cleanse” them, or the Catholic church for, well everything they’ve done. It makes sense that communists would fight these things, and they are religious things, but it doesn’t have to mean that a communist must be anti-religious to fight specific examples of abuse from metaphysical thinking that they see around them.
I have noticed lots of examples of people using religion to “justify” actions that are right at home with the playbook of a Snake Oil Salesman.
yeah it is quite literally the oldest trick in the book and the origination of class society
I’d argue that animal husbandry was the start, but that’s definitely the origin of the First Estate
yeah maybe so, I feel like people were practicing animal husbandry under primitive communism though right? I would assume the first instance of having a class divide socially would have required a religious concept to justify it
That’s not true. Animal husbandry was not meaningfully present in primitive communism until it became the end of it. Agrarian/pastoral society is the foundation of most class society throughout the world, and the traditional Marxist account is that in Europe it produced patriarchy because “estates” of a sort are now in existence and systems wherein women were obliged to only have sex with one man in order to be sure of whose the child was became important for inheritance, and maybe more importantly fields and pastures made having more workers a much more economically valuable thing than in a hunter/gatherer situation, which means that you want more reproduction, which resulted in women being forced to reproduce more and even women being kidnapped from other tribes in order to have more people producing future workers, so now women are a brutally-oppressed underclass ruled by the patriarchs.
Religion existed in primitive communism and throughout human history thereafter and was never the origination of a class divide even if it would go on to be useful for perpetuating class relations (as all ideology is used to perpetuate class relations). We should not be so over-zealously anti-religious that we fall into idealist explanations that blame religion when one of the most basic pitches of this community is that religiosity interferes with materialist analysis. Class divides originate from material conditions, religion supportive of class divides comes after, as the ruling ideology developed by the new ruling class.
Edit: Engels covers a version of this in Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, and here’s an audiobook that I quickly found, but you can probably find others if you don’t like this one.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
communists wouldnt have to be anti-religious if religions didnt immediately start foaming at the mouth and joining the forces of reaction whenever the status quo is even slightly threatened
hey fuckers, why didnt yall join the movement? what’s up with that?