The Church of Marxism

Is it fair to present Marxism as a religion?

I’ve been slowly making my way through Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and recently came across an interesting comparison between Marxism and Christianity.

This is by no means a novel comparison, however, previous comparisons I’ve come across tend to be lazy commenting on the fanaticism of ideology as opposed to making a measured comparison, something that Russell does quite well.

Interestingly, Russell makes his comparison not in the chapter he dedicates to Marx, which comes later in the book, but rather in the chapter on St. Augustine and his concept of the City of God and the eternal conflict between good (God) and Evil (the Devil). Russell says:

The Jewish pattern of history, past and future, is such as to make a powerful appeal to the oppressed and unfortunate at all times. St. Augustine adapted this pattern to Christianity, Marx to Socialism. To understand Marx psychologically, one should use the following dictionary:

Yahweh=Dialectical Materialism
The Messiah= Marx
The Elect=The Proletariat
The Church=The Communist Party
The Second Coming=The Revolution
Hell=Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium=The Communist Commonwealth

The terms on the left give the emotional content of the terms on the right, and it is this emotional content, familiar to those who have had a Christian or a Jewish upbringing, that makes Marx’s eschatology credible. A similar dictionary could be made for the Nazis, but their conceptions are more purely Old Testament and less Christian than those of Marx, and their Messiah is more analogous to the Maccabees than to Christ.

Although this is not an outright claim that Marxism can or should be considered a religion, it is clear that Russell is pointing to the emancipatory similarities between religion and Marxism.

Anyone familiar with Marx may instinctively laugh at the possibility of a comparison between Marxism and religion, especially considering the atheist tendencies of communists and Marx’s own words that paint religion as a distraction from today's oppression, a reversal of the typical religious narrative where today’s oppressions are nothing but distractions and temptations from a holy temporal life and the everlasting life that follows.

Furthermore, it can be taken that Marx’s materialist philosophy that concerns itself only with our lived experience automatically means that it cannot be spoken of as a religion. Marxism does not engage with questions of the soul, creation, or entertain any concept of an afterlife. leaving any comparison of it with religion with nothing but Russell’s stretched comparison. However, Joseph Schumpeter in Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy takes this challenge and ads a qualifier. He says:

In one important sense, Marxism ‘is’ a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. We may specify still further: Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave.

Schumpeter's qualifier, that Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave is a convincing one, however, the rest of his passage plays more on the dogmatic aspects of Marxism than the narrative provided by Russell which is, overall, a bit more convincing, even though it remains far fetched.

Meaning of life

Schumpter claims that Marxism presents “a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions” it would seem that he is looking here to draw a comparison between Christian virtue ethics and what I can only guess is Dialectical Materialism which is what Russell equates with God in his comparison.

Two things are wrong here. First, Dialectical Materialism, the philosophy advocated by Marx and Engles does not have an ‘End’, it is a historical philosophy and thus one that does not hint at any sort of stability of finitude. Schumpeter may be referring to the end as being the abolition of class antagonism, but there is nothing in Marxist doctrine to suggest that this is the end. This unlike religious presentations of raptures or even liberal fantasies of an end to history.

Russell is also wrong to equate this with God as the philosophy is a method and a scientific one at that which needs to be tested and validated against material and historical conditions. It is a tool and not a thing or a freestanding entity. As such, there is nothing of absoluteness that can be derived from it, especially an underlying meaning of life.

The idea that Dialectical Materialism presents “absolute standards by which to judge events and actions” as is hinted by Schumpeter can be further discredited by the fact that Marx did not believe in any sort of ‘rights’ that is, divine god given rights towards individuals. Marx believed in history being projected forward by class struggle and any morality to be ephemeral and based on the balance and contradictions put forth by how class antagonisms settle. Thus the morality found under feudalism is different than the morality found in capitalism and so on. That a form of morality may arise under communism would also be expected, but religion is not concerned with eventual or emergent systems when it comes to morality but rather the morality of today. That is, religion requires the adoption of a morality irrespective and alienated from the corporeal world.

Prophets and followers

Russell presents more comparisons than Schumpter and it is these comparisons that provide meatier points and, for some, more convincing ones.

The first of these comparisons is that of Marx as a Messiah. But Marx, unlike any messiahs makes no claim to have access to divine knowledge passed onto him by God or the Angels. As a matter of fact, Engles in his Socialism: Scientific or Utopian goes to great length to show how Marx’s philosophy is nothing but a historical development of philosophy in general, only prophetic on account of its novelty and nothing else.

An interesting qualifier that Schumpeter makes though is by locating his argument not around Marx, but around “the believer”. Here, we must argue whether or not a belief is a religion due to its claim to divinity, or, due to it having a set of believers/followers. I cannot help but think here of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where a passerby is mistaken for and elevated to the status of prophet before finally being crucified. It is with this same comedic sense that we must look to the idea that believers make a religion.

But even if we were to take it as a valid argument, for believers to make a religion, they must, at a minimum, profess to believing the same thing — something impossible to find among Marxists as even Marx himself famously claimed that he was not a Marxist! A cry against those who were attempting to develop his philosophy into dogma.

The question here then becomes, are there dogmatic Marxists? Yes, there are, but their dogmatists about all sorts of things including prefered colours or performers; does this make any of those things religions? The answer is no.

Russell’s next comparison is of “The Elect=The Proletariat” and “The Church=The Communist Party”. It’s here where Russell’s comparison reveals itself to be leagues ahead of Schumpter’s including why his comparison is that of method (a pattern of history) and not categories.

Simply put, Christian theology advocates that through the adoption of Christian values and joining the church one will be ‘saved’. Similarly, Marx proposes that through engagement in the class struggle, by joining the communist party which acts as the democratic authority of how this struggle should be fought, the proletariat can be saved as well.

This is simple enough, but where this comparison becomes interesting is in the way the Church and the Party function similarly. The church, since its conception, has acted as a separate and independent power (Where it could afford to do so) from ‘worldly’ affairs. That is, it saw the affairs of kings, emperors, the economy as irrelevant to the mission of the Church and engaged with them only in so far that it could further the Church’s objectives of spreading its values or attracting more people to the Church. This is very similar if not identical to the Communist concept of Dual Power where to undermine an existing power structure, parallel structures where proletariats are in control should be set up. The Party, as such, should operate independently and even against already present ‘worldly’ systems. The best way to organize and mobilize to meet this objective is to join the Communist Party.

Salvation

We’ve already briefly touched on the concept of salvation in the previous section and drawn the parallel of how it is through the Church and the Party that it can be achieved. Here, major diversions appear once again in Russell’s comparison to the church.

The Second Coming=The Revolution
Hell=Punishment of the Capitalists
The Millennium=The Communist Commonwealth

Where the second coming in theology is spoken of as an externally triggered event, salvation, as it pertains to Marxism is self-emancipatory. That is, it is the proletariat themselves who must bring about the revolution and pay the price for it. Where the second coming is a release, a reward, the revolution is an intensification.

This is something Schumpter gets wrong as well when he claims that Marxism is “a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved”. That Marxism provides a guide, albeit a loose one, is true. But it is the proletariat who must come up with the plan and execute it to save themselves not to be saved.

To add to this, the revolution is not meant to punish the capitalist, it is not hell as Russell presents it (although it can be argued that existing in communism is comparable to a hellfire existence for capitalists) rather it is emancipatory for all.

Finally, Salvation in Marxism is not a form of transformation it is, to put it in Marxian terms, the decoupling of chains that stop us as humans from reaching our full potential in science, thought, and art. As Engles puts it, after the revolution:

The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties

Trotsky presents this proposition in more poetic terms.

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

Take away points

The comparison of Marxism to Religion is an interesting one. However, it is a simplistic, lazy, and false one, an easy trope used by detractors of Marxism who want to present it as a dogmatic and blind pursuit of unattainable and utopic goals.

Needless to say, the ideology behind the two is worlds apart, literally. Where one asks for nothing but a slight bow in the head in exchange for an afterlife in heaven, the other looks to mobilise the disenfranchised into a revolutionary force promising first nothing but an extended period of suffering before being handed the reigns to forge their own futures. Surrender vs. Toil.

Nevertheless, the comparison can help shed some light on questions of method and strategy for Marxists. The growth and establishment of the Church during the dark ages in Europe is a historical development with many lessons to provide. The ability of the church to transcend class and geography is not too dissimilar from the Marxist goal of internationalism. Understanding the growth of the Church and their ability to successfully function independently outside of and in parallel to the state system can be key to developing or reinvigorating Marxist activity.