Lenin on atheism, materialism & popular education (2)

I had not intended to delve into this subject, but now that I have started it, I must add another key article by V.I. Lenin: "On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (12 March 1922), in Lenin’s Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), Volume 33, 1972, pp. 227-236. First published in Pod Znamenem Marksizma, No. 3, March 1922. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

In this article Lenin dwells on the need for atheist literature, inter alia recommending the lively writings of the 18th century Enlightenment for purposes of popularization. While this literature is outdated in certain respects, it can easily be updated and supplemented and still compares favorably with less exemplary contemporary writings, whether they be dull, content-poor specimens of atheist literature or the deceptions of liberal wafflers pushing their own brand of religiosity or purporting to avoid "extreme positions". It is also vital to combat the misuse of new scientific theories (Einstein's relativity at the time of writing) for new forms of mystical-idealist obscurantism. Lenin also proposes an alliance of scientists and (dialectical) materialist philosophers to address the need for philosophical clarification of innovations in scientific knowledge, ideally a sort of “Society of Materialist Friends of Hegelian Dialectics”.

Lenin on God-concepts, liberalized religion, & political orientation

Even with the near-instantaneous accessibility of information thanks to the digitization of information, finding a specific piece of information you know exists can be time-consuming. In this case, there are two factors involved: (1) inaccuracy in memories of information acquired decades ago, (2) variations in translations from foreign languages. Hence it took me a long time to track down the source of a quote in this letter:

V. I. Lenin to Maxim Gorky, written on November 13 or 14, 1913 [translated by Andrew Rothstein], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), Volume 35, pp. 121-124 [#55]. First published in Pravda No. 51, March 2, 1924. Sent from Cracow to Capri. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

Here Lenin reads Gorky the riot act for indulgence of the "god-building" tendency among the Russian intelligentsia. Here is the key phrase, in this translation:

Just because any religious idea, any idea of any god at all, any flirtation even with a god, is the most inexpressible foulness, particularly tolerantly (and often even favourably) accepted by the democratic bourgeoisie—for that very reason it is the most dangerous foulness, the most shameful “infection”. A million physical sins, dirty tricks, acts of violence and infections are much more easily discovered by the crowd, and therefore are much less dangerous, than the nubile, spiritual idea of god, dressed up in the most attractive “ideological” costumes.

The force of the first sentence is diluted by the choice of words. As it turns out, this phrase is quoted constantly by right-wing Christians, translated thusly (source of translation unknown):

Every religious idea, every idea of god, every flirtation with the idea of God is unutterable vileness. . . . vileness of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions . . . are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of a God . . .

Usually the quote cuts off at the first ellipsis. Now isn't this a much more forceful translation?

The full argument should be read. The gist is that the insinuation of watered-down, feelgood notions of God are much more subtly insidious than the gross abuses perpetrated by religionists.

Lenin elaborates his thinking in a subsequent letter:

V. I. Lenin to Maxim Gorky, written in the second half of November 1913 [translated by Andrew Rothstein], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), Volume 35, pp. 127-129 [#58]. First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany I. Sent from Cracow to Capri. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

On the masking effects of liberalized religion:

Like the Christian socialists (the worst variety of “socialism”, and its worst distortion), yon make use of a method which (despite your best intentions) repeals the hocus-pocus of the priests: you eliminate from the idea of God everything about it that is historical and drawn from real life (filth, prejudices, sanctified ignorance and degradation, on the one hand, serfdom and monarchy, on the other), and instead of the reality of history and life (here is substituted in the idea of God a gentle petty-bourgeois phrase (God=“ideas which awaken and organise social feelings”).

Your wish in so doing is to say something “good and kind”, to point out “truth and justice” and the like. But your good wish remains your personal affair, a subjective “innocent desire”. Once you have written it down, it goes out among the masses, and its significance is determined not by your good wishes, but by the relationship of social forces, the objective relationship of classes.

Lenin goes on to clarify why. . .

Your entire definition is reactionary and bourgeois, through and through. God=the complex of ideas which “awaken and organise social feelings, having as their object to link the individual with society and to bridle zoological individualism.

As for the political handling of religion, this may be Lenin's most important statement:

"The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion" [translated by Andrew Rothstein and Bernard Issacs], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), Volume 15, pp. 402-413. From Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909. (Also available on the From Marx to Mao site.)

Lenin's dialectical position rejects both the doctrinaire anti-religious politics of anarchists and the waffling timorousness of liberals:

To people with a slapdash attitude towards Marxism, to people who cannot or will not think, this history is a skein of meaningless Marxist contradictions and waverings, a hodge-podge of “consistent” atheism and “sops” to religion, “unprincipled” wavering between a r-r-revolutionary war on God and a cowardly desire to “play up to” religious workers, a fear of scaring them away, etc., etc.

Furthermore:

. . . We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion.

Critics who see Marxist policy as inconsistent on the question of anti-religious agitation fail to see:

The contradiction which perplexes these objectors is a real contradiction in real life, i. e., a dialectical contradiction, and not a verbal or invented one. To draw a hard-and-fast line between the theoretical propaganda of atheism, i. e., the destruction of religious beliefs among certain sections of the proletariat, and the success, the progress and the conditions of the class struggle of these sections, is to reason undialectically, to transform a shifting and relative boundary into an absolute boundary; it is forcibly to disconnect what is indissolubly connected in real life.

As for the (in)appropriateness of religious expressions:

Another example. Should members of the Social-Democratic Party be censured all alike under all circumstances for declaring “socialism is my religion”, and for advocating views in keeping with this declaration? No! The deviation from Marxism (and consequently from socialism) is here indisputable; but the significance of the deviation, its relative importance, so to speak, may vary with circumstances. It is one thing when an agitator or a person addressing the workers speaks in this way in order to make himself better understood, as an introduction to his subject, in order to present his views more vividly in terms to which the backward masses are most accustomed. It is another thing when a writer begins to preach “god-building”, or god-building socialism (in the spirit, for example, of our Lunacharsky and Co.). While in the first case censure would be mere carping, or even inappropriate restriction of the freedom of the agitator, of his freedom in choosing “pedagogical” methods, in the second case party censure is necessary and essential. For some the statement “socialism is a religion” is a form of transition from religion to socialism; for others, it is a form of transition from socialism to religion.

As for the policy of party (which was a voluntary association before the revolution) and state on religion:

The party of the proletariat demands that the state should declare religion a private matter, but does not regard the fight against the opium of the people, the fight against religious superstitions, etc., as a “private matter”.

All the aforementioned writings originated prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Once the Bolsheviks fight the brutal civil war and retain command of the state, there is a whole new set of circumstances to evaluate historically. Here is a key statement on communist ethics from the Soviet Union's earliest years:

"The Tasks of the Youth Leagues", Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young Communist League, in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), Vol. 31, pp. 283-99. Speech written and.or delivered on October 2, 1920, published in Pravda, Nos. 221, 222 and 223, October 5, 6 and 7, 1920. (Also available on the From Marx to Mao site.)

Lenin asserts that communists do indeed have an ethics, in spite of accusations to the contrary. To wit:

In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality?

In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics on God's commandments. On this point we, of course, say that we do not believe in God, and that we know perfectly well that the clergy, the landowners and the bourgeoisie invoked the name of God so as to further their own interests as exploiters. Or, instead of basing ethics on the commandments of morality, on the commandments of God, they based it on idealist or semi-idealist phrases, which always amounted to something very similar to God's commandments.

We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class concepts. We say that this is deception, dupery, stultification of the workers and peasants in the interests of the landowners and capitalists.

We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat's class struggle. Our morality stems from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.

The old society was based on the oppression of all the workers and peasants by the landowners and capitalists. We had to destroy all that, and overthrow them but to do that we had to create unity. That is something that God cannot create.

This notion of morality has been contested in light of the subsequent history of the Soviet Union and other regimes citing Marxism-Leninism as their authority. Nonetheless, there is much good sense in Lenin's philosophical viewpoint that remains worth considering, though today's circumstances and politics are fundamentally quite different.

Langston Hughes: Goodbye Christ, Hello Persecution

Langston Hughes caught a lot of grief for his poem "Goodbye Christ", written in 1932 during Hughes' most radical period. Subject to censorship by others and by Hughes, this poem can now be found all over the Internet, along with commentary by people who defend it and attack it, or defend it with qualifications (Christians who lament the exploitation of Christianity).

A good place to start is The Successful Censorship of Langston Hughes’s Poem “Goodbye Christ” by Joshua B. Good (Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007). Here you will find the text of the poem along with a history of the consequences of publishing it, including being banned, censored, hounded, subject to government surveillance, and being treated as a subversive. The poem excoriates the gamut of obscurantists from huckster preachers to popes to robber barons, and sends corrupted Christianity on its way, because it's now revolution time. Hughes was ultimately forced to back down to people and forces he attacked, e.g. powerful megachurch leader Aimee Semple McPherson. The FBI got on his case and surreptitiously worked to undermine his career. In 1953, during the McCarthy era, Hughes was hauled before HUAC, and took the trouble to explain his poem as a reaction against the abuse of Christianity, insisting that it was not anti-religious and denying he was an atheist. Hughes was forced to downplay his poem and mute re-publication in order to stay on the good side of his patron and others.

Ronald Bruce Meyer also contextualizes the poem, with some additional information and excerpts from Hughes' other mentions of religion. See also Hughes’ "Goodbye, Christ”: Controversy and Communism. Cited here is the important anthology you should seek out, Faith Berry’s Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writing of Langston Hughes. Red Flags reproduces the poem and notes its omission from Hughes anthologies.

See the web page On "Goodbye Christ" for brief passages on this poem by Christopher C. DeSantis, Faith Berry, and James A. Emanuel.

As for Christians' online reactions to the poem, here are a couple specimens. Adult Christianity's Poppy Dixon defends Hughes for indicting the hypocrisy of professed Christians. An airhead by the name of John Piper proclaims The Tragedy of Langston Hughes and a Warning I Will Heed, claiming this to be Hughes' "most lamentable" poem and a tragic "loss of this talent to the service of Christ." But don't despair, Piper is praying.

Last but least, let's not forget right-wing reactions, which continue to the present day. For example, note these specimens of the red-baiting of presidential candidate John Kerry for adopting a slogan from Hughes, "Let America be America again": John Kerry's Stalinist Campaign Slogan, These Last Days Ministries, and the late right-wing archvillain, William F. Buckley.

Don't you just love white Christian America?

Religion, economic insecurity & social inequality

Very interesting commentary and interchange on the Pharyngula blog:

The trends, IF they continue, are in our favor

Commentators debate the causes of the differences in religiosity between Americans and West Europeans and the correlation because economic security, social equlity, and the decline of religion. Even the name of Karl Marx is brought up, though he is anathema in the USA and perhaps in other parts of the English-speaking world as well.

George Eliot, novelist, translator, nonbeliever

George Eliot may be most famous for her novels, but I think of her as the translator of Ludwig Feuerbach's epochal The Essence of Christianity.

Here is a summary of her life and work:

Frome, Susan. "The Sage of Unbelief: George Eliot and Unorthodox Choices," The Philosopher, Volume LXXXXIIII, No. 1.

Sherwin Wine: Laughter not worship

From a CD of podcast highlights of the Humanist Network News I acquired at the World Humanist Congress last week:

Rabbi Sherwin Wine on humanism and spirituality:

"One of the things that you do in the celebration of humanism is you talk about the human condition, and what we all know is that the human condition is absurd. . . You celebrate the absurdity of the human condition. So . . . people often ask me, what's your substitute for worshipping God—you worship people. Never. Never! And the alternative to worship for me has always been something I treasure; it's laughter."

You can't beat Jewish humor for perspective! The official podcast of the American Humanist Association can be located at HumanistStudies.org/podcast or AmericanHumanist.org/podcast.

Martin Luther King, Jr. as secular humanist

Jeff Nall,
“Remembering the Humanism of Martin Luther King.”
Toward Freedom, July 12, 2005. Feature article (alternative version of Humanist piece);
Reprint: Theocracy Alert, Online Journal, July 16, 2005.

Those invoking the name of MLK in the cause of left/liberal theocracy had better reconsider.

Another source with some information on MLK and the religious issue in the civil rights movement (including defamation of secular Jews) is:

Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.

On the role of existentialism in black thought and the civil rights movement, see:

Cotkin, George. Existential America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

For further background, see:

Allen, Norm R., Jr. “Religion and the New African American Intellectuals,” Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 9, no. 2 (1996), pp. 159-87.