Towards the Restoration of the Leninist Perspective on Religion

Before we can get into the substance of this paper, it is necessary to establish what exactly the point of the Communist Party is. We fully agree with August Bebel when he stated that “Our primary goal must be to remove bourgeois society from the face of the earth. There’s no divergence of opinion on that point. He who acknowledges another tactic than the one I pointed out, must leave the party.” However, one must not be confused as to what he meant about this. We must not be “Fundamentalist Marxists” who literally interpret everything said, completely devoid of analysis and taking into account the circumstances of every society. When Bebel means we must remove bourgeois society, he means that we must establish communism. Communism must be established in place of Capitalism, not Feudalism nor Slave Society replacing capitalism. One has to remember, in the Manifesto, Marx actually called for the implementation of Bourgeois society where it had not been given! Now, of course this command is outdated and should be ignored, but it is important to remember that when Bebel called for the destruction of bourgeois society, he specifically meant for it to be replaced by communist society. What defines communist society? Well, as Marxists, we insist that society is determined by the mode of production. We are economic determinists, this is a fundamental for a marxist orientation. Thus, the removal of bourgeois society naturally means the destruction of the capitalist mode of production and the replacement of it with the communist one.

This means the destruction of the law of value and to replace it with production for use. Everything a communist party does must be oriented towards this goal. This is the only goal the communist party has, it is not the fight for a better world under capitalism, it is not the fight for bourgeois democracy, it is not the fight for oppressed people. The activity of the communist party, the core principle, the doctrine, is the destruction of the law of value and its replacement with production for use. It may be that a fight for reforms or any other tactic may help the communist party reach this goal, but that is how they should be viewed, hence the fight for reforms, women’s lib, the end of oppression of minorities are not goals in-and-off themselves, they are tactics that will help us abolish the law of value. This is not to say communists do not care about these struggles, but it is to say that these struggles are only important in-so-much as they abolish the law of value. That is all the communist party fights for, all other battles must be connected to this goal, or the communists may not fight them.

With this in mind, one may question how the Communist Party can consider things such as women’s liberation, queer liberation, trans* liberation, and the end of oppression of minorities (be it national, religious or ethnic) so integral to its program and activity. This is simple: in order to establish communism, a society in which everyone works according to their ability, it is required that everyone’s ability is developed to its fullness capability. One may not do this if they are constantly under attack for their color, for their orientation, or for their sex. In order to live life to the fullest, it is necessary that a person is not under attack for these issues – it is therefore necessary that communists destroy this oppression and help liberate these people. Imagine if someone is under constant attack from society, imagine if society constantly says they must do x and not y, even though they are better at y than x, imagine if they are unaccepted by their friends and family – eventually these ideas become internalized and they are unable to work to their fullest (as they experience an amount of self-loathing and are limited to things they may not even be good at); thus their ability is only developed to a certain extent. How the can society function “from each according to [their] ability, to each according to [their] need” (a necessary corollary to production for use)? They cannot.

Having thus established the entire point of the communist party we must wonder why certain marxists have hyperfocused on religion. The insistence of battling and destroying religion is thoroughly anti-marxist. It is idealism at its best. Religion is like any other ideology, and must be viewed as such. To view religion as an abstract ideology that must be combated is just as idealist as religion itself!

The battle between the Communist Party and Religion is only important in so far that religion opposes the tactics necessary to the destruction of the law of value. And it is this part of religion that must be opposed, not religion itself. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels never spoke of the destruction of religion as a goal, but as a symptom. Atheism is as much a symptom of communism as religion is a symptom of class society. Thus, even if some people continue to be religious under communism, this should not be opposed on a communist basis, as it does not relate to the destruction of the law of value.

Do those who advocate the banning of religion, the suppression of it to force an atheist communism to be born, forget that Engels had criticized this idea? “Accusing the would-be ultra revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck’s folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers’ party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion” (Lenin). Or what about Lenin’s condemnation that the “war on religion [as] a political task of the workers’ party [is] just anarchistic phrase-mongering”?

What most likely influences this absurd notion of religion as some extra forces communists have to battle was the bourgeois-atheism of the Eastern Bloc states. It appears since these states claimed to uphold Lenin, otherwise well intentioned people suppose that is what Leninism is. The bourgeois-atheism of the Eastern Bloc had culminated in the regime of Enver Hoxha, who constitutionally banned all religion. The reason this has been done had nothing to do with Leninism. This was an extreme action that bourgeois atheists have taken before. One can look at Robespierre’s banning of religion and wonder if that makes Robespierre a socialist too. The real reason the Hoxhaists had banned religion was a simple one. The hoxhaists had gotten to power in response to Yugoslavia absorbing Albania, Hoxha was a response to this, he and his bunch were the one’s who insisted on Albanian independence when even Stalin was against the concept. It is therefore necessary that Hoxha instill a sense of Albanian nationalism onto the populace, in order to further legitimise his rule. The process of the criminalization of religion had reflected this perfectly. At first, religious minorities were attacked. The minorities had been all wiped out, and Hoxha moved on to killing off islam in his country, to the point of criminalising beards. The hoxhaists were bourgeois-nationalists, who replaced religion with Albanian Nationalism and the Cult of Enver Hoxha. The atheism of Enver Hoxha, and of the so-called “communist” states was not that in line with Leninism, but one in line with bourgeois-nationalism. In stark contrast to the hoxhaists, Lenin has said “We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned.“ But don’t think that this bourgeois-atheism was exclusively Hoxha: it appeared everywhere that nationalism did not triumph.

Thus, we see it necessary to restore what Lenin had laid out in regards to religion. In the marxist analysis, modern day religion is tool of bourgeois class rule, it is used in a way to distract people from the class struggle, to deny them proletarian class consciousness.

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” is sentence known to all. To try and eliminate religion without first eliminating the cause of religion is the pinnacle of bourgeois atheism, and it is a major thing that separates Marxism from Bourgeois Materialism. Marxism is materialism, it is necessarily atheist, but unlike vulgar materialism, marxism takes into account class struggle.

Hence, while being a militant atheist, Lenin can simultaneously state “Engels called [the Blanquists’] vociferous proclamation of war on religion a piece of stupidity, and stated that such a declaration of war was the best way to revive interest in religion and to prevent it from really dying out.” Lenin clearly lays out the best way to combat religion is not to attack religion directly, but to attack the cause of religion, i.e. class society. As Marx said “to call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions” meaning that to command people to give up their religion, without investigating or abolishing the cause of religion, is pure idealism, in that it ignores the class struggle, and thus, such a mentality is to be opposed by the Communist Party.

Lenin had also stated that “Engels no less resolutely condemns Dühring’s pseudo-revolutionary idea that religion should be prohibited in socialist society. To declare such a war on religion, Engels says, is to “out-Bismarck Bismarck”, i. e., to repeat the folly of Bismarck’s struggle against the clericals” meaning that Lenin himself was opposed to the criminalization of religion! How can someone insist they are in the line of Lenin, when they ignore what Lenin had said?
Engels had called for the abolition of the cause of religion, not of the abolition of religion directly. “Engels did this in the form of a statement, which he deliberately underlined, that Social-Democrats 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” in other words, Marxists must be materialists, but the state itself is to view religion as a private matter. The atheism of a marxist is nuanced, a marxist does not see the spreading of atheism their job, or even effective, but instead sees the abolition of the causes of religion, their “primary goal must be to remove bourgeois society from the face of the earth,” not the abolition of religion. The atheism of the marxist is not spread by selling books or giving interviews, or making tweets about how stupid religious minorities are, but is spread via the abolition of capital, that the task of spreading atheism is subordinated to class struggle. In fact, atheist propaganda can be detrimental to class struggle, for instance, one who attacks striking workers for being members of a christian union may think they are spreading marxism and thus are acting in the interest of the proletariat, are actually doing the job of the bourgeois – not for scaring away the workers from marxism by their militant atheism – but by their disregarding of actual class struggle. As Luxemburg has said “The incessant guerrilla warfare waged for the last ten years against the priests is for French middle-class republicans one of the best ways of turning away the attention of the working-class from social questions, and of weakening the class struggle.”

But does this mean that only atheists may join the Communist Party? On the contrary, such a rule would be ineffectual, for instance when Lenin said “if a priest comes to us to take part in our common political work and conscientiously performs Party duties, without opposing the programme of the Party, he may be allowed to join the ranks of the Social-Democrats; for the contradiction between the spirit and principles of our programme and the religious convictions of the priest would in such circumstances be something that concerned him alone, his own private contradiction; and a political organisation cannot put its members through an examination to see if there is no contradiction between their views and the Party programme” he did not call for the priest to renounce the priesthood, and if the priest can join why not the lay person? There is no brain scan for joining the Communist Party! On the other hand, the religious party member may not try to make the party religious, they must be fine with the atheist nature of the communist party, they must of course choose the party over the church when such a conflict occurs. Religion is a tool of the ruling class that is used against the proletariat, an ideology that no fully class conscious worker still has, “but that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development.” To deny a class conscious worker entry into the party on grounds of them being religious is, quite frankly, bullcrap.

In areas where the bourgeois war on religion has not occurred, it is now necessary for the proletariat to fight that battle. The proletariat must abolish the clergy as a class, they must fight for secularism, they must battle the church’s control over society. As Lenin said, “Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.” Communists must declare war on these religions in these regions. “The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned” by attacking the dominant religion, by destroying its politico-economic backings that it receives from the state. This secularism is not an attack on religion, but on the dominant religion. As Luxemburg stated “we demand the abolition of all public privileges which believers enjoy to the disadvantage of unbelievers, and we will assail all efforts attempted by the Church to become a dominating power in the State.” As Luxemburg went on to say, secularism is only achieved “when the clergy shall have been driven from the schools and from the army, and when the property of the religious orders shall have been confiscated.”

Religious discrimination is never to be tolerated however. A worker cannot be denied rights to society based on religion. This is a fundamentally anti-proletarian doctrine, that may never be allowed so much as consideration. Such a thought should be enough to expel a party member permanently. It cannot be stressed how anti-Marxist religious discrimination is. Do they forget when Lenin said “Muslims of Russia…all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the revolution”? When the workers are striking, and the party is refusing to support them for being a christian union, do they forget when Lenin said “it is the duty of a Marxist to place the success of the strike movement above everything else, vigorously to counteract the division of the workers in this struggle into atheists and Christians, vigorously to oppose any such division.”? To even contemplate that workers should face penalties for religious persuasions, or that more class conscious workers should receive benefits is enough to prove one’s anti-marxist nature. This concept should not need explanation, and if it does, you are of no use to the Communists. Lenin has told us “discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.” We communists oppose all discrimination directed towards the proletariat, including religious ones.

However, this recognition of religion being a private affair was fought by Lenin, repeatedly, when it became so opportunist as to say that religion is a private matter in regards to the party. The whole of his thought on this is expressed wonderfully in the sentence that “so far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair.” Religion is just the same as any other ideology, it is one that the party must actively fight. We do not raise secularism to that of a principle. In the ABC’s of Communism, it is said “if the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the anti-semitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out.” Thus, we communists must not force atheism on the masses. Nor is it the job of communists to force atheism on the masses. The job of communists is to abolish the law of value, not to make atheism of the masses.

Communists will have to spread marxist propaganda certainly, and that necessarily means they will spread atheist propaganda. Communists will certainly spread atheism, and we cannot be shy about this. But we must remember that our task is not to spread atheism, and in fact the party will not be used to spread atheism around for the point of propagating atheism (in fact if religion somehow manages to continue under the higher phases of communism, we still shan’t repress it), but our task is to abolish the law of value. We must remember the roots of religion is class society – and thus that religion will persist under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (as it is capitalist) no matter how we may try to eradicate it.

Therefore, we need to adapt to this. We have outlined how minority rights are important to abolishing the law of
value – so we will change these institutions so that they do adapt to women’s, queer, trans, and minority liberation; so they become tools in favor of the proletariat and not the bourgeois (and like the proletariat, they will most likely cease to exist when socialism is established). Some may insist this is not possible – the religious doctrines are against this and religion is a tool of the bourgeoisie!

Again, our hyper anti-theist “comrades” have shown themselves to be as idealistic as the religions the religions they claim to oppose.

Religious doctrine does not wholly determine the attitude of the religion – in fact, many Christian Fundamentalists do things that are diametrically opposed to the Bible! Dogma was written by man, it can be unwritten by man. Those who scoff at religion serving the proletarian interests – do they forget that religion served Aristocratic interests before Bourgeois ones? It is entirely possible to change these religions to better suit our needs. How is this accomplished – by party control of religious institutions. In fact, the party may even create a supra-institution that is formed by the doctrine of all other religions on earth, and change the dogma and doctrine of each religious body they control into this supra-institution, in order to destroy the difference the religious proletariat has with the proletariat of other religions.
We have now a vision of destruction of the revisionist, opportunist and bourgeois outlooks on religion. Surely a five page article cannot undo the damages done in regards to Marxism and Religion – but it is a start. And now we call onwards, comrades, towards the restoration of the Leninist perception of Religion!