On delusion bashing
by classless, 3 December 2007
Sorry to interrupt the party, but I tend to feel uncomfortable with the way religion is debated here. The fashionable point, that seems to be shared by most of my fellow popinjays, starts and ends with the statement that God is a mere delusion, as Richard Dawkins tells in his bestseller that even in Germany occupies the number one in any book sales charts.
This atheist attitude falls back to bourgeois idealist positions, heavily attacked by Marx, as Marxmyths.org thankworthily summarizes:
Marx states in the 1844 Manuscripts that he is not an atheist; for Marx, to positively assert that God does not exist is childish. “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. … The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.” Likewise, political economy cannot be abolished other than by abolishing the world of which it is the “aroma.”
To join in with the choir of neocons and liberals who consider religion to be outdated and somewhat inefficient, does not seem to be appropriate for an ideologiekritisch approach. It means to support those who denounce one special form of the belief in the “reified nothing” (Manfred Dahlmann) while they keep worshipping the “market reason”, while they keep sacrificing for it and while they keep assessing - as probably everybody else - the worth of things and people by their anticipated market price.
All these forms of belief and ritual have to continue as long as humans are subjugated to the capital relation, as long as they all perform the market exchange and the synthetic thinking intrinsically tied to it. In this sense, God exists as much as the exchange value exists, as much as the inertia principle is real, as much as infinitesimal is zero, as much as bar is needed to make rhythmic music, and so forth.
These things are real because all of us do need these assumptions to match our social life with economic realities. It is not a delusion that there is a huge gap between moral self-depiction and everyday hunt for the bigger piece of the cake. To criticize how people comfort themselves in this dilemma, is totally necessary, to make fun of some of the forms in which people fill this gap, however, is cheap.
The question how we come from this “state of affairs” (Baldrick, The Black Adder) to the other state of affairs in which the capital relation will be sublated, is not yet answered, so it might be better not to always ridicule every expression of the current state of affairs. Even though I admit it’s fun at times.
Monday 3 December 2007 at 18:44
Yes, the anti-religionists have rather cherry-picked their data recently. It comes from looking at history back-to-front, tracing in hindsight from our own exalted era, rather than following history forward in time, as it actually happened. Such a small difference, but so packed with significance! Such reversal of perspective allows one to pick out the bits that fit one’s narrative.
Monday 3 December 2007 at 19:44
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3395
Monday 3 December 2007 at 20:02
Village Idiot: from your own site…
CS Lewis, who had the slight advantage of having actually studied the entirety of philosophy and literature of Europe covering a thousand-year period and more, usually in the original languages, rejected this view entirely. Over time, he has cured me of it as well.
We lack a picture of how primitive Europe was before the arrival of Christianity. Justice meant not law and rights, but only revenge… There was no reading and writing, save Ogham and scraps of runes. Even these reached their height only after the introduction of learning by the Church
All agricultural advances in Europe came out of the network of monasteries sharing information. All. This devotion to improvement was intentional on the part of the monks, who studied stockbreeding, machinery, soil & fertilization, irrigation, preservation - all the arts of farming.
This will surprise anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the Roman Republic and Empire.
Monday 3 December 2007 at 20:16
@Mustafa
If I understand the linked text correctly, I’d agree with most of it.
But if the sublation of the capital relation is referred to as “the abolition of the earthly chaos”, I am fundamentally opposed.
Monday 3 December 2007 at 22:26
Religion is not an expression of the current state of affairs, it is an expression of how to transition to the next. An unproven belief on how to achieve a better state of affairs.
The capital relation is only as synthetic as it’s base of “everybody else” making independent choices in value. To dismiss this requires belief that there is a higher purpose of operation superior to independent human choice, the common basis of religious belief is that fairness and happiness for all is achievable.
Riducle is not for “fun”, it is to criticise the 99.99999% of religions that would have us move from this state of affairs to another state of affairs in which the capital relation will be sublated in favor of something worse. It is fun to ridicule when a religion (or other such overarching social reconstruction) portrays itself as the most natural state, but requires the forced restriction of human freedoms. Fun, because it is easy to find the inherent flaw - “do what the religoin tells you to/it is the natural thing to do”.
Monday 3 December 2007 at 22:36
Hm, somehow I find things funnier when it is not so easy to find the flaw. For example, in our commodity fetishism. Good jokes about that - that’d be something!
Tuesday 4 December 2007 at 5:26
Nevermind God. God is a delusion. But “to join in with the choir of neocons and liberals who consider religion to be outdated and somewhat inefficient” isn’t something I’ve noticed around here. Rather more sensible things are said here about religion than commentary viz. its efficiency or contemporary usefulness, I’ve noticed, plus great fun and piss-taking about it.
“All these forms of belief and ritual have to continue as long as humans are subjugated to the capital relation. . .” and they will continue beyond that, if you chuck “ritual” in with “forms of belief” in that way. We’ve been pushing flowers at one another since the Neanderthals, at times of babies being born and grandpappies dying and so on, and this is not something worth getting overwrought about. Not rational. Neither is jazz. So what?
There really are “harmless devotions” people persist in, and we shouldn’t pay insufficient notice of the distinction between the content and function of “religion” in the lives of most ordinary people. Tradition’s the thing, and I suspect that belief, for lots of people, has nothing to do with the comfort of regularly repairing to a grand old place on cold mornings with stained glass and all those nice old Filipino ladies, or the gurudwara, and langar, free food, and good company. Attend weekly, take in a bit of the singsong, and as long as the clergyman shuts his big yapper, no harm done.
God is not only a delusion, but for many if not most “religious” people, the delusion is utterly irrelevant to the role religion plays in their lives.
Betcha.
Tuesday 4 December 2007 at 9:58
To join in with the choir of neocons and liberals who consider religion to be outdated and somewhat inefficient, does not seem to be appropriate for an ideologiekritisch approach. It means to support those who denounce one special form of the belief in the “reified nothing” (Manfred Dahlmann) while they keep worshipping the “market reason”, while they keep sacrificing for it and while they keep assessing - as probably everybody else - the worth of things and people by their anticipated market price.
Excluded middle. It is possible to oppose both God and Marketism as coercive delusional bogosity. Their claims are false and their effects harmful. A cultural studies lecturer view of the world in which things are real if other people believe them hard enough is not the basis for any sort of critique. And it is certainly not a basis for declaring a class of social phenomena beyond critique.
Am I missing a layer of irony here?
Tuesday 4 December 2007 at 10:05
Hmmm - I find myself agreeing with the spirit of what you’re saying in that I don’t particularly care for the Dawkins approach either. Yet I can’t agree with the reasons you give. The Marxist-Leninist analysis of religion, specifically Christianity, as a function of the capital relation is simply wrong. Lenin in particular got himself into a bit of a mess trying to demonstrate the social origins of Christianity - and I think most scholars would agree today that his understanding of the social origins was, in any event, historically inaccurate.
Tuesday 4 December 2007 at 10:36
@Shuggy
I don’t seem to be as precise as I’d like to be. I am not saying any ritual or any religion is based on the capital relation, I was trying to define conditions: Those forms of religion and ritual based on the capital relation will only disappear with it, if at all.
Then again, Lenin and even more his comrades seemed to reduce Religionskritik to atheism.
@dirigible
The assumption of real abstraction, that is, of a materialization of social relations f.e. in money and cult, has nothing to do with defining reality by some sort of perception consensus. It is just taking those social realities serious, I’d say.