lgoasklucyl wrote:Is Marxism being an atheist because they don't worship a God and have a set of ideals not based on a higher power?
I do understand that there are some slightly different interpretations of how Marxism should be worked out, but in essence, it is atheistic according to its founders and their later successors of the Marxist message:
"Philosophy makes no secret of it. Prometheus's admission: 'In sooth all gods I hate' is its own admission, its own motto against all gods, heavenly and earthly, who do not acknowledge the consciousness of man as the supreme divinity. There must be no god on a level with it." - Karl Marx,
On Religion, Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), pg. 15
"The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man" - Karl Marx,
Karl Marx - Frederick Engels: Collected Works, 40 volumes (New York: International Publishers, 1976) vol. 3, pg. 182
"Absolute criticism still regards the abolition of religion, atheism, as the condition for civil equality" - Karl Marx,
Ibid, vol. 4, pg. 89
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people" - Karl Marx,
Ibid, vol. 3, pg. 175
"We want to sweep away everything that claims to be supernatural and superhuman, for the root of all untruth and lying is the pretension of the human and the natural to be superhuman and supernatural. For that reason we have once and for all declared war on religion and religious ideas and care little whether we are called atheists or anything else" - Frederick Engels,
Ibid, vol. 3, pg. 175
"All religion is nothing but a fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces." - Frederick Engels,
Anti-Duhring, cited in Marx and Engels - On Religion, pgs. 147-148
"The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion." - V. I. Lenin,
Complete Collected Works, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978) vol. 10, pg. 402
"Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism" - V.I. Lenin,
Ibid, pg. 86
"Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness...vileness of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions...are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of a God decked out in the smartest 'ideological' costumes. Every defense of justification of the idea of God, even the most refined, the best intentioned, is a justification of reaction" - V. I. Lenin,
Ibid, pg. 122
"We Communists are atheists" - Chou En-lai at the Bandung Conference in April 1955,
Communism: Faith and Fallacies, edited by James D. Bales, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1962), pg. 37
"fight for the full victory of atheism" -
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, (Moscow: 1950), cited in Bale's Communism: Faith and Fallacies, pg. 165
"If you are not a convinced atheist, you cannot be a good Communist. Atheism is indissolubly bound to Communism" -
Young Communists League's 'Ten Commandments of Communism', Ibid, pg. 37
"Communism has not changed its attitude of opposition to religion. We are doing everything we can to eliminate the bewitching power of the opium of religion" - Nakita Kruschev in speech from September, 22, 1955,
Ibid, pg. 165
"The Communist Party aims at doing away with the remnants of the old order, including the religious remnant. An intensification of scientifico-atheistic propaganda is needed in order to raise the cultural level of Soviet citizens and to further their education for communism" - M. T. Iovchuk,
The Role of Socialist Ideology in the Struggle Against the Survivals of Capitalism, cited in Gustav A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Publishers, 1977), pgs. 245-246
"As a result of the victory of socialism in our country, the exploiter classes which spread and supported religion and religious and ecclesiastical organizations were destroyed. In this way, the social roots of religion were undermined. As a result of the cultural revolution which has taken place in our country and the spread of scientific atheist propaganda, the overwhelming majority of the population of the Soviet Union has made a complete break with religion and has adopted the position of atheism" -
The Atheist's Handbook, (Moscow: 1959), reprinted in English by U.S. Joint Publications Research Service, pg. 117
"The party takes a position of militant atheism and an implacable aggressive ideological struggle against religious befuddlement" -
Ibid, pg. 69
"Each party member must be an atheist and conduct active anti-religious propaganda among those not belonging to the party" - Ibid, pg. 222
"Marxists must adhere to atheism because: (1) clergy are anti-communist, (2) religion is philosophically wrong, thereby giving believers a false sense of reality, and (3) atheism supports the workers" - Boris M. Marjamov, cited in '
Face-to-Face Interview with Soviet Atheist Leaders, edited by Frederick Edwords,
The Humanist, January/February 1987, pg. 9
"The main purpose of the institute [under the Academy of Social Sciences] is to spread the atheistic world view, the atheistic behavior pattern, the atheistic way of understanding life, understanding ethics, and so on. Beginning in school, we work to bring up all the people in the atheistic world view" - Dr. Victor D. Timofeyev, Institute for Scientific Atheism,
Ibid, pg. 9
"Incorporated into every subject is education in the spirit of Marxism, of which atheistic ideas are a part...Besides their regular classes, there is also a program after school when children attend a special study club. Here the teachers utilize motives and slides and lectures on atheism" - Sinaida Vetschenko,
Ibid, pg. 9
"The study of atheism is incorporated into the philosophy course." - Yevgenia Ossipova,
Ibid, pg. 10
"Children 8 to 14 were enrolled in groups of 'Godless Youth'. These were disbanded before the War [WWII] though the League of Communist Youth continues its atheist indoctrination to this day" - Paul Kurtz,
Militant Atheism Versus Freedom of Conscience,
Free Inquiry, Fall 1989, pg. 28
. The horrible crimes are not being perpetuated because of atheism, and atheism is in now way justifying it, or anything of the sort. They are happening because the theocracy with a defacto God-Emperor does not tolerate any other religious beliefs and I'm sure that atheists and Christians are being persecuted alike.
