-Caveat Lector-
magnetic_field wrote:
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> I think that one of his most misunderstood quotes was that "religion
> is the opiate of the masses". In the context of the time in which he lived
> this was very true. Since in most societies then there was no "safety net".
> If you were too ill to work, and had no family to help you out, you just
> fell thru the cracks. I many places there were still "debter's prisons or
> work houses. It was too easy then, to say to a poor starving worker, that it
> was God's will that things be that way. That they should accept it and hope
> for a reward in heaven. People bore with the most deploreable conditions
> because they felt God had deemed it so.
> In our time we have so little concept of such a struggle. The
> closest we can to this was the great depression in the 1930's. There is a
> book "Down and Out in the Great Depression" of letters from common people in
> their own language to the President and others describing their situation.
> Many families lost their homes for less than $40.00 in back taxes.
> Another book is fiction but gives you a sense of what true poverty
> is "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair (who by the way happened to be a
> socialist).
> This comment may be off topic but I think it's related. Like they
> say "nothing happens in a vaccuum".
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
BF>Satanic forces try to stand in the place of the holy. One form of this would
be the use of religion to oppress. Religion has been the handmaided of rulers
throughout history. Marx and the Founding Fathers both recognized this, and both
sought to limit the power of the Church. The established religions being more an
instrument of worldly power than of God they vigorously protested. The true
faithful are not only too moral to exploit, but find the prospect of such a life
boring. They have no quarrel with the honest socialist, only with the repression
of faith that philosophical materialism will inevitably make necessary.
Yes, Marx has to be understood in context. That does not make his views
right, but one must not stereotype what one does not bother to understand. I
also believe that he was wrong on fundamental points, one of which is economic
determinism. Capitalism can adapt, and has adapted, to human needs, and liberal
democracy has as its fruits a better life for more people than any other sytem.
I also believe, however, that we are an alienated society, much as Marx wrote.
We are divided between the included and the excluded. The decadence in
capitalist societies revolts even the Russians and Chinese who visit, coming from
officially atheistic societies. The spirit of Babylon is strong in capitalist
nations, and this is our undoing if we do not expell it.
Bates
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