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Religion and the limits
of the State
We have
conclusive proof
that Tony Blair doesn’t read the Socialist Standard. In
these pages last month, we warned that trying to suppress religion or
religious expression is not going to stem any terror threat. Yet
now, the Prime Minister has stood before the media, vowing to close
down Mosques where religious extremism is preached. Yet, censorship
has never worked to suppress any ideology or movement.
The
Blairites have long
been proud of their writing the European Convention of Human Rights
into British law. Yet Tony Blair has stood before the media vowing
to amend the act so as to enable his government to use draconian
powers against those it suspects – but cannot prove in a court of
law – to be involved in the promotion of terrorism. We have, also,
in these pages before, warned that human rights legislation was a
paper thin protection against the might of the organised violence of
the state. Thus it proves, when inalienable rights get in the way of
untrammelled state power, they get torn asunder. There are rights,
but only when they don’t matter, it seems.
Tony
Blair has stood before
the media of the world, venting sound and fury because the levers of
state he controls with such ultimate power are inadequate to stem the
terrorist tide. Kings and Prime Ministers have long been able to do
whatever they pleased with the machinery of state – but their
record in stopping the seas is somewhat dismal. The state has
ultimate power over our bodies – life or death, but it reaches its
limits at people’s minds.
People’s
consciousness is
not something that can be shaped by fiat – a minuted cabinet
meeting declaring that all inhabitants of Britain will be loyal
citizens. People’s consciousness is an outgrowth of their life
every bit as much as their arms or their hair. Socialists know from
long (and bitter) experience, that merely expounding an idea to
someone will not move them. There has to be the basis of agreement
already in their minds, based on their experience of the world and
their values, for any ideas to take hold.
The
notion that merely
preaching is enough to turn people into suicide bombers is itself a
part of the same flawed premise upon which religion is based: that
people choose to believe. The idea that people are outside the world
around them, separate from the chains of causation they can see in
nature. It is also a projection of the self-image of the great
leaders who believe that they can bend people’s wills to whatever
they wish, like some great impresario in the circus ring.
Religion
itself is subject
to materialist explanation. It is, in fact, just a branch of
science, the effort of human beings to understand the world around
them. Beginning with the ancient religions that explained natural
phenomena in terms of beings with human-like minds controlling
events. That is, early cultures explained the world with reference
to the thing they knew best, humans and human behaviour. Projecting
human relationships on natural objects – for instance by making
gifts to the fields and rivers in return for favours like not
flooding.
As
civilisation grew, human
social science – or religion as it was called – changed to adapt
to the new environment. Different types of gods grew up, who behaved
suspiciously like the despots who governed the world at that time. The
growth of widespread kingdoms lead to the development of
divisions of labour which established priestly castes and codified
myths to establish a common religious narrative (which helped in
co-ordinating things like the kingdom-wide harvesting of crops). The
essential ingredient, though, of projecting a human gift relationship
on the world remained.
Around
the first century of
the Common Era (CE) this process led to the spread of the great
monotheistic religions. At the time, Rome was spreading its
influence over the near east. As trade and commerce extended, local
tribal formations became more fluid, and so the image of one Emperor
ruling over a vast differentiated domain easily gave rise to the idea
of one God ruling over the entire Earth. People were obliged to obey
that God much as they would have to obey the Emperor, lest they face
his fierce and arbitrary wrath. The religion that most successfully
encompassed that sort of world experience was Christianity, which
grew to be the dominant and official religion of the Roman Empire in
the 4th century CE under Constantine.
Likewise,
Islam (Literally
‘Submission to the will of god’) emerged around 600 CE –
propagated by Muhammed, a wealthy and well-travelled merchant. The
Arab peoples at that time were divided and living in the shadows of
the great Byzantine and Persian Empires (empires characterised by
centralised monotheistic religious uniformity). It was to Muhammed
and his movement’s advantage to copy this style of thinking and
organising, as they began to spread their fledgling empire and unite
the Arab tribes into a power.
That is,
these religions in
their time were rational observations of how both the natural and
social worlds operated. Even, in some senses, progressive in their
advancement of human understanding and the growth of civilisation. They
stemmed from a need to understand a world that stretched beyond
immediate apprehension and sense and spread over vast and
intermingling empires. Lacking modern data capture or inquiry
techniques, such empires could only be apprehended by metaphors for
the emperors that ruled them.
The
religions born then
continued to be at the forefront of science for many years, either as
direct means of explaining phenomena, or as paradigms into which new
explanations and observations could and must be incorporated. If
everything happens by the will of god, then knowing the mind of god
is the only rational form of scientific endeavour.
As data
capture and the
technology of natural science advanced over the subsequent thousand
years, the value of the old science began to be questioned. In
Western Europe, this lead to a division between the concept of
science and of religion. As various physical world-truth claims of
religion – such as that of the position of the Earth in relation to
the Sun – came under sustained challenge – by Copernicus, in 1514
CE – the established religious elites fought back, using raw
political power and wealth.
This
meant that the
ideologues of religion came up with more and more ways to defend
their world-view from the challenge of the new scientific methods –
retreating (in some cases) to the point of defending religion as a
mere personal preference in areas where facts could not be proved in
the same way as in the natural sciences. That is, they clung on to
the social sciences for a further three hundred years. All ethics
and social theory was made by reference to the assumed existence of a
despotic deity.
Class
struggle broke out
over Europe. The rising bourgeoisie challenged their feudal masters,
and in so doing challenged the idea of obeying the dictates of a
despotic god, instead trying to privatise conscience and change the
relationship to a more contractual one. This meant challenging the
religious authorities on the ground of social science, and meant that
other theories could be opened up for debate – empiricism and
rationalism and later idealism. They challenged simply accepting
facts and truth claims based on authority. They challenged obedience
to a set of simplistic rules set down by the Emperor. It was a
revolutionary challenge.
This
challenge lasted only
as long as there was a stake in it. Once the bourgeoisie was finally
ensured of power, the religious questions didn’t matter as much,
and in fact proved to be a useful way of defending their new found
supremacy from the challenge of the nascent working class. The same
weapon of social science which helped them to power was now being
used against them, to show how their rule was exploitative and
domineering. The old religion became a means of justifying their
rule to themselves and to their subordinates, as they spread their
system across the globe.
To the
extent that the
working class felt themselves powerless, they were willing to accept
an explanation of the world that gave them some measure of
understanding and control – much as for the humans at the formation
of the first religious impulse. As, however, technical competence
was increasingly required for work, so has a growth of understanding
of science and the world that sees much of western religion driven to
either the merest shadow of its former acceptance, if not outright
agnosticism (though many still accept the arguments of the theists
over religion and belief over things which cannot be proven).
In many
parts of the world,
traditional religious castes still retain a strong sway – Catholic
priests were wheeled out in Portugal to explain the euro, for
instance. Where social and economic development has not provided a
practical impetus to challenge the teachings and presumptions of
religion, it has remained strong. Gaining a further power as a means
of giving a sense of identity and community to ways of life that are
under apparent external threat – as in parts of the Muslim world
and their reaction to western economic domination. Also, people in
politically marginalised and powerless communities – like much of
the rural United States – are turning to religious fundamentalism
in the face of their own lack of control over their own and their
communities’ lives.
The
resurgence of the old
authoritarian religions is a growing problem. Politicians who also
like to think of themselves as believers do not want to challenge the
presuppositions and premises of these religions, but instead try to
incorporate them so as not to challenge the structure of existing
society.
Socialists
oppose religion
for its anachronistic premises, for the barrier it presents to
scientifically examining and controlling our own lives and destinies.
Religion starts by placing humans outside the natural world – with
anthropomorph deities shaping the world and people’s free will
allowing them to obey and believe. Humans are part of the world, and
are amenable to scientific behavioural study, and it is understanding
that that will allow us to liberate ourselves, and control ourselves
and our destinies.
Argument
alone will not
suffice to remove religion and religious strife from the world, it
will take the material interest of a common cause and a common
struggle to build a democratic society where people stand in real
relation to each other, not seeing each other reflected in the eyes
of some ancient Middle Eastern despot’s mad dream.
PIK
SMEET
More
on the Marxian socialist analysis of religion can be found at www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/sar.pdf
and www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1947/religion.htm
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contents  Page 9
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