Quote of the Day
Let me explain how Marxism works as a religion with regard to its theory of sin/evil.
Ludicrous Marxist beliefs about criminality and whatnot are all really easy to understand when you realize Marxism is a religion built out of the same Christian motifs reoriented and turned inside-out.
In Marxist faith, the Fall of Man isn’t the result of disobedience to God but instead individualism realized through private property. That is, it’s the result of disobedience to Man as a collectivist “species-being,” in Marx’s terminology: a being that lives for the whole species instead of just himself. (Marx had an entitlement complex he turned into an evil religion.)
So, private property, capitalism with it, and individualism are Marxism’s Original Sin, so they create man’s sinful (depraved) nature, and so all bad things (like crime, etc.) are downstream from that. Repentance of the sin of individualism, through the abolition by spiritual transcendence of private property, which requires the destruction of capitalism on the macro scale, is therefore the Marxist theory of salvation (soteriology).
If you overcome the ravages of capitalism by abolishing private property rights and transcending the idea of private property in your own spiritual development, and thus eliminating the basis for individualism, you also undo the sinful nature of man, which would end all evil, all crime, and so on.
This is why you see them forward asinine programs like Restorative Justice and offering to pay criminals to stop crime and claims that all crime is the result of systemic racism and everything that follows from all of that. They believe that they’re socially ameliorating the source of human depravity, thus their will to sin (against Man).
Of course, they’re completely wrong. You don’t have to accept the Christian view of sin to see this, but you certainly could. This is another reason Marxism can never work. It’s completely wrong about human nature at a completely fundamental level, not just on a practical level in terms of motivations to be productive.
The soteriology (theory of salvation) of Marxism still ultimately depends on repentance, then. You have to repent of individualism, partly by renouncing (transcending) private property. It’s only salvific if everyone else does it too, though. Universal salvation or none.
James Lindsay, full varsity @ConceptualJames
Posted on X May 1, 2024 (and here)
Hmmm… That seems to fit the facts as I know them.
Comments?
They’ve got their militant, evangelical fundamentalists. They have their inquisitors. They’ve got rituals and shibboleths. They’re using universities and colleges for their original purposes: to train clergy. If you subordinate your culture to their guidance, willingly, they will integrate some of your cultural elements into their larger traditions; otherwise they’ll just destroy you and force your children into their indoctrination centers.
Oh, and the vast majority of their faithful follow their faith with child-like dogmatism with no understanding of the underpinning philosophy nor pondering the implications.
Yep, all checks out.
To paraphrase someone famous, if they do it for your own good, there are no limits.
He is absolutely correct. In a series of writings in 1844, Marx described man’s alienation from the means of production, other men, and his species being. Like most philosophies/ideologies/theologies, there’s a truth there – alienation. We feel it, we sense it and live lives alienated from these things Marx described.
Where Marx goes wrong, as Lindsay says, is in it’s belief that man is essentially good and reasonable, and when class constraints, property, capitalism, imperialism, and such are removed, man will respond with reason and generosity, living in community, (Communism), with his fellow man.
Look around. See any of that? Not happening. I’m a Christian, and a believer in man’s depravity and sinful nature. As Lindsay points out, you don’t have to be a Christian to believe these things. Just an observer.
Counterfeit Christianity. Just like Islam. Marxism is just a religion of domination.
satan’s political system. Or as Vox Day named it. “The Empire that never ended.”
Since the beginning of history evil has plagued humanity. Marxism is just the latest iteration of that evil. Subverting human nature, twisting it into something unrecognizable. Murdering both the innocent and faithful alike.
Lot’s-O-luck, and I’ll see you on the beach.
In the very first tell of collectivism. Where Christ’s disciples had all things in common. The couple that sold their property, but kept hid part of the money, got zapped by the Holy Spirit for lying about it.
So, murder/death and communism go hand in hand. No matter who tries it.
And in America the first pilgrims tried sharing everything and almost starved to death. Once the governor gave them all their own land and told them to live or die by their own hand?
They had abundance we still enjoy to this day.
But most importantly is the fact that communism is the outward manifestation of a base evil in all of us. That it’s much easier the steal from others than work for something.
And those that lack worldly experience or have little impulse control are the most in danger of acting on that evil. Unfortunately, America is OD’ing on that arc-type and is about to pay what so many have paid before.
In blood, lot’s and lot’s of blood. Misery and brutality.
Evil never ends for humanity. So, neither will the fight against it.
In college I did my senior research thesis on anarchist communes on the Olympic peninsula (there’re a bunch of artifacts in a Gig Harbor museum, among other things), and they all failed for (IMO) the same reason: people can’t agree on personal taste.
I want potatoes. You want corn. We have a plot of land that can only support one, which one do we plant? You can argue about priorities in terms of nutrition, but you can’t argue which one tastes better. Ultimately the communities all dissolved because people couldn’t agree on how to utilize common resources, I assert because personal taste can only be compromised for so long before people stop being willing to compromise.
We may be a social species, but we’re individuals first, and that individuality can’t be removed (well, not without tranquilizers, anyway). Any social system that ignores that fails.
Remember the pilgrims came over here to exercise their freedom to tell everyone else how they should worship.
The Pilgrims also started off their colony by owning everything in common and receiving according to their need. They almost starved to death. Then the colonial governor abolished their communism, divided the colony property among the families and said, “It’s your land, live off it and trade amongst yourselves as needed,” and they thrived.
In some of his longer-form presentations, James Lindsay (the guy quotes here) goes into detail how Marxism and the Woke ideology meets every part of the SCOTUS test for “what is a religion?” It has a world-view, a view of man, a call to action, a means of salvation, everything.
Functionally, it is essentially the same as Satanism, which in in basic form is a rejection of God of the Bible with the idea of “we can be as gods ourselves, and do not need outside grace for salvation. We can do it all!” There is nothing beyond the here and now, and no high laws or morality (objective rules for right and wrong) to be followed.
So, yes, commies are evil.
Does that last paragraph mean that I can singlehandedly deny Marxists their misbegotten, evil equivalent of salvation for as long as I live*? Sweet!
*Yes, I know that they’ll do their level best to kill me. They’ll do that regardless, so I may as well get some satisfaction out of the deal.
Nah! Not buying it. The most fervent of Marxists….like that assclown Bernie Sanders…LOVE private property and especially the ability for them to OWN private property. Marxism is no more a religion than islam is. It’s just an excuse to let your inner asshole loose to prey on others.
So, it sounds like the model is complete: in addition to true belivers, the Marxist religion has more than it’s share of apostate leaders looking to fleece the flock and hypocritical followers just going along with the crowd in an attempt to avoid social consequences.
Now if we could just separate church and state…
Bones has the right of it.
I have been considering the question of why Marxism is so resilient given the economic disasters and the mountains of skulls. The answers are twofold. It is indeed a religion with all of the characteristics mentioned by Tirno plus it has spawned three major heresies-fascism, Maoism and cultural Marxism. All have produced economic disasters of their own and the first two, their own mountains of skulls. The third is still working on the mountains of skulls.
The second reason is that Marx and Engels got something right. It is all about power and if you control the means of production, you have the power. This is not only true but opens the door to all sorts of grifters as Jason says.
It is also successful because it taps into a very powerful emotion, envy. There are a lot more unsuccessful and envious people in the world looking for a way to loot others, than successful / satisfied people. There is a reason that envy is considered one of the major sins in Christianity.