the god that failed: an exploration of images of the imagination by: Andrew R Taylor

I view some kinds of atheism as a cleansing of the mind far preferable to worshipping idols of the imagination. You know the famous Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote strongly on false belief and false worship,- he said "religion is a place to hide from God".

And just as religion can become a totalistic, limiting philosophy closed to the variety and immensity of mystery / reality, in the same way political movements can propose a totalistic limiting philosophy that rejects openness and pluralism. Everything I write on politics & religion has this problem of dimished vision in mind .

And when your religion or your party fails to fill your ontological incompleteness -- then you are in crisis: it turns out you have served "The God That Failed" whether it was a political or religious idol, and the panic is on.

It is that then a terrible darkness can come over the Mind and will and imagination: John of the Cross, the Carmelite Mystic, talks about "the Dark Night of the soul" when all sensible apprehension of the divine vanishes. It is difficult to accept the instruction to stay still when one's deity has dissapeared.

En passant I have just mentioned a book title by former-Communists edited by Arthur Koestler: "The God That Failed". There are in-good-faith and bad-faith reasons for leaving a cadre party I suppose, and I do not judge any of the contributors to this important anthology. The diverse group of contributors to the book shared one act in common -- they had handed over their liberty and conscience to a less-than-ultimate structure, and discovering that the Party was not ultimate and all-knowing, they lost their way. The authors describe their entrance into the darkness of unknowing; their depression, their rage and griefs.

So I propose that no matter how good a Communist we might be, however good a Catholic or Conservative, a Buddhist, Jew or Muslim, or any other sect, we regularly make the exercise of remembering that the visible fellowship is an imperfect band of brothers and sisters reaching outward for the common good, following a great historically mediated tradition that can help open our eyes to truth and bless the world or blinker them and create living hells.

I do not believe we humans are strong enough or wise enough to entrust ourselves absolutely to anything but the absolute -- however we conceive that. We suffer if we forget that lesson.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
-W.H. Auden,
excerpt from "As I Walked Out One Evening"

And the world has already staged enough political/theological trials, burned enough witches.

On Religion (Again), by Andrew W Taylor

Many Marxists continue to hold the older classical Marxist idea of all Religion invariably being a fantastic refraction of Class Society. But some of us learned from Liberation Theology that while Religion is lived by some as a principle of bourgeois Order,other kinds of relgious believing inspires people to rebel from unjust conditions and " seek the Kingdom of God" not just after the grave, but as the future promise of this Earth. After all, Jesus said in the gospel of Luke: "Blessed are the Poor, They will inherit the Earth". (NOT 'they will inherit "pie in the sky when they die")

During the 1980s I met CP militants from Central America who said their national parties had had to come to terms with unnuanced anti-religious elements in older cadre teaching because the "Base Ecclesial Communities" were obviously producing mature, disciplined, militant layers of workers and farmers.

I think this Religion(s) questions looms large for Marxist/Socialist approach to the Aboriginal peoples. Are we really going to arrive at the door of Traditional or Christian Native people, and lecture them based on Eurocentric Enlightenment Thought on their 'superstitious belief in spirits, gods'? Will we bring our Eurocentric intellectual hatchets to chop down 'totems of belief' in a new ideologically imperial Marxist project?

So there is much work to be done by Marxists in developing a nuanced appreciation of Religion as a multi-layered dimension of man irreducible to a simple formula. Unfortunately many Marxists rejected an altar-boy level Religion in their adolescence and have an uninformed dogmatism on the Question.

But of course, one finds people who are angry at Religion in any demographic. I think a lot of ant-religious feeling comes out of western european bourgeois secularism of the post-Enlightenment. My own Scottish grandparents had pure contempt for religion. It was as if they thought "that nonsense has alll been cleared up by science. Only idiots bother with it." What more was there to talk about?

But my grandparents were also educated in the UK under a triumphalistic scientific paragigm, in which they had been taught to view African, North American and Asian Traditional religions as a pack of superstitious garbage which progressive white Europeans would de-mystify for the ignorant brown, black, tellow and red races! The triumphalism of The British Empire, the triumphalism of "scientific socialism", and the triumphalism of "The March of Science" made a heady mixture. All these ideological forces also mightily contributed to the parcelling up and poisoning of the Earth by an imperious scientism impervious to traditional religious reverence for "our Mother, the Earth".

The danger, in my view, for modern (or post-modern) Socialism is to keep alive this unexamined Eurocentric bourgeois bias. The socialist and communist movements will attract only the flotsam and jetsam of European radical relativism unless it re-evaluates its stance on the spiritual dimension of "homo religious".

YCL SUPPORTS ABORIGINAL ACTIONS Self-determination & justice now!, (reprint from 2007)

YCL SUPPORTS ABORIGINAL ACTIONS
Self-determination & justice now!
Across the land today, Aboriginal peoples together with their allies, are sounding a warning to the trans-national corporations and the government of Canada, a government that is foreign and has no rightful control over the indigenous peoples!

Warning bell: action needed now!
Canada has a long, shady and brutal history of con artists stealing the land, resources, and very way of life from the Aboriginal peoples who have been the protectors of this land. As time goes on the theft of resources continues as oil, gas, hydroelectric power, and raw materials are given away to the new powers, the corporate states (trans-national corporations).

Youth are not taught this history in school. Talking about land claims and acknowledging the rights of First Nations (and all Aboriginal peoples), which should have happened all along, has never been acted upon in good faith. So after waiting for so long, Aboriginals will be the first ones to step in the right direction and act.

Time for Solidarity
The actions of June 29th are for self-determination and justice for Aboriginal peoples first and foremost but ultimately, justice for all that live on this land. Why? Because the capitalists sell our resources south to the USA and all the people are being robbed.

The Young Communist League of Canada is out joining actions today because we know that Aboriginal peoples are on the front lines against the evils of big corporate greed that we call imperialism. We stand in solidarity.

Aboriginal peoples have been the target of genocidal and systemic racist policies causing unemployment and difficulty in finding a job, police harassment, colonial in-justice, and health problems.

In the cities, Aboriginal people have to make ends meet to pay rent to slumlords who profit from the situation. Paying rent on what was once their own land? Being watched and "looked after" by an imposed police force? Kept on small "reserves" that are more like refugee camps? Kept at third world conditions?

These are all the results of an archaic government system, and the policies of that system that perpetuate oppressive conditions.

Young people are bombarded with misinformation. The perceptions that First Nations "have everything at the expense of the taxpayer" is a divide and conquer tactic. No, Aboriginals do not get anything free, for they have paid the highest price: their freedom.

Time to pay the bills
First Nations have made treaties that agreed to "share the land," not sign it over. They agreed to move to new homes on reserves. However, they were then locked there, and what reserves they had were relocated, and reduced in size.

They do not own their land (held in a government "trust") and have no jobs on reserves. Spending for First Nations is close to $8,000 per year per person. Who really gets it free? The trans-national corporations and the billionaires.

The colonizing business interests have capitalized on the loss of Aboriginal land and resource wealth. Aboriginals "gave an inch" while capitalists and racists "took a mile". The time has come for the return of what was stolen. Fair is fair. Time to pay the bill.

If there is to be any justice and a peaceful and healthy co-operation between nations, self-determination must prevail, and above all, honour in DEED by all concerned.

If the Harper Conservative government does not do what it promised, then it is just another lie (and we know how governments lie no matter who you are!). Lying is the language of thieves, and certainly does not lead to peace and justice.

Please read the statements given out by the Assembly of First Nations, and other Aboriginals groups, because one's best voice is one's own. The Young Communist League adds its voice to those taking a stand today, June 29th, because justice must prevail. In unity is strength. With the Communist Party, the YCL demands action to further this aim:

- Recognize the Métis as an Aboriginal people.

- Support prompt land claims settlements, including Aboriginal rights over resources.

- Campaign for a new, equal and voluntary partnership of nations in Canada in a democratically made constitution.

Every Canadian citizen who is not a member of the ruling class, who does not have a vested interest in exploitation and robbery, should take a good look in the mirror. Looking back are the First Nations allies with the same needs: access to education, jobs, housing, public ownership of resources and wealth, the dignity to live as proud human beings in peace and friendship.

This is the bottom line and the practical reality of solidarity, unity and social justice. We call upon all the youth and students to stand in solidarity with Aboriginal peoples!

Copyright © 2007 Young Communist League

Our goal is Socialism, by Andrew R Taylor

I believe there is only one way to overcome the chronic economic crises, the narcissistic "me-firstism" inculcated by capitalist mass-psychology, and the coming ecological degradation that will otherwise destroy the Earth, and it is through the establishment of a socialist state with a socialist economy by the workers, accompanied by an educational system which would educate its citizens in socially aware, cooperative aspirations, methods and goals. In this type of economy, the means of production are owned by the people themselves and it functions in a rational fashion through planning. Try as I might, I cannot think of a reformist path that will actually do what must be done.

While it may in certain conditions be an ameliorative measure, I do not see the partial or full nationalisation of capitalist assets as necessarily a step toward radical democracy never-mind socialism. Keynesianism consists of a counter-revolutionary series of measures to save capitalism from its inherent self-destroying profit function. I reject reformism as an ideology that holds that the most the working class can hope for is the adoption of progressive reforms (however good and helpful). Social democrats usually confine "Politics" to election campaigns and trade unions; both are necessary areas of struggle and education, but at some point when conditions are ripe the organised working people will have to take away the means of production from the capitalists.

However socialism comes about, it will have to be very carefully and deliberately carried out by an organised working class and its allies. Because of the immense opposition to social ownership on the part of the possessing capitalist class, at all stages of the revolutionary struggle for power as well as in the challenges of the revolutionary process, the working people have to be readied to defend their gains from police surveillance, agents provocateur, and the violence of police and soldiers. We must look at the experience of interferences in nations becoming socialist, or nationalist, or merely deemed to be contrary to US "national interests". But Canada has its own police surveillance as well that works hand to glove with FBI and CIA covert action.

All of these unhappy realities raise the question of the need for a disciplined Socialist party that has learned wisdom and unflinching commitment from many decades of internal and international struggles with imperialism and capitalism.

It is true "Society" can be conceived in a variety of different ways, depending on the operative (or unformulated) sociological theory.

Let me speak more clearly, and as a Marxist, of the State, including among its different arms, first, the courts, police, prisons; second, the government, the civil service, parliament, city council; third, govt sponsored bodies like the public school system. Under capitalism the Ruling Class requires police to guard property and break strikes as well as arresting the criminal elements. Parliament or Congress with the Courts maintain corporate class rule while superbly keeping alive the fiction that anyone has the "right" to rise to the corridors of power and "serve the nation". A legal, formal right does not magically permit the worker to transcend class barriers.

My examples are meant to illustrate that the State is not neutral; "Society" as its constituted in our several countries is partisan on the side of the antagonistic owning Class.

Under socialism, the chief means of production are socially owned and controlled by means of a revolutionary socialist state. And the base of the socialist party and the socialist state is the working-class – the majority within society. The government of the socialist state is composed of the leading, politically educated delegates of the working-class and its Movement. The citizens send their deputies to regional and central legislative bodies through free vote. This State is also partisan, but in favor of the majority. It will defend itself from internal and external attempts at the overthrow of the Revolution. It will not tolerate the operation of parties advocating fascism, war,or hate crimes; it will not permit public political agitation intended to overthrow socialism and restore capitalism.

If the capitalist state is as I have characterized it in the foregoing discussion, a partisan possessing class stunting and distorting our creativity, our values, expropriating all in its path -- from our parliaments and judiciary to our factories and labour,-- then we must stop sabotaging our class and survival interests, and prepare for the perhaps near, perhaps distant day, when the working-class and its allies takes power.