Re: [Marxism] Re: The hijab controversy

[Johannes Schneider <Johannes.Schneider@xxxxxxx>]

Richard Fidler asked:

> How does that differ from what Paul Flewers said?

Paul Flewers:

"This involves the abolition of religious schools and their resources
being brought into the state educational system."

Karl Marx:
"Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any
influence on the school."

Paul advocates the subordination of schools under the state, where as Marx
demands its exclusion from the educational system. The difference is
obvious to me. Marx sees state and church as equally bad influences on
education, while Paul prefers the state over the church.

Karl Marx was quite consistent in seeing both church and state influence
as equally negative. With regard to the Paris Commune he wrote in the "The
Civil War in France"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
"The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people
gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church
and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but
science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and
governmental force had imposed upon it."

Friedrich Engels was even in favour of tolerance for religious schools. In
1891 he wrote
Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Programmentwurfs 1891, MEW 22, S. 237

"Vollständige Trennung von Kirche und Staat. Alle religiösen
Gemeinschaften ohne Ausnahme werden vom Staat als Privatgenossenschaften
behandelt. Sie verlieren jede Unterstützung aus öffentlichen Mitteln und
jeden Einnuß auf die öffentlichen Schulen. (Man kann ihnen doch nicht
verbieten, eigne Schulen aus eignen Mitteln zu gründen und dort ihren
Blödsinn zu lehren.)"

"You cannot bar the churches from founding schools out of their own monet
and teaching their non-sense there" (My translation, JS)

Johannes

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