this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Its not so much about swearing off religion as it is swearing off idealism which is necessary. "genuine"ness is a pitfall here, any communist no matter how poor quality can be genuine. The actual measure you should be thinking about is effectiveness of a communist. If religious thinking gets in the way of communist thinking, then that requires change. The chief example is christain philosophy emphasising that sacrifice and defeat is nobel and good. Sacrifice is a dead end tactic, and thinking its useful leads a lot of western communists into a total dead end. I really recommend reading this essay https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/
Exactly, and this also means swearing off reddit atheism, which posits a fundamentally idea-driven functioning of hierarchies when it puts the blame for hierarchies on religious dogma.
The Marxist critique of religion has always understood religiosity as a reaction to unbearable material conditions. "Opiate of the masses" means self-medication of pain caused by fundamentally hurtful circumstances, and it is these agonizing circumstances, not the painkillers, that deserve the most attention.