Re: Felix Morrow on religion

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2/24/07, Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Greetings Economists,
> On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:24 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Where do leftists expect workers to turn when Marxism
> > becomes the most powerful religion of capitalism?
>
> Doyle;
> I am reminded of the Chinese Cultural Revolution trying to deal with
> the duality of capitalist roaders in the socialist movement.  To me,
> the production of knowledge is the heart of the debate.  What unifies
> society?  What are the tools that unify a great state?  How do they
> work.

It seems to me it would have been better if China's workers and
peasants had been able to debate which economic path to take --
greater economic development at the cost of greater inequality or
lesser inequality at the cost of lesser economic development -- in the
sixties.  Why did the Cultural Revolution become "cultural," rather
than economic?

> Religion is fundamentally flawed in the sense of morality.  It can't
> theorize a realistic scientific answer to intimate connection so it
> must dither around in metaphysics for some concrete answer to the
> cravings for emotional freedom.  Socialism can offer ways to 'navigate'
> the ocean of feelings to free people to crave gay sex, changing roles
> when they want and a lot of other online community of interests
> activities not possible in the face to face world.  In which turn that
> deeply influences the face to face world.  Especially eroding religious
> methods which are not scientific in terms of networked properties of
> human connection.
> Doyle

Socialism's record on freedom overall, including freedom to have gay
sex, is not superior to religion's.  That's how most GLBT people
think, and I doubt you'll convince them otherwise.  People who leave
religion for that reason, instead of trying to reform it, generally
don't turn to socialism as an alternative but to liberalism, for many
people conflate liberalism with capitalism with Europe, and think
that, if they do liberalism, they can also all have European
capitalist development and social democracy and personal freedoms that
comes with it.  But that just ain't so.  :->
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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