Communism
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[edit] Communism and religion
Karl Marx famously said that religion was "the opiate of the people". Or, in full:
Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. 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. 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. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. 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. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Of course, this is simply Marx's beliefs, and thus religious socialism still exists, as the system of communism is not opposed to religion in any way. Marx does not advocate the banning of religion, and instead says that it is simply a way to cope, and a way to see something bright at the end of the tunnel when one is faced with the injustices of feudal and capitalist society, and says that the criticism of religion is thus the criticism of the conditions that breed it. Saying that this means that communism includes the banning of religion is like saying that if Marx disliked broccoli, communism includes the banning of broccoli.
As for the phrase itself, opium in Marx's time was an important painkiller, a source of extraordinary visions for 'opium eaters', the cause of important conflicts such as the Opium Wars, and also used by parents to keep their children quiet. It is likely that Marx was alluding to all of these.
[edit] What Communism "actually is"
Be careful reading this, because just the simple fact of knowing what actual communism is is treason in the United States of America. And "godlessness" is really only a very small part of it.
First, we must mention Karl Marx and the idea that human society develops in from primitive communism to feudalism, and then, after feudalism ceases to be productive, to capitalism. As capitalism has an inherent tendency to go into crisis, the workers would eventually get pissed off and revolt. This would lead to socialism, a classless and stateless society, with the state being defined as a tool of class rule; the Communist Manifesto[1] was his statement of purpose. Vladmir Lenin, leading the Russian Revolution, took that idea to heart (even though Marx hadn't thought too highly of the chances of revolution from a feudalistic society. Stricly speaking countries such as Russia have not succeeded with a pure socialist revolution as, when defined by Marx, it must be proceeded by a capitalist society which is then overthrown) and declared open class warfare on the bourgeoisie, in an attempt to create a workers' paradise. Lenin jumped the gun by leading a communist revolution with a small group of intellectuals without waiting for a significant working class to develop, trying to jump start a socialist state by skipping an entire step in the process Marx had described. This would become know as Leninism, a sort of backwards Marxism, in which a small group of enlightened leaders, known as a vanguard, took over the state first, and industry and a large working class were developed afterwards. In Leninism, the initial leaders of the revolution were to be caretakers of the communist state until the workers caught up and society could be transformed into the "workers' paradise."
It is true that Lenin's ideas (especially applying planned economy principles to agriculture) didn't really work, but though some reforms were suggested, Lenin died before they could be properly implemented, and Stalin took over the Soviet Union and converted a somewhat brutal, bumblingly experimental socialist state into an extremely brutal and repressive autocracy, ruling by fear and paying only lip service to the thoughts of Marx and Lenin. So not only was the great Soviet experiment not working, Stalin stepped in and insured it never would, which was more than enough to carry the crazy red-baiters of the 1920s into the 50s with McCarthyism, throwing the adjective "godless"[2] in just to give it a bit more emotional sting. Of interest is the fact that the US had helped anti-Bolshvik forces during the Russian Civil War, thus inevitably making it even harder for them to rebuild.
[edit] Conservapedia on Communism
They don't even begin to tell you what it is until they're finished telling you how bad it was (see the parody at the beginning of this article). Shows how much they really care about accuracy...
[edit] See also
- Marxism
- Freedom -- The general basis of communism, as the state withers away, and thus hierarchies are abolished, including that of class.
- John Birch Society -- the United States' most prominent anti-Communist organization. (They didn't get the memo.) A common figure of fun, even back then.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ The Communist Manifesto at Project Gutenberg
- ↑ Around this time, the United States adopted the motto "In God we Trust" to differentiate themselves from their nemesistical superpower and empire.
