Socialist Standard No. 1386 February 2020

[PartisanZ]

 

• Editorial
• Pathfinders
• The Pensions Struggle: The Financial Iceberg
• Open Letter to David Attenborough
• Cooking the Books I: Not for the squeamish
• Wood For the Trees: Life without socialism
• Material World: Nigeria: need poverty exist
• Green ‘New Deal’: Naomi’s Fantasy 
• Green Capitalism: Ideology for Oxymorons
• Jeremy Corbyn: Last Stand of the Left
• Money: Icon of Slavery
• Religion: New Opiates
• Cooking the Books II: Boris’s Gift Nag
• Proper Gander
• Even if He Wasn’t an Idiot
• Reviews
• Bad Marx – See Me!
• 50 Years Ago: Slaughter in Vietnam
• Obituary: Jim Ryder
• Meetings
• Rear View
• Free Lunch

[rodshaw]

In the editors’ reply to Stephen Murphy’s letter about religion, they comment that ‘religion – of whatever sort – is a matter of personal faith’. But on the WSM website, in the section ‘How the WSM is Different from Other Groups’, we say ‘religion is a social, not personal, matter’.

So how do we square the two statements?

[ALB]

I don’t think there is a contradiction between the two statements. People hold religious views as individuals, ie on a personal basis. That so many people do  literally “believe” without reference to the facts in one sort of religion or another is a social matter, a social problem.

Socialists oppose it because all religions are wrong in their assumptions just as, for instance, reformism and nationalism are  and this impedes people coming to realise what they need to do to make this life (the only one we have) as good as possible.

[Socialist Party Head Office]

Comment received at Head Office from Stephen Murphy to the editors’ reply to his letter:

“My only comment, reading the Editors reply, is: Reading the paragraph (‘But you posit a special case…’) –  the editors really don’t like people like me, do they? Their thinly veiled anger and intolerance blazes through. God knows where s/he dug all that up from (“..religious people think..we possess a spirit that others don’t have; we see … atheism as a form of disability, we belittle others.. passive aggression etc, etc..”)  Quite frankly that paragraph says more about your editorial writers than it does about the Christians I know. Unresolved issues there. I think the gist of my original letter has been answered.”

[Author]

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