Someone on this site recently linked the blog http://www.indi.ca. It's good, for the most part. It's anti-imperialist, pro-communist, pro-China, all that good stuff. It offers, among many other things, solid materialist analysis of things like why Ukraine has been losing and why a model depending on infinite economic growth is inherently unsustainable.
Which is why it came as a surprise and disappointment to me when the guy responsible used anticapitalism to push theocracy. The fact that he otherwise has good takes is the only reason this piece stood out enough to me to critique. I'm going to break this down.
Long ago—in the 'Enlightenment' they stole from the Lord Buddha—Europeans killed their Lord and called it a brave new day. They've been proselytizing this path ever since, calling it secularism. Instead of an invisible man they now believe in an invisible hand, with economists as its priests and scientists as its miracle workers. And this great golden god called 'the economy' really did work miracles. People got used to growth every year, something which used to be an anomaly. The first shall be first and the last shall be last, but don't worry, it'll trickle down eventually. When things got bad, as they do cyclically, the economists just sacrificed some children and poor people and it all got growing again.
In truth, all they really value is money. Principal is the only principle, profit is the only prophet, usury is the only use. The astonishing belief that there was a man in the sky was replaced with ‘the [even more] astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds,’ as John Maynard Keynes said. A fairly full description of capitalism from one its architects. The 'invisible hand' was a throwaway metaphor from Adam Smith that somehow became a state religion, like basing your civilization on a random joke you heard at a party. This obviously hasn't worked out in the end (awfully hot, isn't it?). Westerners thought they were following science but, more accurately, they were following Satan.
The very first thing the author does is present a false dichotomy between religion and capitalism - the possibility that a person can be both religious and capitalist (see American evangelicals) or neither (see any socialist country with a policy of state atheism) is simply not entertained.
Am I calling for a caliphate, or the return of God kings? I'm not against it.
Here we go. The bait-and-switch. Up until now, the article has been making entirely reasonable critiques of capitalism, but now it pivots to using those critiques to push social conservatism (a common fascist tactic).
There are so many things wrong with this, it's hard to know where to begin. The most obvious answer is to point out that theocracy has never stopped environmental destruction or colonial exploitation, and in fact, the two are often bedfellows. Franco's Spain was hardly known for its environmental protections. Saudi Arabia is under religious authority, and it's the largest oil exporter in the world while at the same time committing genocide in Yemen. Bolsonaro, a Christian fascist, gleefully bulldozed huge portions of the Amazon while driving out and murdering the indigenous population. The most rabid pro-Israel, pro-capitalist, anti-environment people in America are die-hard evangelical Christians, and Israel itself is a religious state. By contrast, communism - a movement the author repeatedly supports elsewhere - has a long and consistent history of anticlerical views and policies. Cuba has never colonized anyone and is the most sustainable country in the world.
Religion is just a way of perceiving higher things. Why shouldn't it have a place in governing?
The author is straight, male, and a member of the majority religion in his country (Buddhist in Sri Lanka), which may be why this poses a legitimate question for him. It's very easy to answer "why shouldn't it" if you're trans woman in the US, a gay man in Iran (or the US), a woman in Saudi Arabia (or the US), or a Muslim in India (or the US). He does not consider these people even for a second - or if he does, he considers them an acceptable sacrifice. Given that he has already written about his own country's religious authorities persecuting minorities, I lean toward the latter. "I'm okay with you and your friends being murdered by theocratic fascists to save the world" would be ghoulish even if it would actually work. As it is, it's just grossly indifferent to human life.
It all started when western philosophy severed the religious part of their brain (the practicing, not the preaching) and ran headlong across the continents, killing, colonizing, and enslaving and calling it ‘enlightenment’. This was supposed to be replaced with a secular, scientific morality, but we the colonized have never seen any evidence of this.
This is, of course, a completely ahistorical and absurd view of colonialism. The old-time European colonizers loved their Christianity. Residential schools, missionaries, and forced conversions were all part and parcel of the colonial playbook. Churches backed colonialism under the guise of saving souls, and the enterprise was carried out by kings and queens who justified their rule with divine right.
The author has spoken positively of Christianity elsewhere in his blog, so I'm sure he would say that all of these examples weren't "real Christianity" - an argument that rings as hollow as when capitalists say that monopolies and colonialism "aren't real capitalism." We must judge a system by its results when put into practice.
