Sorry for the late response. Meant to get to this much earlier.
How does religion develop naturally and be left alone when it’s inextricably tied to reality, especially when the only societies that have existed for the past several millennia were class societies?
Classless societies have existed all throughout history and there is no evidence for a lack of religion in any of them. I’m not sure where you got the idea that a classless society has never existed before because that simply isn’t the case. One of my personal favorite examples is also one of the earliest civilizations: the Indus Valley civilization. Despite extensive archaeology no evidence for a class system has been produced as of yet and everything currently points to a lack of stratification entirely, though there is evidence of religious rituals. It endured for several thousand years. Even if no class society had ever existed there doesn’t necessarily mean that religion is tied specifically to the class system; that would be assuming correlation equals causation. It’s also disproven by the modern incarnation of class societies which has been heavily moving away from religious-oriented cultures, oftentimes deliberately eroding faith over time. Where religion hasn’t been totally removed from society it has been either weakened to the point of feebleness or coopted by capital for its own ends.
Also, how do we reconcile materialism and the militant atheism that’s been part of the foundation of ML parties with atheism being a bourgeois invention to flatten people into soulless automata?
That’s the point of self-criticism: to find and analyze flaws and correct them.
Hakim states it best in his video on the mistakes of former socialism where he points out that while it was good and necessary to weaken the authority of clerical institutions that opposed socialism and worked with reactionary forces this didn’t need to translate to the outright persecution of religion entirely and that by doing so the socialist state positioned itself as an enemy of all religious people - including deeply religious proles. Seeing as proles tend to be the most religious demographic by far it doesn’t help our movement to be openly hostile to their personal, spiritual beliefs - particularly when this beliefs compliment our own materialist ideology rather than conflict with it. “Jesus was a socialist” might be a meme but the reality of Jesus and his teachings is that they are in fact quite compatible - complimentary, even - with a socialist system and there’s no point in alienating Christian proles by telling them their religion is fake. Being spiritual is not the same as being anti-materialist. Most people in fact are quite materialist in their thinking and way of life, including incredibly religious people, and there’s no benefit to them or us by creating unnecessary friction between our ideology and their religion when it doesn’t need to exist.
I’ve been having a crisis of faith in dialectical materialism lately, especially the latter part. I’ve been an atheist for my entire adult life and all I have to show for it is empty comfort and self hatred. I’ve seen the downright miraculous transformations people have when they re-establish their relationship with God. It’s indisputable proof that God exists, that He cares for us, and that the evangelists the reddit atheists would always argue with were right: only a fool says in his heart there is no God. Why should anyone treat the material as primary, let alone all that exists?
I actually have a similar issue, being gnostic myself.
The way I see it: this life is only temporary. Whether there is or isn’t something waiting for us afterwards I can find no reason not to make the material world we live in as enjoyable for ourselves as possible. If we’re to exist here, in this place, for a certain amount of time we might as well make the best of it by living a life worth living and if whatever evil systems in this world are getting in the way of that then we should prioritize destroying them and replacing them with something better so that we can finally enjoy our time on this Earth.
Sorry for the late response. Meant to get to this much earlier.
Classless societies have existed all throughout history and there is no evidence for a lack of religion in any of them. I’m not sure where you got the idea that a classless society has never existed before because that simply isn’t the case. One of my personal favorite examples is also one of the earliest civilizations: the Indus Valley civilization. Despite extensive archaeology no evidence for a class system has been produced as of yet and everything currently points to a lack of stratification entirely, though there is evidence of religious rituals. It endured for several thousand years. Even if no class society had ever existed there doesn’t necessarily mean that religion is tied specifically to the class system; that would be assuming correlation equals causation. It’s also disproven by the modern incarnation of class societies which has been heavily moving away from religious-oriented cultures, oftentimes deliberately eroding faith over time. Where religion hasn’t been totally removed from society it has been either weakened to the point of feebleness or coopted by capital for its own ends.
That’s the point of self-criticism: to find and analyze flaws and correct them.
Hakim states it best in his video on the mistakes of former socialism where he points out that while it was good and necessary to weaken the authority of clerical institutions that opposed socialism and worked with reactionary forces this didn’t need to translate to the outright persecution of religion entirely and that by doing so the socialist state positioned itself as an enemy of all religious people - including deeply religious proles. Seeing as proles tend to be the most religious demographic by far it doesn’t help our movement to be openly hostile to their personal, spiritual beliefs - particularly when this beliefs compliment our own materialist ideology rather than conflict with it. “Jesus was a socialist” might be a meme but the reality of Jesus and his teachings is that they are in fact quite compatible - complimentary, even - with a socialist system and there’s no point in alienating Christian proles by telling them their religion is fake. Being spiritual is not the same as being anti-materialist. Most people in fact are quite materialist in their thinking and way of life, including incredibly religious people, and there’s no benefit to them or us by creating unnecessary friction between our ideology and their religion when it doesn’t need to exist.
I actually have a similar issue, being gnostic myself.
The way I see it: this life is only temporary. Whether there is or isn’t something waiting for us afterwards I can find no reason not to make the material world we live in as enjoyable for ourselves as possible. If we’re to exist here, in this place, for a certain amount of time we might as well make the best of it by living a life worth living and if whatever evil systems in this world are getting in the way of that then we should prioritize destroying them and replacing them with something better so that we can finally enjoy our time on this Earth.