And I use "normal" in scare quotes, because, according to whom, exactly, capitalism? Society? Yourself? Some of the "weirdest" people I've met in my life where also some of the nicest and actually helped me out. People you'd peg as "normal"? Well I've had my fair share of shit with them. I'm not about to put up with some reddit lord trying to score points with cool kid podcasters by throwing people who feed the homeless under the bus, fuck you very much.

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[–] Feed_el_Castro@hexbear.net 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It is strictly contradictory in the most widespread sense of "religion". Religion most often implies a metaphysical working for the universe, which is incompatible with scientific materialism. Abstract cultural and ritual practices are of course not incompatible with Marxism, but that's more culture than it is religion in the strict sense IMO, boils down to definition of words.

[–] ComradeRat@hexbear.net 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The guy youve named urself after said theres no contradiction lol. Cuba lets catholics into the party.

[–] Feed_el_Castro@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Keep in mind I said "strictly". Political practice is all but strict, and a revolutionary movement born in Cuba is obviously necessarily inclusive of Catholics. This doesn't mean that Catholicism is compatible with materialism, being materialist actually requires discarding the metaphysical aspects such as miracles, any event of godly intervention on Earth, and the cores event of Christianity which are creation, immaculate conception, resurrection, and the existence of souls and afterlife.

Marxist political movements are full of concessions that are contrary to ideology but necessary in practice. The Soviets absolutely understood that peasants wanting land ownership was a negative thing compared to collective ownership, and the ideal practice was the Sovkhoz (agricultural state companies operating under economic planning) rather than the Kolkhoz (private agricultural communes operating to an extent under the profit motive). However, in order to satisfy peasant desires in 1929, the collectivization had to be carried out majorly in the latter form. This is an example of good revolutionary Marxist practice which directly opposed strict theory.

I'm a huge Hakim fanboy (he was mentioned in the main comment of this chain) and I respect him probably more than any other socialist currently alive in terms of theory, he's educated me more than anyone else. I still can respect him as an incredible Marxist agitator and educator and believe that I have opinion differences with him regarding religion in the particular sense of metaphysical claims (and not about cultural practices and rituals as I said).

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

immaculate conception,

This term doesn't mean what you think it means. Jesus' conception is called the Incarnation. "Immaculate Conception" refers to Mary being conceived without original sin, it's something only Catholics believe in.

[–] Feed_el_Castro@hexbear.net 4 points 2 days ago

Thanks!

[–] ComradeRat@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Cuba used to uphold that marxism was contradictory to being a catholic; their allowal of catholics into the party is a more recent (last 40ish years afaik) thing, resulting in part from the catholic church in cuba becoming less reactionary and partly from the party no longer worrying about these sorts of unproveable metaphysical debates. Being materialist requires, first and formost, starting from the premise of actual living people who must producr food before they can think, and secondmost investigatig the actual conditions and experiences before drawing a provisional conclusion, not a final conclusion for all time and certainly not adherence to this or that dogma as absolute truth.

For context, i come at this sort of topic with a lotta concern about how these sorts of views have resulted in chauvinist policies against indigenous peoples (including unfortunate examples of residential schools in the ussr to "exterminate superstition"). For all societies before europe in the 1600s, spiritual "metaphors" were the entire way they understood the empirical world; that is why, for example, so many of the life saving drugs stolen by western pharma from indigenous peoples, have "spiritual" stories attached to them to explain use, location, etc. When instead of examining the specific claims made by real people we dismiss them bc they dont align with dogma we fail to be materialists and pass into a phony idealist materialism that often makes us miss out on actually useful discoveries, as well as being chauvinistic.

[–] Feed_el_Castro@hexbear.net 1 points 2 days ago

Yes, I fully agree with everything you said in your comment. I specifically addressed the difference between rituals and culture because of this, my point isn't "let's be cringe Reddit atheists and dunk on all religion all the time", it's simply that metaphysical claims should be systematically discarded as much as revolutionary practice allows.