Re: [A-List] Moderator's note

["Christopher Black" <bar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Salaam

Unfortunately, whether you want it or not imperialism is not something that
is "your scene" or not. It is an economic and political fact and cannot be
ignored by wishful thinking. It is produced by a specific economic system,
capitalism. Capitalism produces some good things but at this period in
history it is a system which can only survive on war and slavery. But more
than this, it produces in the lives of every working person a profound sense
of alienation of each worker from every other and from the society at large.
It is this profound sense of alienation that Karl Marx wanted to understand;
where did it come from, why did it exist, how did it work, and how could it
be eliminated so that once again each individual could feel connected to all
human beings and perhaps more importantly to themselves.

Marx was a profound humanist first and foremost and his desire to overcome
alienation led him to an analysis of the capitalist system that produces it.
This in turn led him to his rejection of religion as a false way of
overcoming this alienation and more, as another cause of alienation as
religion induced people to look outside themselves for solutions to some
mythical being who promised salvation in an aferlife. He realized that gods
never have helped anyone who did not help themselves and that religion plays
a major role in preventing people from helping themselves by stating that
the people should accept their rotten lot in this life in hope of some
reward in another. A perfect way for the rich and powerful to keep the
ordinary person in chains.

Marx rejected the idea that there was anything outside the material world as
there is no basis in fact to support such an idea and becuase it always led
to disillusionment and paralysis. He had supreme faith in humanity to solve
its problems here and now, something which every religion denies.

Marx accepted that in each of us there is an oceanic feeling of
connectedness to nature and to each other, something almost indefiinable, a
longing for the warmth of the womb in fact. But he thought that this could
only be truly expressed by each if their individuality was allowed to be
expressed as richly as possible and that this could never happen in a
capitalist system in which every one who has to work for a living is reduced
from a proud, independent, creative and loving being to a virtual slave
without hope, without self-respect, without love.

You are correct. Material desires are not enough to satisfy this sense of
"spirit" as you term it. You and Marx agree that  the community should care
about its members and that we should all enjoy rich and satisfying lives.
That was his central aim. But he thought it a grave mistake to think that
the spiritual element was to be found outside humanity itself in some
mythical beings that mankind invented. In fact he argues compellingly that
mankind invented the idea of gods in various forms exactly in order to
express its need to connect with itself and that all gods are projections
into the sky (the sky gods as Gore Vidal calls them; God, Allah, Jehovah
etc) of this unconscious need to be connected to each other and to our own
perfection. His great advance was to recognize that the spirit in mankind
can only be released, be active, in and through mankind in the real world
not in the realm of the imaginary. Imperialism, the expression of monopoly
capitalism destroys the spirit and will destroy us all if we do not oppose
it and transform our present economic system into another system that is
based on the human spirit instead of opposed to and in conflcit with it.

Chris