Prelude
We
aim at two issues with this article. First of all; we want to build
up our discussion
on why atheists should take communists seriously. We believe that a
marxist explanation of concepts such as "human nature",
"morality", "ethics" etc. would be inspiring in
resolving the confusions that occasionally arise in atheist circles.
This is our first aim.
For
an unprepared reader, it would be surprising to see Joel Kovel
starting his book The Enemy of Nature with a comparison of
Marx and Darwin. It is due to a very elegant approach that a book,
which offers a frame of class struggles for the ecological crisis,
reserves its introductory chapters to Darwin. And this brings us to
our second aim: We believe that a discussion on the origins and the
development of religions can be employed to exemplify the materialist
worldview.
In
accordance with its aims, this article will be rather abstract. Yet,
with the awareness of the fact that we will not present any ideas
that were not available up till now, we will choose to abstract from
examples rather than providing a theoretical presentation.
Why
was Marx fascinated by The
Origins of Species and why did he send a copy of Capital to Darwin?
Marx
points out an objective phenomenon when he states that capitalism
revolutionizes the forces of production and will sweep all other
relations of production. Also, Darwin declares the results of his
research and not a situation he likes or prefers, when he puts
forward the natural selection thesis. The scientific analyses of
these persons do not prove that they fancy the results: That Darwin
observes wasps place their larvae inside caterpillars in order to eat
them alive does not mean that he enjoyed it. Likewise, it would be
absurd to claim that Marx rejoiced to note the commodification of
everything in the world.
The
scientific propositions of both Marx and Darwin explain how the past
came through to the present, and not how the future will be.
As they are not psychics but scientists, they analyzed parts of
innumerable parameters on which the knowledge of future rests.
Neither would Darwin explicitly assert which species would evolve in
the next million years, nor would Marx say which type of government
would be adopted in a given century.
We
open up a parenthesis here. A scientific claim does not prophesize,
but by definition makes predictions about the future. This future can
be, as in the case of physics, an event to be observed in the future,
or, as in the case of history, a document to be discovered in the
future. We hope it is clear that the above paragraphs are not meant
in this sense.
Furthermore,
the comprehension of the laws that brought the past to today enables
to produce hypothetical scenarios of the future. It is a reasonable
consideration to estimate (with some margin of error) which genetic
features would disappear under given climatic and geographical
conditions. Similarly, one does not need to wait until the 20th
century and see with one's eyes to understand that capitalism would
eradicate the Asiatic type of production. We close the parenthesis.
Marx
and Darwin were searching for the laws driving the processes. However
it was only Marx who could see the parallelism between the two
scientific analyses. While he sent a copy of Capital
to Darwin with this excitement, Darwin put the book aside without
reading it.
Yet
Marx was right: While Darwin was investigating the formation of the
species, Marx was investigating societies.
The theory of evolution described how the genetic code which is more
suitable to given conditions survived through natural selection,
whereas historical materialism explained how a society established
superiority over others by adopting more progressive relations of
production.
The
question of the origins of religions
To
think that the question of how religions emerged would clarify the
issue of religions is as ridiculous as supposing that one could
predict which species would arise by knowing why a certain mutation
took place.
Hundreds
of thousands of new ideas emerge everyday in the world. There are
thousands of messiah and prophet candidates available. We do not even
count the new-age religions.
The
point is not how an idea has initially emerged; the point is how an
idea, once emerged, has survived throughout history. An idea can
survive only if, in the given period of history, it offers a
structure capable of eliminating its disbelievers.
It
is not a coincidence that both Moses and the Catholic Empire have
come through ideologies that aim to
increase
the population.
When
Moses defines the family as a norm and oppresses any homosexual
experience, and when the Roman Empire declares every sperm sacred,
the societies that adopt these ideologies gained an advantage over
the other societies around. Human reproduction becoming such a hype,
and the cognition of sex and reproduction as one and the same thing
are due to this historical process.
Intermezzo:
The question of ethics
Let
us not miss the opportunity here, to touch upon one of the subjects
that is thought to sweat atheists. As all other social phenomena,
from esthetics to languages, morality and ethics are historical as
well. It is understandable that, in the philosophy of ethics, a
distinction between morality and ethics was made; yet this situation
led to a delusion among some atheists in the direction that we would
be able to establish an ethics excluded from the society and history.
Of course we can get outside the generally accepted ethical realm
built by the rulers, but humans cannot go out of historicity.
All human production (including opposing views) lies within history.
The question is to understand how a certain view gained validity
throughout history.
All
moral questions, from finishing the food on your plate to not killing
human beings, are results of the historical selection we mentioned in
the first section. New moral statements, on the other hand, will gain
as much validity as they survive this historical process.
Let
us now focus on heterosexism, as it is a particularly delicate
subject. Independent of our fancies, mechanization created the
potential of the production becoming independent of concrete human
presence. Yet this potential cannot be actually realized within
capitalism (or more generally, in class societies): Machines do not
produce surplus value. In a system based on exploitation, human has
to be the primary element of production.
On
the other hand, societies took action to utilize this liberation
potential of mechanization for humane use. Large masses of people
demanded the just distribution of wealth that came out. Owing to the
rights gained in these struggles, production and power has become
partially
independent of population; that is, having more population began not
to directly imply being more powerful. In proportion to this
independence, superstructure institutions, such as family, have
dissolved.
Thus
appeared the objective possibility of humanity freeing itself from
the elements of alienation such as sexism and heterosexism. The
rights gained by years-long struggles of militant activists should be
seen in this frame; and not in that sexism were dogmatically “bad”
and activists finally convinced other people to this argument. We are
now fighting to abolish an element of alienation which we discovered
at a certain period of the development of the means of production.
Now
it would be beneficial to recall the parallelism between Marx and
Darwin we suggested in the first section. Understanding the relation
between the emergence of an idea and how it is widely accepted among
the society is similar to understanding the relation between how a
particular gene emerges and how it attains a place in the gene pool
of a species. The legitimacy of an idea is not measured dogmatically
and in abstract terms, but with its effect in the real world.
Homosexuality is not abnormal because it is abnormal; homosexuality
is abnormal because those who claim that it is have seized the power.
Human
nature
Historicity is the key to understand
humankind. The distinguishing characteristic of humankind among other
species is that it has history; that the activities of previous
generations shape the nature of future generations. Human individuals
confront a social phenomenon that is extrinsic to them and that
imposes itself to them. They
produce on the production of past generations. Humankind has a
history. Animals do not.
This is the defining property of human species.
Therefore, the question of what
constitutes “human nature” is beyond the limits of biology
proper. Moreover, as Richard Dawkins rediscovered through memetics,
it is sometimes outside of biology proper. Dawkins especially
exemplifies this by referring to diseases that need extensive care
beginning from birth. If it were left to purely biological and
genetical dynamics, such diseases should have disappeared from human
species, as the diseased individuals would perish in natural ways.
Yet societies have found numerous ways to deal with these situations,
and they secured not only that the patients survive but also that
they are capable of having babies in a healthy way, whereby
transferring the relevant genetic code to future generations. Dawkins
argues that in this example, the memetic code overrules the genetic
code. The framework we summarized in this essay fits well into this
explanation and further clarifies the laws of selection for “the
memetic code” - namely, the development of the means of production.
What we wanted to emphasize here are
that the “human nature” is changing way too fast compared to the
biological evolution scales and that it by definition depends on time
and space.
Epilogue
Let us briefly summarize our claim: To
understand religion, it is unnecessary to understand how the idea of
religion initially emerged. The question is how religion survived
throughout generations, and this is an eminently materialistic
question.
The survival of supernatural views and
institutionalized religion is hidden in the fact that they reshaped
and stretched themselves in all necessary ways in order to further
develop the means of production. We gave instances of this in the
preceding sections. These instances were, of course, not aimed at
given an ultimate explanation about the roots of religions, but at
exemplifying the attempt to understand religions, as historical
phenomena, within history and the laws governing it.
In today's world (as a matter of fact,
since at least two centuries), religion has no historical
excuse anymore. Now,
religion forms an obstacle in front of the development of the means
of production and in front of humans creativity. The search for
supernatural answers is regressive exactly
in this sense of the word.
(We addressed this subject in our previous article: “An
introduction to why atheists should take communists seriously”)
A species that searches the causes of
the floods and droughts all around the world which are becoming more
frequent and intense in the moral degradation instead of climate
change is bound for extinction – taking hundreds of thousands of
other species with it. A species that, based on the argument “They
have it; ergo,
we should have it too.”, produces nuclear weapons, potent to
destroy all life on earth several times, and makes them the plaything
of arbitrariness in the bargains of the ruling class, is indeed bound
for extinction – taking hundreds of thousands of other species with
it.
Richard Dawkins would say that the
human species needs a dramatic change in the memetic code. Among
friends, we call it the communist revolution.
