Comrade Jesus
by Elizabeth Clements
Not being a member of any left (or right for that matter) political groups, upon being thrown into a large gang of communists, I very quickly realised religious people were treated sceptically, if not incredulously, as if it isn’t possible for someone living in these modern times to still be taken with the fantastical religions of centuries long since passed. Wanting to approach Marxism critically, I was keen to discover whether this persistent obsession with saving religious people from their own ignorance was in fact connected with Marxism itself, or if it was indeed just a by-product of the type of people who, at this stage in history, are willing and happy to label themselves “raging lefties”. Without wanting to be stereotypical, it has to be said that the majority of Marxists tend to be atheists. Is this as a result of studying Marx and co., or does the desire to plunge oneself into extreme left politics arise once you have reconciled yourself to the fact that if there is nothing beyond this life then energies should be directed towards changing this world, not striving for a place in the next? Indeed, Marx himself criticises practically all philosophers when he famously observes that “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Consequently, during the countless energetic exchanges that inevitably followed my socialising with a bunch of atheists, I tried to distinguish if I was debating with John Doe the Atheist, or John Doe the Communist. I often found the two personas to be intimately intertwined.
Seeing as a large percentage of the global working class are in some way religious or have cultural ties to religion, indeed, the laws and frameworks of many societies are based on a religion, it would be pure folly for Marxists to allow their personal beliefs in the non-existence of a god/gods to alienate the very people with whom they aim and strive to be in solidarity. This being the case, should not the argument between atheists and theists be treated as merely academic; the debate no more than a pleasant way to spend an evening in the pub? Marxism and religion should be fundamentally separated from one another in the pursuit of knowledge and social freedom. Religion should be of no more interest to a Marxist than any other quirk of the working class, so long as it doesn’t encroach upon human rights. If communism can bring about a society in which the so-called need for religion is eradicated, then so be it, but that should not be the driving force and motivation for the projects of Marxists.
Religion (and here I can only speak for Christianity) can indeed be considered, to some extent, to be consistent with communism. The new church as described in the book of Acts in the New Testament was indeed a communistic society:
“No-one claimed that any of his possessions were his own, but they shared everything they had … There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostle’s feet, and it was distributed to anybody as he had need.” (Acts 4:32, 34-35)
Christianity was a movement for the oppressed of the time. It was scathingly referred to by Roman enemies as a religion of women and slaves. Indeed, the New Testament teaches that in the Christian religion “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). So, there are consistencies between Marxism and Christianity. There are differences that cannot be overlooked, however, namely that Christianity requires the submission of the consciousness to a power higher than, and outside of, itself, and holds that fundamental freedom is delivered by a supernatural being or Deity, and applies to a life after this one. This is in contention with the Marxist method. However, is it not more appropriate to ask if the two are compatible with each other, especially seeing as it is near impossible to irrefutably prove or disprove the existence of a god, either scientifically or philosophically? The theist will simply maintain their beliefs in the face of the atheist manipulation of the latest scientific evidence to suit his or her argument.
Whatever the motivation for desiring a better society for humankind, be it divine command or humanistic morality, should not the two parties combine efforts to increase the likelihood of achieving the same overall goal? As long as there is always room for democratic voicing of opinion within a Marxist party, as one would hope and expect, then neither the atheist nor the theist can be accused of allowing a personal agenda to taint the Marxist project and thus opening the doors to a “cult of the personality”.
There are some interesting points raised here, which should be responded to appropriately.
1. On the “compatibility” or otherwise of Christian beliefs and Marxist/communist politics – in the first instance, there are certainly elements and precedents described in the Bible, here and there, which point towards a communist society. This is fair enough and a matter of record – however, it also misses the point somewhat. The trouple with religious doctrines is not that they preclude certain political expressions, but that they are almost invariably perfectly good bedfellows with whatever happens to be lying around. We have the Catholic church’s complicity in most of the fascist regimes of the early part of the century…and the Diggers. We have the libidinal, anarchic quasi-commune of the Anabaptists in Reformation Munster…and the status of official religion awarded by the same Roman society that was hitherto perfectly pleased to feed its adherents to lions.
The problem, as I see it, is that the Bible is far too ambiguous, and the body of doctrines deriving therefrom too kaleidoscopically fragmented, for it to serve as a self-suffucient principle in choosing between these different political expressions of religion. If comrade Clements is happy to make a radical/left reading of the Bible and Christian history, then fantastic – but stripping away the layers of distortions and finding the true, perfect essence of the Word is simply an impossible task. (Indeed, the most famous such “distortion” is the New Testament itself, whose entire textual purpose is to completely refashion the Judaic tradition in the very act of “fulfilling” its prophesies.) To my knowledge, the positing of such a ‘pure Christianity’ is axiomatic for all Christian traditions (as is a “pure marxism” for some Marxists) – this is not a problem obviously for non-Christians, but it does mean that we are unlikely to accept a particular reading of the Bible as a ringing endorsement of Christianity as such. For us, Christianity is, if you will, empty, and gets filled up whenever anybody believes it.
2. Finding areas of agreement – why not? It is certainly not a matter of enormous concern how one finds one’s way into a revolutionary movement. If you come via Acts, or if you come via Bakunin, nobody really minds. There are more than enough cultural and material stimuli, and discriminating between them is indeed a matter for the pub.
However, when we talk of “democratic voicing of opinion” in a Marxist party, we must be clear on what this means. It is not simply a matter of being “allowed” to be a Christian, or an Althusserian, or a sado-masochist, without interference. In fact, democracy in a way means the opposite – rather than looking for points of agreement, in democracy we look for points of disagreement, and through a process of comradely but forthright struggle, if not arrive unambiguously at the truth, at least arrive at a basis for effective action. If – say – a Christian communist’s basic theoretical beliefs lead him or her to a specific political position that an orthodox atheist Marxist believes, thanks to his own theoretical axioms, to be erroneous, then there will have to be an argument – and where there is an argument there must be a loser.
James Turley