Re: ca[r]rol and lou on religion

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

George Snedeker wrote:

> I think it was Cornel West who argued that Marxism had nothing to say about
> the question of death. this is why he thought we still needed religion to
> answer human needs for metaphysical questions.

I have a longer post under composition in response to (or rather
addition to) Lou's post, but I'd like to comment separately on this.
Marxism does not have anything to say on the question of death
simply because everything that needed to be said was said by
one of the originators of the current of thought to which Marxism
belongs, the materialism of Epicurus and Lucretius. The dead
do not know they are dead, and hence death is a tragedy only
for the living. And note that the afterlife as a place where one
would meet one's dead friends and loved ones is a creation of
the 19th century. Earlier Christian thought if anything emphasized
the opposite. In all the close relationships mentioned in Dante's
epic, one of the pair is in hell, the other in heaven. So Christianity
until it was transformed by capitalist individualism had nothing
to say on that part of death which was/is a tragedy.

Immortality utterly cheapens human life. Engels compliments
the doctrine when he refers to it merely as tedious. It is vicious.

Carrol