I'm not a strict dialectical materialist. I do believe in God. I do believe in spiritual power. I've seen it evidenced in my own life. I am not a strict Marxist materialist. That said, I do believe that the dialectic and struggle is a big part of human history ie the Hegelian dialectic.
I do believe in in religious things. The head of the Russian Communist party is an Orthodox Christian Fidel Castro accepted Christ in his final years. He wrote that he was a Christian. Fidel Castro in his biography said that he was a Christian. His world view was rooted in Christianity. He wasn't for most of his career and brutally persecuted Christians at one point in his life in the 70s 60s and 70s. But so did the Apostle Paul who killed many Christians but then changed his mind. Fidel Castro in the 1990s had a religious conversion. He welcomed the Pope to Cuba and also met with uh Russian Orthodox clergy. He started quoting the Bible. Cuba has really changed in regards to religion. There's still a lot of Atheism in Cuba but Fidel Castro became religious.
In the Arab world Islam and socialism walk hand in hand. There are secular movements. Gaddafi in Libya was considered a secular leader but his socialism was Islamic socialism put forward in the Green Book by Gaddafi.
Islamic socialism is Baathist Arab Socialism in Syria and in Iraq. It was a secular movement that allowed for religious freedom, believed in a secular state and considers Islam to be part of the genius of Arabs. It argues that Islam has a special place the Syrian Constitution and says that even though it is a secular state, it gives a special a special emphasis on on Sunni Islam as being a guide for Syrian Baathist Arab Socialism.
Iran is not a socialist society. They say they are neither socialist nor capitalist and have an Islamic system. They call it not capitalism but Islam but have state central planning. An overwhelming majority of the economy is state-run. They have central planning. The biggest economic entity in the country is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. The government itself, the Islamic Revolutionary government considers itself to be part of the wave of anti-colonial revolutions that came after World War 2. They have big pictures of Malcolm X and Che Guevara. Anti-imperialism is a big part of their identity.
In Iran they don't call themselves Marxists at all but their anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism is very Islamic and religious.
China is a little bit of a different situation because China didn't have a unified religion for all of China. China wasn't a Catholic country, it wasn't a Muslim country. China had a lot of different local regional practices - Taoism, ancestor worship, what people might call animism. There were different regional practices and there was the Confucian philosophy and theory of the state, but China did not have a unified religion at the time of the revolution. China has really improved its relationship with religious people and there's a Chinese Association of religions that is sympathetic to the Communist party, so it's complicated.
Classical pure Marxism that says there is no God that says pure 100% dialectical materialism is not going to return.
In the 70s and 80s things were starting to change with Baathism with the Islamic revolution of Iran, with liberation theology in Latin America. These countries that were breaking free from feudalism. They had to just wipe the slate clean, smash the old institutions associated with feudalism. but we have gotten past that stage. The world is constantly changing and this destructive vandal energy that was a big part of the anti-religious side of Communism is now primarily coming out of Western capitalism, Facebook and Twitter - that's the color Revolution apparatus, that's George Soros. They're not trying to spread communism all over the world, they're not trying to tear things down and spread chaos. They're trying to do the opposite, they're trying to have stability in the face of the global market.
One book that really changed my life - a really good book that I read that is not a Marxist book is called on Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlisle. Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish intellectual. He wrote this very good book about what is a hero what what is he what is what are the heroic in history. He talks about why so many prophets throughout the ancient world smash idols, why the prophet Isaiah smashes the idols and the prophet Jeremiah smashes the idols. Moses comes down from the mountain and he sees the people bowing before the Golden Calf. He smashes the Golden Calf. The prophet Muhammad comes to the temple in Mecca and smashes the idols.
Why is Idol smashing such a big part of what prophets do? Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple. He walked into the Temple of Jerusalem and turns over the tables. Why is it that prophets are always going around smashing idols? What does this mean?
These people were bowing before idols or fetishise these statues they thought they were God. That's stupid because they were worshiping inanimate objects. You're not supposed to do that and so they were saying don't do that. Worship the real God. Don't worship this inanimate object and that is the standard interpretation. Thomas Carlyle points out that there's a flaw in that. Do we really think that human beings were stupid enough to just go "Oh, I'm going to cut a piece of wood and it's God. Oh, I'm gonna cut a piece of stone and it's God, I just made it. You know you can make a god in your backyard, you can make a god in your garage."
Were people really that stupid? Some people might have been, but I don't think most people were actually that stupid that they believed that they could could carve them up a god. "Oh, got a
free day. Here, let's carve us up a god and put it in the backyard."
I don't think people are that stupid. That's kind of a colonial attitude people assume "Oh, these people in Africa, they worship statues, how stupid is that?"
If you look at what idols fetishise graven images, they are not in and of themselves meant to be god. They are an item, a ritual item that is created by human beings as a symbol that is used in a ritual. The reason they're bowing for is they're bowing to a real god, but they built an altar. They built it like a statue. It's a prop.
So why are the prophets always going around smashing the props? Moses and the Children of Israel did not literally believe that the Golden Calf was God. The ancient Arabs didn't think that those statues in Mecca were gods. They originally built these statues to stand for a principle, to stand for a truth, but the people had forgotten that truth, and they had fallen into a routine. Those statues had originally been erected and created in order to point to certain truths and certain true spiritual power that exists and they were meant to be a symbol of that true spiritual power. But what happened is that the people forgot the truth that the idol or the statue stood for so the prophet Isaiah, Moses and Muhammad the prophet come to Earth to sweep away the idols in order to reconnect mankind with the truth that the idol once stood for that is what it means and that's what Thomas Carlyle points out in his writing that the idol represents routinism. It represents passionless cold belief going through the motions of believing things and not knowing why you believe them or why they are true. That's what the idol represents and the prophet is one who comes to the Earth filled with the spirit of God, filled with passion, filled with truth and energy and so Isaiah shows up and he smashes the idols and reconnects connects the Children of Israel Israel with the true God. Moses shows up and he smashes the Golden Calf and he says "Thou shall make no golden images or graven images. I've got the Ten Commandments here. We're going to follow the true God that I just encountered up on the mount."
The prophet Muhammad he and his followers they went to the temple at Mecca and they smashed the idols and the prophet Muhammad saw that as such an important moment that he wore a piece of one of the idols on his ring. When I heard that story about why Shia Muslim men wear a ring like this, I thought I have to get a ring like this.
I identify with that tradition the idol smashing and returning of passion to the earth. I identify with that so much.
The Chinese Revolution also started with the smashing of idols. Dr Sun Yat-sen the father of the Chinese great Revival the founder of the Chinese Republic Dr Sun Yat-sen his first revolutionary
act. In China they humiliated peasants. Peasants had to go make sacrifices and bow before idols. The local landlord would set up an idol and make the peasants bow and burn some of their crops and do this humiliating ritual for the idols. So Dr Sun Yat-sen, a young man in his early twenties from a wealthier background - not a poor man - went to a temple one day and he saw a bunch of peasants having to bow before a graven image - an idol - and Dr Sun Yat-sen the father of the Chinese Revolution, the father of Chinese Communists - what did Dr Sun Yat-sen do? He flew into a rage and ran to the front of the room and smashed the idols. Dr Sun Yat-sen was an idol smasher. Smashers of idols are those who restore truth and passion and tear down arbitrary authority, tear down routine, tear down pointless oppression, y tear down meaningless hierarchies and rituals, and restore truth and passion to the Earth so they carry with them the spirit of God."
The reason that this is related to Communism is because I think that in all the countries where Communists took power, the church had become an idol. The church had become routinist and it had to be swept away. Those idols had to be smashed so that the truth could reassert itself. Communists had to go to sweep away the old to clear for the new. This oppressive church that's tied in with feudalism that's corrupt had to be swept away by an atheistic Communist Revolution to make room for the true spirit of God to return. You have to smash the idols before the true God can return.
So the Communists played a powerful spiritual role even though they were atheistic. Even though they rejected all spirituality, they were clearing the way for the principles and the truth that the idols once stood for. If you have feudalism in Europe and peasants being oppressed in the name of the Catholic church and kings who claim that God put them on the throne because they have divine right, you can't have people become genuine Christian revolutionaries. So that had to be swept away. The Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution - these things were necessary to sweep away the idols and return the passion to the Earth. That's what I believe. When the message of God becomes corrupted, it is necessary for the corruption of God's image to be swept away so the truth can return. That may be deeply offensive to people of different countries and I'm not here to judge. Religion is a personal private matter and I respect everyone's views but that's what I believe and that's why the Communists had to come and smash the idols so that the truth could return.
No comments:
Post a Comment