Should all of Christianity and all of Islam be combated as well? Once upon a time i might have said yes, but now i don’t know. Maybe eventually.
Let me point out first that there’s a difference between a religion/philosophy as a major component of a countries superstructure vs something that merely exists in personal practices here and there.
With that caveat, I think most of us who live in America would say that Christianity absolutely does need to be rooted out of the culture because it is monstrous.
But is it really a priority at the moment? Is this the primary contradiction that we are facing?
You can’t accomplish revolutionary change by focusing on exactly one thing at a time while letting all other forms of reaction flourish. That is a form of tailism.
Would it not be more prudent to focus on denouncing specifically the most reactionary elements of these philosophies/religions while ignoring the more benign ones, at least for the time being?
What matters is if it is actually actionably reactionary. Confucianism, being a philosophy and not a religion, really loses wiggle room that religions have in terms of benign beliefs like “mee-maw is looking down on me from Heaven” or whatever. It’s almost entirely things that have real, practical significance, like filial piety and ren (which are reactionary).
I think most of us who live in America would say that Christianity absolutely does need to be rooted out of the culture because it is monstrous.
On a personal level i agree with you, but politically that is probably a non-starter. You have to work with the material you have in front of you, not the material you wish you had. The masses that form the basis of a revolution exist in a real cultural context and ignoring that reality is idealism.
I don’t know what the right answer is here, but it’s probably going to involve some sort of pragmatic compromise, otherwise your revolutionary movement will remain small, sectarian, insular, dogmatic and isolated from the masses. It goes without saying that this is a recipe for perpetual failure, and the bourgeois state knows this too which is why COINTELPRO has always strived to encourage that sort of narrow ideological dogmatism.
And before anyone misunderstands what i am saying, this does not mean that we should be tailing the masses. Absolutely we should continue to denounce the reactionary elements of our culture, because it is precisely these which are the biggest hindrance to waging a successful revolution (false consciousness, etc.).
Confucianism, being a philosophy and not a religion, really loses wiggle room that religions have in terms of benign beliefs
I’m actually inclined to give Confucianism more leeway because of this. Religions, especially theistic ones, are fundamentally anti-materialist, whereas an atheistic philosophy at least could be compatible with materialism (not saying that it is…again: i just don’t know enough about it).
It’s almost entirely things that have real, practical significance, like filial piety and ren (which are reactionary).
I am not a big fan of the whole “filial piety” thing myself, but then again i didn’t grow up in that culture. I’m sure if you asked Chinese communists many of them would disagree with your view that filial piety is necessarily reactionary. They might acknowledge some downsides but ultimately view it as a net positive.
I just think we could all do with a little more humility and not be so quick to dismiss other cultures’ mores just because they don’t align with our own cultural ideas of what it means to be progressive.
On a personal level i agree with you, but politically that is probably a non-starter . . .
I’m not saying Christianity as a personal practice needs to be destroyed, but essentially that the country needs to be secularized by any means necessary because Christo-fascist theocratic policy has massive support in some places. There can be no privileging Christians above other citizens, no “teaching the controversy” on science and myth, no cultish Christian home"schools", no protecting the souls of blastocysts, etc.
This shit isn’t something that would make a popular movement non-viable, it would help it while preventing massive, systemic abuse of women and children, because the simple fact of the matter is that this shit only gets into legislation because of massive backing by the bourgeoisie. Most people even in the most conservative states oppose it, it’s just the fucking Christian nationalist think tanks that push it.
. . . whereas an atheistic philosophy at least could (not saying that it is) be compatible with materialism.
I mentioned Daoism, I think it was to you. Daoism definitely has elements compatible with materialism. I’m not convinced that Confucianism has any except maybe yì.
I am not a big fan of the whole “filial piety” thing myself . . .
I’ve had the opportunity to argue somewhat extensively with a Chinese communist about a number of issues, filial piety being one. He is, like a lot of them are, revisionist, but I need to give him credit for being open-minded. I don’t think it was all that possible even to change his mind, but he at least acknowledged that I had a point when I claimed filial piety is hierarchical and (coincidentally like some of the western practices that I just mentioned) absolutely begging for abuse on the part of the patriarch and – speaking of there being patriarchs – deeply sexist, and, in addition, it and ren represent a dysfunctional way to order an egalitarian society if family members are commanded to give deontological preference to their own family and those closest to them.
Almost no one, myself included, thinks he went about it in a constructive way, but Mao had reason to want to fight this stuff.
It’s not like I’m saying they should follow American ideas of progressiveness, I’m not saying Xi should wear a dashiki and kneel for eight minutes, but in a broader sense Mao acknowledged and the country was built on the belief that there is some amount of trans-culturally relevant notions of what it means to be a progressive (e.g. Marxism-Leninism) and that these should be pursued, even if the application looks different in different places.
I’m not saying Christianity as a personal practice needs to be destroyed, but essentially that the country needs to be secularized […] There can be no privileging Christians above other citizens, no “teaching the controversy” on science and myth, no cultish Christian home"schools" […]
On this we are in complete agreement. I think even most Christian communists would agree with this. This is what i meant by denouncing the reactionary elements of religion.
What matters is if it is actually actionably reactionary. Confucianism, being a philosophy and not a religion, really loses wiggle room that religions have in terms of benign beliefs like “mee-maw is looking down on me from Heaven” or whatever. It’s almost entirely things that have real, practical significance, like filial piety and ren (which are reactionary).
I think this is a very poor interpretation of confucianism. Confucianism as a political system, used by feudal rulers to enforce control over society, has been practically completed rooted out, and most of the reactionary elements you mention are more complicated than you make them seem… Are they reactionary? Maybe partially, but a respect for parents doesn’t mean that Chinese will take shit from the people raising them lying down, and likewise ren doesn’t mean they’ll let people walk over them. Confucius himself discussed these concepts in his original teachings, where you can clearly see that he gives different concepts to different students depending on their own situations, which I would argue ironically is the best approach to applying marxism to various movements today.
Let me point out first that there’s a difference between a religion/philosophy as a major component of a countries superstructure vs something that merely exists in personal practices here and there.
With that caveat, I think most of us who live in America would say that Christianity absolutely does need to be rooted out of the culture because it is monstrous.
You can’t accomplish revolutionary change by focusing on exactly one thing at a time while letting all other forms of reaction flourish. That is a form of tailism.
What matters is if it is actually actionably reactionary. Confucianism, being a philosophy and not a religion, really loses wiggle room that religions have in terms of benign beliefs like “mee-maw is looking down on me from Heaven” or whatever. It’s almost entirely things that have real, practical significance, like filial piety and ren (which are reactionary).
On a personal level i agree with you, but politically that is probably a non-starter. You have to work with the material you have in front of you, not the material you wish you had. The masses that form the basis of a revolution exist in a real cultural context and ignoring that reality is idealism.
I don’t know what the right answer is here, but it’s probably going to involve some sort of pragmatic compromise, otherwise your revolutionary movement will remain small, sectarian, insular, dogmatic and isolated from the masses. It goes without saying that this is a recipe for perpetual failure, and the bourgeois state knows this too which is why COINTELPRO has always strived to encourage that sort of narrow ideological dogmatism.
And before anyone misunderstands what i am saying, this does not mean that we should be tailing the masses. Absolutely we should continue to denounce the reactionary elements of our culture, because it is precisely these which are the biggest hindrance to waging a successful revolution (false consciousness, etc.).
I’m actually inclined to give Confucianism more leeway because of this. Religions, especially theistic ones, are fundamentally anti-materialist, whereas an atheistic philosophy at least could be compatible with materialism (not saying that it is…again: i just don’t know enough about it).
I am not a big fan of the whole “filial piety” thing myself, but then again i didn’t grow up in that culture. I’m sure if you asked Chinese communists many of them would disagree with your view that filial piety is necessarily reactionary. They might acknowledge some downsides but ultimately view it as a net positive.
I just think we could all do with a little more humility and not be so quick to dismiss other cultures’ mores just because they don’t align with our own cultural ideas of what it means to be progressive.
I’m not saying Christianity as a personal practice needs to be destroyed, but essentially that the country needs to be secularized by any means necessary because Christo-fascist theocratic policy has massive support in some places. There can be no privileging Christians above other citizens, no “teaching the controversy” on science and myth, no cultish Christian home"schools", no protecting the souls of blastocysts, etc.
This shit isn’t something that would make a popular movement non-viable, it would help it while preventing massive, systemic abuse of women and children, because the simple fact of the matter is that this shit only gets into legislation because of massive backing by the bourgeoisie. Most people even in the most conservative states oppose it, it’s just the fucking Christian nationalist think tanks that push it.
I mentioned Daoism, I think it was to you. Daoism definitely has elements compatible with materialism. I’m not convinced that Confucianism has any except maybe yì.
I’ve had the opportunity to argue somewhat extensively with a Chinese communist about a number of issues, filial piety being one. He is, like a lot of them are, revisionist, but I need to give him credit for being open-minded. I don’t think it was all that possible even to change his mind, but he at least acknowledged that I had a point when I claimed filial piety is hierarchical and (coincidentally like some of the western practices that I just mentioned) absolutely begging for abuse on the part of the patriarch and – speaking of there being patriarchs – deeply sexist, and, in addition, it and ren represent a dysfunctional way to order an egalitarian society if family members are commanded to give deontological preference to their own family and those closest to them.
Almost no one, myself included, thinks he went about it in a constructive way, but Mao had reason to want to fight this stuff.
It’s not like I’m saying they should follow American ideas of progressiveness, I’m not saying Xi should wear a dashiki and kneel for eight minutes, but in a broader sense Mao acknowledged and the country was built on the belief that there is some amount of trans-culturally relevant notions of what it means to be a progressive (e.g. Marxism-Leninism) and that these should be pursued, even if the application looks different in different places.
On this we are in complete agreement. I think even most Christian communists would agree with this. This is what i meant by denouncing the reactionary elements of religion.
I think this is a very poor interpretation of confucianism. Confucianism as a political system, used by feudal rulers to enforce control over society, has been practically completed rooted out, and most of the reactionary elements you mention are more complicated than you make them seem… Are they reactionary? Maybe partially, but a respect for parents doesn’t mean that Chinese will take shit from the people raising them lying down, and likewise ren doesn’t mean they’ll let people walk over them. Confucius himself discussed these concepts in his original teachings, where you can clearly see that he gives different concepts to different students depending on their own situations, which I would argue ironically is the best approach to applying marxism to various movements today.