The SWP and Religion

I have a lot of time for Marx, Engels,Lenin's and other classical Marxists, left views and writings on religion. But they do still have to be contextualized to their own epoch; even so there is much to be learned from them and their literature on the subject.

Applying the format in Lenin's time does not fit exactly with today. I would argue that since the huge anti war movement or the movement for peace (as it became known), the politics in many religiously minded and motivated people took a shift to the left, whether it still stands to this day though I am not sure, but certainly things like Jubilee 2000 and drop the debt campaigns were enthusiastically supported by huge numbers of ordinary church going people, many of whom provided the motor for those campaigns and were visible on the many demonstrations during that time including the massive two million strong anti war demonstration in 2003.

Religion for a time was not about right leaning social democratic middle class and poor oppressed believers in God and followers of the local priest. Things changed, from around 1995 to recently ( it is hard to put an actual date on when the peace movement of that time either died or morphed into something else). There was more dynamism among religious groups as many of these people took to the streets to demonstrate causes of justice and peace. Many people from different walks of life and from the whole spectrum of faiths, felt inspired in those years and the question of religion captured peoples imagination. The left, with its tired old 'religion is the opium of the masses', really had to return once again to the classic texts and re-read some of Marx's most beautiful and courageous prose on the subject.

As hard as this is for materialists to understand, and I am one, I am a materialist, not everything can be answered in the here and now; even if Marx said it can, he had to clear a path for materialism on the back of the period of time that came before the enlightenment. Alongside Marx's criticism of religion and atheism is also beautiful writings on philosophy, and that is where the debate needs to shift to, and it is in the process of doing just that. There doesn't need to be any departure from Marxism but by using Marx's theories and applying them to the situation today in the struggle for socialism, we still find that the basic concept of unity stands, it is all in the fight for socialism, unity of the poor, the oppressed, the workers, men, women, black, white, gay straight, and also the unity of the religious and non religious.

That is not to say there should be cross class alliances, those who generally hold the dominant ideology in religious institutions is the same ideology in any other institutions, it is the ideology by and large of the right and of privileged class. In religious institutions where the main work is moral and spiritual, there are means of enforcing compliance with the overall system of minority rule. For example debate is not encouraged in a formal sense, and people's general confidence in themselves is also not encouraged (something that goes hand in hand with all other institutions we live in).

There used to be a terribly patronizing notion in the SWP, a notion that may have fitted with the Bolsheviks in their time and allow as we must consideration to be given to the fact that the majority in the society in Russia at that time were peasants ( and therefore the influence of religion was more of a stupefying one on peoples mental ability), but really it is a questionable practice for today; that any religious party member needs to be convinced out of their religious belief.

Any convincing one way or the other is perhaps an interesting debate but no-one should take the high ground on it; believers or non believers.

Also, I don't believe it is right for today or for the necessity of unity, to convince someone out of their belief and honestly sometimes the euphoria displayed in SWP meetings on the subject of religion that I have witnessed, comrades ecstatic when someone declares their atheism, it really beggars belief and in fact shows them up to be sect like because of it, because of their shallow understanding of the subject.

Something which I do believe (and hope) has stopped and a more sober approach adopted by now. I will be testing this out at the Marxism 2011 event, and hoping for greater depth and direction than what I have seen on some previous occasions.