Myths about communism & atheism
During the Nazi era along with German Catholics in the 1920s and 30s, and through the 1950s American anti-communist hysteria, right wing fanatics helped fuel the idea that communism meant an absence of religion and a promotion of atheism. Today, this myth still lives in the minds of many political conservatives and religionists.
However, nowhere in the Communist Manifesto or in USSR's Constitution (even during the height of the cold war) does there occur any mention of atheism. Nor did the USSR ever exterminate religion. On the contrary, nothing in Communism disallows religion. Noteworthy appears the fact that the Communist Manifesto (i.e., Manifesto of the Communist Party) compares Christianity with socialism:
"Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy, water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat."
Article 34 of the 1977 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics states that,
"Citizens of the USSR are equal before the law, without distinction of origin, social or property status, race or nationality, sex, education, language, attitude to religion, type and nature of occupation, domicile, or other status."
Communism describes an economic and social belief system, based on the concept of community ownership rather than individual ownership. It says nothing about promoting atheism or eliminating religion.
Although there certainly occurred prosecutions against Russian churches in the early 1900s, the powers of communism did this out of political concerns, not for religious or atheist reasons. Communists desire the control of all social resources and this includes its religious instruments just as it does its industry and agriculture. This served as one of the reasons why Stalin reintroduced the Russian Orthodox Church where it exists to this day.
Perhaps the most quoted "reason" for connecting atheism to communism comes from Karl Marx's statement:
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."
This statement does not come from his communist philosophy, but rather from his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. It also does not express a statement about atheism or about the absence of a god, but rather an observation about religion. Note that many people who believe in god but who renounce religion agree with that statement. Pure individualist Protestantism, for example, correlates precisely with Marx's statement.
Karl Marx makes this clear from his own observation:
"It is possible, therefore, for the state to have emancipated itself from religion even if the overwhelming majority is still religious. And the overwhelming majority does not cease to be religious through being religious in private.... The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation of the real man from religion."
--Karl Marx (Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, Braunschweig, 1843)
That doesn't sound atheistic at all. At all.
Moreover, how does one explain communism's alleged atheism when other social and communist countries during the 1970s and 1980s, especially South American countries, embraced Christianity, especially Catholicism?
Note that virtually all books that attempt to connect atheism with communism have come from religious organizations or religious authors who have an obvious bent against a rival and competing belief-system. Indeed, Communism, at least the brand of Russian communism, has served as a threat to certain brands of Christian denominations, but this reflects no more an alignment with atheism than the history of Catholicism against Protestantism, or Protestantism against Catholicism, or Islam against Christianity or Christianity against Islam.
Believers have always portrayed enemies of religion as practicing subterfuge, propaganda, and by false labeling (and always doing the same themselves), and the same goes with arguments against Communism, for Communism describes a kind of religion in itself, a worship of the god of state instead of a god who dictates. Communism competes against religious dogma because it itself describes a dogma.
How can anyone explain the founding members of communism in terms of atheism with hardly a mention of atheism coming from them? Unfortunately even many atheists fall prey to this myth. Just because Bolshevik Communism curtailed the churches, what in the world has this got to do with atheism by that fact alone? If a hurricane swept through a Christian city and destroyed all the churches, should we blame it on an atheistic hurricane? If, indeed, communists justified their beliefs through atheism, then where do we find their arguments? In religious crusades, pogroms, and inquisitions, for example, we find a plethora of theological arguments to justify these atrocities from the theologians and religious believers themselves.
But what atheistic reasons did the Communist leaders use? Where do we find their exegesis? One should think that with all the claims and accusations we should find abundant sources. Where do we find them? Although I have not read the entire works of Marx and Stalin, I tried but failed to find where they even admit to their own atheism, much less an elucidation about their philosophy of atheism. This seems rather odd considering all the hoopla spent, ad nauseam, on the subject of atheistic Communism. Imagine a god based religion started by people who rarely speak about God, and you get a flavor of the absurdity of the atheist-Communism argument. So whenever some believer wants to defend the evils of religion by comparing it with the evils of Communist atheism, simply ask for the evidence of atheistic justification. I submit that they haven't a clue about what they talk about.
Let me give you a little challenge. Surely the great "Atheist," Karl Marx must have opined about atheism somewhere, so find an article or essay where Karl Marx explains or writes about atheism, either as a philosophy, or belief system. No? Better yet, find where he admits his atheism even in one sentence.
Although Communism represents a dangerous and unworkable belief system, it has nothing to do with atheism (and as an atheist, I abhore communism). On the contrary, its emphasis on the loss of ownership and giving one's self to a "larger" idea has more in common with Christianity than atheism. The story of Jesus and his disciples in the Gospels describes an exemplary example of a communist life style. Simply substitute or add government as the ideological belief and you have the basis for communism. In the end both Communism and religion hold a dangerous commonality: they both represent belief systems.
Interesting factettes:
Karl Marx came from Jewish parents but his father embraced Christianity and the entire family got baptized as Protestants.
Stalin came born into religion. Raised by a deeply religious mother, he attended a parish school, and later entered a theological seminary. It occurred during his theological training when he began his radical communist thinking. Much of his temper and intolerance matches that of the religious teachings of his day.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/facts.htm
