I've been struggling for a while to reconcile my faith (Islam) with communism. I've run into a lot of leftists who tell me flat out that you can't be religious and a Marxist. They quote Lenin, Bukharin, and the ABC of Communism to argue that religion is 'idealist' and that any believing communist is a 'revisionist.'
But recently, someone on this platform responded to one of my posts with something that really stuck with me. They suggested that the leftists I've been arguing with might be confusing mechanical materialism with dialectical materialism. They put it this way:
'A dialectical materialist view would say that somebody receiving a message from a god is part of their material conditions... either way, it's still a real thing impacting them.'
They argued that a mechanical materialist treats humans like passive objects, reduces consciousness to brain chemistry, and sees religion as just 'false consciousness' to be eliminated. A dialectical materialist, by contrast, understands that consciousness is real, that ideas emerge from material conditions and then react back on them, and that religion is a complex phenomenon that can be a force for resistance or oppression depending on the context.
This really resonated with me, but I want to understand it more deeply.
So I want to ask you all:
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In your own words, what is the difference between mechanical and dialectical materialism?
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How does dialectical materialism approach the question of religion, compared to mechanical materialism?
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Does dialectical materialism require atheism as a philosophical commitment, or is it compatible with someone who holds religious faith as a personal and communal practice so as long as they don't use their faith as their analytical tool or basis for an argument?
I’ve not heard of mechanical materialism before, but from overall I don’t think that dialectical materialism, communism, and Marxism are in direct conflict with religion. Primarily because religion is spiritual, it deals with the non-material reality. While it does have an effect on material reality such as prohibitions on certain foods or practices and necessary prayer, those are material things that must be considered as such. Ultimately it’s no different than a culture that has prohibitions on foods, practices, and its own rituals or festivals. And those things can be accounted for materially.
Ultimately I think that a lot of religions tend to uphold the same principles and values that Marxism does, but whereas religion relies on a moral and spiritual analysis Marxism takes a more pragmatic materialist approach to come to similar conclusions.
Broadly speaking the only thing religion has in direct conflict with communism is the nature of the church as an anti-revolutionary institution as we’ve seen historically. As long as religious organizations answer to the people and participate within, but do not supersede or exist outside of the people’s control, then there is no conflict. Ultimately various religious organizations becoming anti-communist, particularly after the October revolution, is the root of a lot of anti-religious sentiment within Marxism I think and why Marx himself didn’t connect as much about communism and religion being in conflict with each other than Lenin and others did later.
All that said Marxist theory has come a long way in analyzing these things with the benefit of historical analysis and anti-religious sentiment is similar to anti-LGBTQ sentiment, and outdated concept rooted in historical conditions that must be overcome.