Philosophy and Religion, Part 4
Lenin
The philosopher Helena Sheehan records that Christopher Caudwell, whose
work we will look at later on in this series, used a quote from Lenin that
says:
"Communism
becomes a mere empty phrase, a mere facade, and the communist a mere bluffer,
if he has not worked over in his consciousness the whole inheritance of human
knowledge."
Whether this quotation is
genuine or not, Lenin certainly did take philosophy seriously, and worked at it
hard. Through 1908 and into 1909 he wrote and then published an entire book on
philosophy called Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism. The book is belligerently partisan for materialism
as against idealism, in the way that Lenin saw such things at the time.
“Anyone in
the least acquainted with philosophical literature must know that scarcely a
single contemporary professor of philosophy (or of theology) can be found who
is not directly or indirectly engaged in refuting materialism,” says Lenin about his bourgeois opponents (“in lieu of an Introduction”).
Vladimir Ilyich also left his
notebook on philosophy, “Conspectus of Hegel’s book
‘The Science of Logic’”, dated 1914, in which, among other things he,
Lenin, wrote:
“It is
impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first
chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s
Logic. Consequently, half a century later, none of the Marxists understood
Marx!!”
These stances of Lenin’s are
not exactly compatible with each other. Hegel, after all, had always been
denounced, including by Lenin, as an “idealist”.
Lenin was still deliberately
studying philosophy up until the tumultuous events that followed the outbreak
of the Imperialist World War in mid-1914, the resulting split in the communist
movement, the two Russian Revolutions of 1917, and the enormous consequences
that followed all of these events, when Lenin was required to give a lead in
almost every sphere of life. We will ask whether Lenin’s philosophical preparations
for revolution, and those of his peers, were sufficient; we may conclude that
they were not.
We are also looking at
religion, so what we will use for discussion in the first place is a text
concerning Lenin’s approach to religion. Among the “classics” it is Lenin who
provided explicit and direct prescriptions as to how practical, organising,
educating and mobilising communists should deal with the question of religion.
Whether he does so in a completely satisfactory way, or not, can be part of the
discussion.
Lenin cannot be accused of
being sympathetic to religion, as Karl Marx could be, for example, on the
strength of the Introduction
to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right; while Engels appears to
have left the topic alone. Lenin’s feelings about religion can be judged from a
note in “Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism” where Lenin writes “However good your intentions may be, Comrade Lunacharsky, it is not a
smile, but disgust your flirtation with religion provokes.”
Altogether, the amount of
writing by Marx, Engels and Lenin on the subject of religion is remarkably little.
It may amount to as little as a thousandth of one per cent of what they wrote
altogether.
This is not surprising
considering that communism is not about religion and is not at war with
religion or at war with God. Communists are interested in individual people and
in humanity generally. It remains a fact that in most countries, including
South Africa, the majority of people, including workers, are, if not strictly
religious, brought up within the fold of religion from one generation to
another. So even if the communist theoretical legacy around the question of
religion is very small, yet it is important. A theory of how to deal with
religion will be helpful to communist cadres today.
Lenin’s “Attitude of Worker's
Party to Religion” (linked below) attacks the question. Let us quarrel with
Lenin, for once in our lives.
He writes: “It is the absolute duty of Social-Democrats
to make a public statement of their attitude towards religion.” Is it? Why
is it?
Lenin writes: “The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx
and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism… a materialism which
is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion.”
In truth, neither Marx nor
Engels ever used the phrase “dialectical materialism”, as we will show later on
in this series. Nor is our materialism the opposite of religion, in the way
that Lenin puts it here. Ours is only to say that the counterpart to the human
Subject is the real, objective universe. This is not an anti-religious
statement, or an anti-religious materialism. It is humanism, and humanism is
not necessarily atheism.
“Religion is the opium of the people—this dictum by
Marx is the corner-stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion,” writes Lenin, lending his authority to a terrible
mistake that has since been repeated millions of times. Marx’s point was that
religion was a relief to the poor people who could not afford opium, and that
religion was also “the heart of a heartless world” and the “sigh of the
oppressed creature”.
But Lenin, in this rather
badly-constructed statement, appears more concerned to establish his atheistic
credentials than to push his denunciations of religion to a conclusion, because
he soon starts back-tracking. He recalls various examples of bourgeois persecution
of religion, disapprovingly. He manages to say at the same time that the
socialist revolutionaries are not tactical about religion, but also to say that
they subordinate the question of religion to more crucial necessities (i.e.
they are tactical). So he appears to contradict himself in this regard,
too.
Then, towards the end, Lenin
managed to praise the Duma deputy (parliamentary representative) Surkov, who
had made a speech denouncing religion as the opium of the masses. Really, this
pamphlet looks like damage control or spin-doctoring by Lenin. It looks like
Comrade Surkov had got into a controversy and needed some public backing.
The first image above is of
Lenin in 1896, aged 26. The second image is of Anatoly Lunacharsky, People's
Commissar of Education in Lenin’s first Soviet government.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Attitude of
Worker's Party to Religion, 1900, Lenin.
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