How is dialectical materialism based communism necessarily atheistic?

[JRKH]

dictionary com
dictionary.reference.com/browse/socialism?s=t

Thanks.

In America, we have Obama and his gang.

Obama is but one…example…
Look at history in this country voter fraud over the years…Tammany Hall, the teapot dome scandal - the tycoons and monopolists etc - greed, graft, fraud…and these are the big examples…and just in one country.
Little ones can be found in every city and township…every company and even in every church. Gossip, cutting others down, jockeying for promotion or position, etc.

Everything that springs from the Capital sins - It’s always with us - and this is why the very concept of communism - all things held in common and distributed according to need - cannot work outside of a very limited scope - such as a small monastic community or something similar.

Peace
James

 

[Khalid]

Solid post Gorgias! And thanks for digesting it further empther.

So to get this straight, the philosophy of Marx and Engels saw religion as something the upper classes utilized in order to “oppress” the lower classes and keep them “in place”? And, being seeing history from the perspective of class struggle, they saw religious belief as something that not only oppressed the masses but also as an obstruction to a unified society (since religion places emphasis on the spiritual, the afterlife, and not, the here and now, or the progress of society). Did I get that right?

Also, I want to clarify that religion, from the philosophies of Marx and Engels, saw religion as the “opiate of the masses” and something that oppressed the people because it made them optimistically focus on a realm that didn’t exist? I don’t know, I’m just guessing here. Why did Marx and Engels see religion as an opiate of the masses, how did it “oppress” the people?

Also, I understand that the philosophy, from what you described, reduced reality to the natural world only and that, it saw religion as a obstacle that needed to be removed. This implies atheism. However, is there anything in the Marx-Engels philosophy that explicitly states that atheism, a lack of belief in God, is needed, or plays a central role in dialectical materialism based communism?

Lastly, does this philosophy have any other gripes with religion? Like, instead of seeing it merely as something that oppressed the people and as an obstacle to societal unification, did they also see it as backward, anti-scientific, irrational or delusional? Was it stated anywhere in the philosophy that religion and human progress cannot co-exist?

They held the ancient Academic view that religion was "considered equally true by the people , equally false by the philosophers , and equally useful by the magistrates ", as it had been developed over the past five hundred years by figures as varied as Marsiglius of Padua (Defensor Pacis), Machiavelli (Discourses on Livy), and other radical/early secular/modern thinkers.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have Wealth of Nations at my bedside and don’t know what you’re talking about.

In communism “the big machine of history” is the dictatorship that tells everybody which shoe to put on first.

The only “invisible hand” in Smith’s book is the effectiveness of free enterprise to produce more wealth at less cost for everybody. In pure capitalism, ( which also doesn’t exist anymore than a pure socialism or communism ) nobody is in charge.

There is his famous example of the pin factory to demonstrate the division of labor. One man draws a wire, another sharpens the point, another prepares the end for the head, another puts the head on, another polishes the head etc etc etc etc.
“In this way a dozen men can produce a thousand pins a day while one man working alone without experience would be labored to produce ten pins a day or even one.”

In communism, we have the ineffieciency of central planning. In Communist Russia, a man in charge of a shoe factory was given a quota of shoes to produce, but central planners didn’t send him enough leather to make them. So he made baby shoes, more than anybody would buy. “Selling them was somebody else’s problem.”
Great system! :banghead:
This is not “the machine of history”. This is the machine of selfish commies who work for a system in which they think they can get to the top of the heap.

Adam Smith was a deist, and held that the optimal outcome in an economy is achieved by letting “natural processes” take their course with the least human interference. In positing natural processes leading to optimal results, he is entirely mechanistic about it; the process, not the people involved, determine outcomes. The people, in following their acquisitive instincts, mindlessly and amorally form the parts of the machine.

His “labor theory of value” (adopted, interestingly, by Marx, and roundly discredited nowadays) is likewise mechanistic inasmuch as process, not decision, determines what the value of something is.

Smith is not without value, and I never said he was without value. He did have some appreciation for free enterprise. But his theories are no longer followed even by modern conservative economists, and are contrary to the economics of Augustine and Aquinas.

Of interest, the “value” theories of Augustine and Aquinas are now being re-examined by modern economists; sometimes even with attribution. According to A&A, “value” is not composed of “what labor I will put into what it takes to get that”,(Smith and Marx) but rather “what I value less that I am willing to give for that which I value more”. In other words, it is a homocentric theory of value, rather than Smith’s and Marx’s mechanistic view.

 

[empther]

Adam Smith was a deist, and held that the optimal outcome in an economy is achieved by letting “natural processes” take their course with the least human interference.

Nobody plans that pin factory? Nobody volunteers to be the wire drawer, the point sharpener, etc etc? Human beings are not involved in this?

In positing natural processes leading to optimal results, he is entirely mechanistic about it; the process, not the people involved, determine outcomes.

People have nothing to do with designing the process?
“Nobody plans that pin factory? etc etc”

The people, in following their acquisitive instincts, mindlessly and amorally form the parts of the machine.

Nobody knows what he’s doing? The point sharpener doesn’t understand the value of the wire drawer? We’re all ants digging in the tunnels?

The problem with thinking out theories on a high level without considering the poor working slobs on the bottom level is that it leads to wrong theories that don’t mean anything.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Nobody plans that pin factory? Nobody volunteers to be the wire drawer, the point sharpener, etc etc? Human beings are not involved in this?

People have nothing to do with designing the process?
“Nobody plans that pin factory? etc etc”

Nobody knows what he’s doing? The point sharpener doesn’t understand the value of the wire drawer? We’re all ants digging in the tunnels?

The problem with thinking out theories on a high level without considering the poor working slobs on the bottom level is that it leads to wrong theories that don’t mean anything.

I don’t think we’re connecting here. Smith did not say there is no involvement of human agency, and I never said he did. He said straight up that human acquisitiveness (greed to some) was, in effect, the fuel for the machine. But the machine would run the same way if unimpeded, no matter what anybody thought about it or intended. In that sense, he was just as mechanistic as Marx.

None of that means that Marxism wasn’t cruel or ineffective or anything else. It doesn’t mean Smith and Marx believed the same things across the board. It just means that both had a deterministic view of human economic activity.

 

[empther]

Smith did not say there is no involvement of human agency, and I never said he did. He said straight up that human acquisitiveness (greed to some) was, in effect, the fuel for the machine. But the machine would run the same way if unimpeded, no matter what anybody thought about it or intended. In that sense, he was just as mechanistic as Marx.

So if by the “machine” you mean man’s need to earn money to buy bread, then yeah man has to do that, I mean, what other kind of life could there be ? Vulcans aren’t going to feed us, ,
but how he does it is his choice. So it’s not mechanistic or deterministic.

It doesn’t mean Smith and Marx believed the same things across the board. It just means that both had a deterministic view of human economic activity.

If by deterministic view you mean nature or something determines how man earns his daily bread,
**then both Marx and Smith are wrong.
**

Marx said class struggle was determined by history. He was wrong. The classes get along fairly well in the U.S. and much of the world.

Not all countries have chosen a capitalist system, but most have because experience shows it works best.

 

[Ridgerunner]

So if by the “machine” you mean man’s need to earn money to buy bread, then yeah man has to do that, I mean, what other kind of life could there be ? Vulcans aren’t going to feed us, ,
but how he does it is his choice. So it’s not mechanistic or deterministic.

If by deterministic view you mean nature or something determines how man earns his daily bread,
**then both Marx and Smith are wrong.
**

Marx said class struggle was determined by history. He was wrong. The classes get along fairly well in the U.S. and much of the world.

Not all countries have chosen a capitalist system, but most have because experience shows it works best.

You will not find a person more favorable to capitalism than myself. In my mind, capitalism, fundamentally, is merely “what people do if free to do it”. I think capitalism gets a bad name because of abuses in the past; abuses that were mostly borne of governmental encouragement of monopolies and oligopolies. In exchanges, I am inclined to the view of Augustine and Aquinas rather than the “labor theory of value” of Smith, Marx, Keyenes and others.

In no way do I agree with Marx.

I still think we are talking past each other. I did not say Smith claims there is no human agency in economic matters. But Smith maintained that people are, in a sense, “decreed” by the mechanism of economics to act in a particular manner and for a particular reason. In that way (and taken narrowly) he and Marx share a basic concept of mechanistics and, yes, I agree that they are both wrong in that way.

Let me offer a suggestion, and I am being friendly in doing it. Rather than a copy of Smith at your bedstand, let me recommend “Redeeming Economics” by John D. Mueller. It’s much more up-to-date, and examines most of the economists one has ever heard of. His is an entirely Catholic viewpoint. He tells what is wrong with “mechanistic” views of economics and why various economists’ insisting on it is mistaken. But nowadays, not all do. Just google it and you’ll find you can buy it on Amazon.

It’s quite readable, though some of the formulas are a bit difficult to digest. There are some small points in it with which I find it hard to agree. But in the main, it is quite friendly to a person who believes in both Catholicism and capitalism.

 

[empther]

I still think we are talking past each other. I did not say Smith claims there is no human agency in economic matters. But Smith maintained that people are, in a sense, “decreed” by the mechanism of economics to act in a particular manner and for a particular reason. In that way (and taken narrowly) he and Marx share a basic concept of mechanistics and, yes,** I agree that they are both wrong in that way. **

In that case, we’re on the same page.

My problem is you never said what the mechanics, either Marx’s or Smith’s, was supposed to be, which suggested you were sympathetic with the idea. Now, you finally say you’re not.

 

[Linux]

A country where everybody freely decided to share equally would not be an immoral form of communism because everybody is freely choosing and agreeing to everything being shared equally. However, there will always be those who do not want everything to be shared equally.

 

[empther]

A country where everybody freely decided to share equally would not be an immoral form of communism because everybody is freely choosing and agreeing to everything being shared equally. However, there will always be those who do not want everything to be shared equally.

No numbers, Linux? No specifics? Why am I not surprised?

there will always be those who do not want everything to be shared equally.

Yeah,
the majority who earn their living won’t want everything to be shared equally.

In an agrarian society, which even the United States was in the late 1800s, most people work on farms. They want their own farms and they want to be paid for any produce they don’t eat themselves.
The same with an industrialized society.

When the Russian Revolution took place, the average farmer way out in the country didn’t have a clue what it was about and had no way to organize and resist it if they even knew what it meant.
Lenin and his gang of thugs took over in Moscow and people were afraid to speak out lest they be labeled “counter revolutionary” and see Lenin’s thugs knock on his door, or break it down. So much for Marx’s class struggle.

 

[Ridgerunner]

In that case, we’re on the same page.

My problem is you never said what the mechanics, either Marx’s or Smith’s, was supposed to be, which suggested you were sympathetic with the idea. Now, you finally say you’re not.

I had no thought to mislead you or to hide what I thought. I thought I was being clear, but apparently I wasn’t.

I am not sympathetic with any mechanistic view of human life or history.

 

[MarcusAndreas]

Adam Smith’s invisible hand is a theory of natural aristocracy, not a determinist theory of history.

The primary similarity between Marx and Smith is that Marx relies on the classical economists’ labor theory of value. Since this was exposed as bunk by the the time Carl Menger came around in the late nineteenth century, we need not worry about Marx anymore. Adam Smith is overrated as an economist.