On 4/28/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> ... An urge to support the Democrats, when push
> comes to shove, no doubt trumps their hatred of religion for most US
> leftists.
changing questions, do most of the US left hate religion? aren't there
a bunch of leftist religious folk? and agnostics such as myself? (Has
anyone ever polled the self-defined "left" to see our attitude on this
question?)
I think Marx's formula was good here: he didn't hate religion as much
as capitalism, which encouraged people to embrace religion.
I thought that Marx's formula was that, although religion is the sigh
of the oppressed, the development of capitalism tends to secularize
life. I believe he was too simplistic about the correlation between
capitalist development and secularization. "All that is solid melts
into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled
to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his
relations with his kind." It looks to me that endless development of
capitalism has more effectively eroded or destroyed secular
institutions on the Left, from state socialism to trade unions, than
religious ones, and profane illusions make people more passive than
sacred ones.
--
Yoshie
