As a rightist observer who quite likes you guys...

As a rightist observer who quite likes you guys, I think you guys would be wildly more popular if left wing politics didn't try to do away with cultural practices and faith wherever you went. Look, for instance, at the Spanish Civil War where Catholic priests were murdered en masse.

Is there a healthy median between religion/culture and left-wing politics, and if so where is it?

Straßerism and National Syndicalism both tried to be what you describe - socialist in societal and economic organization, nationalist conservative in ideology and morals. Both were backstabbed by the right wing because - surprise, surprise - traditional institutions are very much on the side of the established elites and will not willingly turn against them.

Never really saw the point of actively going after religious groups beyond the individuals causing problems. I imagine it would go away under the correct material conditions on its own eventually.

In all fairness, the Church never backstabbed any political movement, as it didn't have the means to quite frankly. It only spoke out in semi-harsh terms against political ideologies that were violently opposed to them.

is that a bad thing?

But the church was effectively collaborating with the fascists and thus becoming an enemy party. They same happens with just about any conflict since abrahamic religious are reactionary ideologies.

It's not so much a hatred of God as it is a hatred of the priesthoods and the churches. At one point in time priesthoods were given 1/3 of a farmer's crop and later profit as a mandatory tithe, and the farmer's were left with only 1/3 of their crop before further taxation.

They didn't really collaborate with the fascists in a hostile way until the Republicans began to execute them. It was then and only then that they picked up arms and actually fought.

What's worse? Relics of feudalism or relics of capitalism?

It's important to understand the context of the Spanish Revolution's attacks on the Catholic Church. Since basically medieval times, the Church in Spain was effectively a puppet organization for the monarchy; while maintaining some of the best relations with Rome among European realms at the time, the Church in Spain essentially kept and controlled separate institutions that were ultimately acting at the beck and call of the state itself. An infamous example of this being the Spanish Inquisition, which operated under state control/authority rather than that of Rome (which had it's own Inquisition running around other European kingdoms) and was used just as much as a tool of social/political control as it was "rooting out heresy." This power relation was basically maintained through the centuries.

Fast forward to the Spanish Civil war: the monarchy itself is gone, but the Church is still built up and operates for the benefit of the former established powers. This happened both at the local scale in attempting to undermine the transition of the revolutionary society to it's intended goals and on the national level by often serving as recruiting centers for the nationalist (clergy and ex-nobles being among Franco's chief supporters).

The actions against the Church were brutal and arguably unfair to many individual members of the clergy who may not have had any serious political involvement, but it was not wholly unjustified as a matter of rectifying systemic obstacles to proletarian emancipation.

What does collaborating in a 'non-hostile way' mean?

What I mean by that is that the Church did intrinsically like the fascists more before the bloodshed started, because the fascists promoted the Church. It was beneficial. The priests and laity didn't really pick up arms and strike back until the Church itself was under threat. With respect to the justly-upheld leftist dominance of this board, I must say that (from my rightist perspective) the Church as any institution, has a right to defend itself.

I'm an atheist and former heavy anti-thiest and I think it was a mistake especially in America to divorce socialism from religion entirely. In the initial swing of writers and waves they had a point to criticize religion it was another arm of capitalism and their ideology of control for the most part, but religion has come to mean more than that in the past century it has evolved and started defining it self in opposition to the things it was criticized for.

In the public discourse over time divorcing socialism from religion essentially conceded common moral language to the other side and you'll notice the first thing older people will say about communism is that it's "godless." They don't really know the intricacies of Marx's economic policies or Bakunin's pamphlets, but they do know religion is le opiade of teh masses and hence we all must be wrong about everything else.

yes please this always worked really well for everyone involved especially germany.

If it's any solace, I'm not a NEETsoc.

That's really the point of what I'm saying. From my experience, most people are open to left-wing economics. Even though I disagree with it, I have to acknowledge it. People value their traditions and faith more than anything else, and will ignore all of the economic doctrines of the left if they feel that they are under threat.

Yeah and that's exactly the reason why we have to keep anti-theism up and not make the mistake of appeasement.

You think that the current neutered state of religion and especially organized religion in the West is the product of talk and appeasement? Oh boy, you are wrong.

You are making the argument that so-called religious """leftists""" are not trustworthy because they will put their faith above everything? I wholeheartedly agree with you. The purge is just.

There is a way of criticizing religion without going full fedora and dismissing the genuine good it does bring in peoples lives, especially if you know the person you're talking to is more receptive to religion than your self but is otherwise open to socialist and communist ideas.

But OP, rabid fedora-tipping does work, as evidenced by the state of religion in the West compared to the Middle East where radical secularists have been crushed.

Well, of course it should feel threatened is a deeply hierarchical and patriarchal relic from feudalism that still retained vast muh privileges and powers.

Pretty disappointed in this. The threat started out well.
Such as?

How will you get anywhere without compromising on your rabid anti-theism? The left has fallen far since its inception, and it only has further to drop, which is really quite a shame since most folks would be open and receptive to your economic doctrine. Ultimately, idealism doesn't work, left or right.

Is there any real reason they should be associated? Should any one person's assertions of moral rectitude mean anything to anyone else? Organized religion seems inexorably bourgeois to me. Abrahamic religions are a special problem, due to their arrogance, entitlement and imperialism.


I have just the institution for you, lad. Pic related


What it means is less important than what it "has" and what it does to secular society. Christianity, in particular, is constructed on a foundation of sales culture and the primitive accumulation of "souls," which is subversive and at odds with the aims of a socialist, steady-state society that provides the material basis of their existence. If they want their own province, they can have it as long as they leave materialists out of their dramas.
Read up on the history of the Birch Society. That's Koch propaganda, read and recited with perfect intonation. Tell them about Huey Long, whom they might have just missed.


Why cfan't they shut the fuck up about their imaginary friend that has nothing to do with us?

But OP, anti-secularism does work, in my country the timidness of the secularists has resulted in emboldening of the religious parties to the point they even tried a complete abortion ban a few times. And it's the centre of fucking Europe, not some third world shithole.

Most major religions, especially Abrahamic and organized religions are just inherently not reconcilable with socialism.

I meaf ffs one of the pillars of Islam is a tax(explicitly) based on accumulated wealth.

Isn't it a conundrum for you socialists that you seem to oppose all traditional institutions and power structures all the while utilizing the same or similar power structures to enforce your will?

Go back to the 8th grade, friendo.

It's just a commonly known exaggeration. The point is just be tactful, a persons religion is really irrelevant if they have correct beliefs about the memes of production. Which is also my answer to:


Religion is basically whatever the person believes in their head. Their can be a very pro socialist Jesus and a very pro-capitalist Jesus in common discourse. What matters is what is the person believes that you're trying to convince at this particular point.

lol ok

abolish institutions, let people worship whatever they want

Sorry, but many religions aren't just religions they are political ideologies with a clear goal of establishing organizations and even whole law and political systems whose main tenets oppose fundamental aspects of socialism

Not if either you retain the cynical awareness that said structures have its use only as said tools to enforce your will or wish to abolish all hierarchical structures altogether.

yes they did. in spain they made it illegal for communists to get married in the church

Maoism. The problem wasn't so much the Anarchists but that the first half of the 20th century was really just edgy and ultra-modernist, that rings true in fascism and Liberalism too.

Most Guerrilla groups for example adopted folk rural and urban music and culture into their imagery and praxis in the search for a Proletarian Culture with some academic elements but building completely on popular roots.

In several places in Africa, Latin America and Asia today it's hard to find Nationalistic imagery that ISN'T explicitly Leftist because revolutionaries were the ones digging into forgotten historical traditions for inspiration.

what are you?

Exactly this: they are hierarchies blessed by an improvable supernatural imprimatur. Which is why…

doesn't wash. In addition to the universal presence of doctrine from first principles, many world religions base their identities on performance, or as 12-Steppers and b-school grads call it, "acting as if." Christianity is an exception, one that demands belief, which is a problem should those beliefs (say, the parable of porky's talents) and social structures be drawn upon to inform their interaction with a fundamentally incompatible present. Religious groups whose creed is based on performance tend to accept secular constraints on their practice, whereas belief-oriented sects tend not to. Not to get too autie about it, but the computer science principle of separation of concerns seems useful here.


ohai Holla Forums


Maybe not so forgotten. In the USA and many of the "mature economies," such qualities as neighborliness and social investment in community, aka the people you can't tell to go away, are vanishingly rare. Where material resources are less concentrated and require material cooperation to gather, it can be a matter of survival.

everyone massacred at that time tbh it was the done thing.

Straßerism and National Syndicalism were not socialists, stop forcing that meme. Nationalization of industry and workerist rhetoric is not "socialism".

This question doesn't even make sense. Do you suppose leftists somehow oppose "culture", whatever that means?

I think leftism would be far more popular if we got rid of the edgy teenagers and recruited right-wing pundits to talk about why conservative communism is the will of god.

That's because the Spanish church was widely and actively involved in sabotage, subversion etc. They weren't hapless innocents. Also


That said, Western Europe has proven that the only reliable way to reduce religiosity is plain and simple material prosperity. Just destroying clergymen and church property ultimately doesn't harm the spook itself. If anything, it might reinforce it by creating martyrs.

So the solution is to leave religion be. It'll slowly die off, like the obsolete idea that it is. Counter-revolutionary clergymen, however, are fair game.

I guess I'd consider myself a traditional conservative. I support traditional institutions and practices, think that religion is a bedrock of successful countries, etc. I support democracy in many of its forms, but oppose universal suffrage. In terms of economics, I associate my beliefs with the historical school of economics, but more protectionist. I don't hold many outright controversial opinions to the average person, and I'm utterly disgusted by Holla Forums's plethora of Nazis, libertarians, and neocons.

I'm mostly talking about the tendency of socialist regimes to stamp out cultural practices, art, architecture. It all seems to meld into the same generic "worker" style. You didn't see Byzantine architecture being promoted in Soviet Russia.

And just to clarify, I'm not here to do any convincing. I'm just trying to get a good idea of what the real left looks like, since we see so little of it these days.

wat

why would communists want to get married in a church?

That's not a specificity of "socialism" but of Stalinist totalitarianism. The early Soviet Union was brewing with artistic experimentation before that was crushed by Stalin and it could arguably be called the most creative avant-garde of the century. Soviet filmmakers kind of came up with montage theory, without which cinema as we know it wouldn't even exist.


You're probably thinking of so-called "Socialist Realism", the official art of the Soviet Union under Stalin. It was indeed incredibly uninspired and was mostly used for propaganda purposes (intimidating neo-classical architecture, strictly realist visual arts, etc).


Well, there was no proper "Byzantine" architecture in Russia, which was never part of the Byzantine Empire. But the so-called "Neo-Byzantine" style prevalent in Imperial Russia was associated with the monarchy so it's not hard to understand why they'd drop that.

You are right with regards to artistic experimentation being prevalent, but you still see the same absence of continuity with the Russian culture, that existed long before, during, and after the revolution to this very day.

Art is one sort of performance of culture. Totalitarianism dictates everything shall issue forth from a single principle. It seems reasonable to generalize that other performances of culture would also accord to the influence of Stalinist totalitarianism.
"The man who knows many stories is wise. The man who knows no stories is foolish. The man who knows one story is dangerous."

If you're not trolling this is painfully ironic.

I don't really see that as a problem. There is no point in continuity for the sake of continuity. Even Italian Futurists — a significant portion of which were Fascists — would agree.

kys

doesn't invalidate anything except the moral bugaboos of liberals.

...

oh boy another episode of 'newfag thinks Holla Forums endorses the worst excesses practiced under any system that called itself socialist'

Well, tankies do.

They were non-combatants, correct.