Can they survive together?
Giancarlo Orsini ‘30
Guest Writer
Class consciousness, the awareness of one’s placement within social or economic classes, an understanding which helps not only to uplift but habitually enables what we know is inequality, to be disrupted. This fact causes routine clashes with religion in its many forms. Yet some of these religions convey the same meanings or have been construed to mean similar things, so wouldn’t their working together benefit both? Whichever way these religious views may take shape in Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, or groups associated with these religions, The Catholic Worker, the Murabbi Party, Brahmo Samaj, and many others, all have been echoed against or for this class consciousness in some way across the world and have asked the question: can class-conscious societies survive religion and vice versa?
Classic examples against this include the Soviet Union’s state atheism and Chinese state atheism, or Spanish revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s. Whom upon highlighted specific Marxist quotations, such as Marx’s common quote “Religion is the Opium of the People”, to refer to religion as a backward idea that holds back class struggles within their societies, which invoked many actions against religion in their specific areas. Contrary to these examples are those which espouse a communal connection between both these ideas of class consciousness and organized religion and habitually tie back to ideas of religious reform. These groups include, but are not wholly limited to, The Catholic Worker, Brahmo Samaj, as well as the Indonesian Murba Party. All of which incorporate aspects of their founding religions in their ideologies.
Does this combination of the two intrinsically prove that they are able to survive or even flourish together? A dream which I wish for every day. No, it does not; groups across the world have tried and failed at forming states and societies which are able to combine the two. These states include the likes of Islamic-Socialist governments of Afghanistan and Libya, two governments which now lie in ruins or under extremist occupation. This is not aided by large religious organizations and their outright hostility to movements which are associated with class consciousness; namely being the Catholic Church, which fought a religious war against the Soviet Union for nearly the entirety of the latter’s existence.
A fundamental challenge to the ability of both ideas to work together is the subsequent demonization of both sides’ greater perspectives, unable to take away the positive ideals from each other due to the greater failures of these wholes. In the case of the Catholic Church, as well as its long history against communism and revolutionary groups in general, it has been hard to enable the collective grasp of class consciousness and what it can mean for the individual and the Church. A fact which may never leave the Catholic Church, or any group on either side, who still fight bitterly and often to the death to this very minute.
DSA Religious Socialism | About Religious Socialism
Hindu Reform Movements: Reviving Traditions and Promoting Equality • Social Work Institute
THE PARTAI MURBA OF INDONESIA, A SPLINTER COMMUNIST PARTY | CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov)
Image courtesy of Middle East Monitor
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