Marxism: The New Secular Religion of the Left....

The Iconoclast ^ | December 21, 2002 | Murray Soupcoff (The Iconoclast)

[Apolitical]

big>ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK....

Marxism: The New Secular Religion of the Left....



December 21, 2002: There seems to be a consensus among sociologists that religion is on the wane among educated young people in affluent Western nations, especially in Europe and Canada (but somewhat less so in the United States where organized religion still flourishes). However, what these so-called social experts choose to ignore is the growth of new forms of secular "religion" -- rigid, ideological-based social movements such as environmentalism, anti-globalism and of course the opiate of contemporary intellectuals in America and on the continent -- Marxism.

Just as Karl Marx might point out, if he were somehow reincarnated as a conservative critic of these great contemporary secular "faiths," these progressive ideological "isms" all bear the earmarks of what the original revolutionary Karl might have considered illusionary beliefs -- rigid orthodoxies, rote catechisms based on myth, allegory and wishful thinking, and the need for an irrational leap of faith on the part of true believers in order to ignore the belief's many internal contradictions, corruption of logic, and divorce from historical reality.

With these thoughts in mind we recommend a new Economist essay, Marx After Communism , an examination of the surprising extended shelf life of this long-discredited socio-economic theory and ideology, even though its "past due" date expired when the Soviet Union spectacularly imploded near the end of the past century.

Basically, here's what the Economist editorialists have to say regarding contemporary Marxism:

But the fact remains that on everything that mattered most to Marx himself, he was wrong. The real power he claimed for his system was predictive, and his main predictions are hopeless failures....

Anti-globalism has been aptly described as a secular religion. So is Marxism: a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on.

In fact, Marxism -- just as it functioned in the early 20th century in Europe and America -- has become a soul-destroying, quasi-religious cult for contemporary Western intellectuals -- a conformist exercise in irrational group think that supplies its true believers with pre-manufactured belief and robs them of their ability to think or act independently. It boasts its charismatic gurus (aka intellectual fruitcakes) such as the likes of Noam Chomsky and Jacques Derrida, its martyred false prophets such as Franz Fanon and Che Guevara, and its biblical texts such as Das Kapital, Wretched of the Earth, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies and most recently, Empire.

The unfortunately reality, however, is that the most fervid practitioners of this secular faith dominate our institutions of higher learning. And so increasingly, the great American centers of independent thought -- including Harvard, Yale and Stanford -- have morphed into Scientology-like brainwashing centers for the young and impressionable. And their most lethal product is the armies of brainwashed young automatons whom they churn out with machine-like predictability -- "useful idiots" cluelessly spewing the hate-America cant of anti-imperialism, anti-globalism and radical environmentalism.........................

[A_perfect_lady]

In other words, you are never going to answer because you don't know. Okay. Nice talking to you. I consider myself the winner of this little debate. (-:

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

In other words, you are never going to answer because you don't know. Okay. Nice talking to you. I consider myself the winner of this little debate. (-:

Just like a woman. Always has to have the last word, no matter how illogical. (^;

I see no winners or losers, just two people who do not agree. One is academically informed, the other is willfully opinionated.

[Tailgunner Joe]

environmentalism allows a new generation of leftist morons to believe they represent "scientific progress" against the slackjawed "religious right."