The Other Journal: Marxism

Other Journal

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781621899143
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The literary critic and Marxist philosopher Fredric Jameson has said, It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. The military, social, and political effects of capitalism are felt everywhere across the planet, and even as we acknowledge the negative effects--the imbalances of power, the imperialist exploitations, the social alienation--we are captivated by its message of self-sufficiency and success. In this issue, The Other Journal examines the potentially surprising intersections of Marxism with Christianity, the ways in which this nexus of thinking and faith may help us contend with and recognize the powers of the market.The issue features essays and reviews by Daniel Colucciello Barber, Luke Bretherton, Kevein Hargaden, Paul Dafydd Jones, D. L. Mayfield, W. Travis McMaken, Christina McRorie, Thomas J. Millay, Silas Morgan, and David Schmidt; an interview by Timothy McGee with Joerg Rieger; fiction by Alex McCauley; creative nonfiction by Jonathan Hiskes; poetry by Brett Foster, Elizabeth Myhr, and Hannah Faith Notess; and art by Steve Bakker and Benjamin Violet.

1 For Money

by hannah faith notess

I opened mail. I tugged clumps of blueberries

from twiggy branches into a red pail.

I saved the files. I stamped them “confidential.”

I answered the phone in a calm and friendly voice.

I pinched the dollar bill with the receipt

and tucked them in your palm. I packed the berries

gently in pint containers, wrapped them, carried

trays onto the truck. I signed for the freight.

I transplanted seedlings into four-pack flats.

I told your future. I took notes. I washed

dishes, wiped down the counters, bagged the trash,

unloaded all the trays, then stretched my back.

I sliced onions without weeping or shame.

I showed up early. I smiled. I called your name.

2 What Marx Can Teach Christian Theology—and the Church—about Being Christian

by silas morgan

Karl Marx in Christian Theology—Promising or Perilous?

Karl Marx is as well known for his atheistic and materialist critique of religion—Christianity especially—as he is for his theory of capitalism and revolutionary praxis. Indeed, he famously argued that “the ‘criticism of religion’ is the conditional premise of all criticism,” the purpose of which is to uncover the material reality of the human condition under “the illusionary sun” of theological “niceties.”1

Marx is not a sort of crypto-theologian, nor is there a religious remainder in Marxism itself, and yet I do think that Marx’s critique of religion can help Christian theologies be more Christian and so aid Christian churches in becoming more like the biblical ekklesia. I am not merely suggesting that Marx’s critique of religion discloses inconvenient truths about the contemporary forms and practices of the Christian church and, in so doing, aids and abets the church’s rediscovery of itself, even if, in the end, it dispenses with Marxian thought. On the contrary, my claim is that Marx ought to be read by the church as an apocryphal prophet who might help us become more Christian.2

Christians have long associated Marx with the dark sociopolitical history of communism and the reductive vulgarities of atheist materialism, and Marx’s critique of religion seems to be congruent with the Enlightenment’s rejection of classical Christian theological beliefs and the legitimacy of religious authority in public life. It is true: Marx was not friendly toward religion or theology, and he was averse to Christianity specifically, which he considered historically complicit in the alienating and reifying effects of capitalism on the working and producing classes. He resisted the idea that “the social principles of Christianity” should be counted on to support and promote social liberation or economic justice:

The social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling and oppressed class, and for the latter all they have to offer is the pious wish that the former may be charitable. . . . The social principles of Christianity are sneaking and hypocritical and the proletariat is revolutionary. So much for the social principles of Christianity!3

But if we stop here, we will overlook some important aspects of Marx’s critique of religion, aspects that can be of great help to the church as we recalibrate our notions of faithful Christian life to our current social and political conditions. What is problematic for Marx is the alienating ideological character of religion and theology, an issue that Christians still face today. We have much to learn from Marx about how to identify and combat such alienation, even as it occurs in our own theological backyards.

To be clear, I am not simply suggesting that in Marx, the Christian church (especially in the United States) finds reasons to disentangle our theo-logic from our longstanding affiliation with the economic and social goals of capitalism. Nor am I arguing that returning to Marx represents an opportunity for a liberal, religious socialism akin to the now defunct Social Gospel of the early twentieth century. To make either of these points would simply be an echo of other interesting work done elsewhere, most notably by self-proclaimed Christian “radical” Shane Claiborne, New York Times journalist Ross Douthat, and philosopher Ken Surin.4 Instead, what I want to say here is that Marx can teach us something about the nature of religion and theology, and so he can help us revitalize our own understanding of what Christianity is and what it means to be a Christian in today’s world.

Marx’s Critique of Religion: A Brief Overview

For the sake of clarity, I will condense Marx’s critique of religion to four points: (1) religion as the “opium of the people,” (2) religion as ideological “false consciousness,” (3) religion as commodity fetishism, and finally, (4) religion as money. I think that each of these four critiques of religion double as theological sites for Marx, and so within them lie important lessons for Christian theology and for Christian churches about the politics of discipleship, or in Marx’s parlance, the social-practical activity of revolutionary praxis.

To take Marx’s view of religion seriously as an immanent critique does not necessitate that we all become materialists, atheists, or (even worse for some of us) socialists, but I do think that in attending seriously to Marx’s critique of religion, we can still find catalysts for the church to become better at being Christian: a globalized and diverse faith community that works in advocacy, action, and resistance, suffering with and for others for the sake of a more just, equal, and gracious world, a world where all lives are livable, all bodies are recognized, and all deaths are equally mourned.5 This may sound a lot like Marx’s utopian political dream, but it is also the Christian hope of heaven, as displayed in both the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew bible (i.e., Amos, Isaiah, Hosea) and in the moral vision of Jesus Christ’s kerygma (e.g., “proclamation”) in the New Testament. Certainly, later Marxist readers, such as Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, and Paul Ricoeur, have found ways to think critically about utopia, not as a purely eschatological expectation of that which lies in the future but as the benchmark for what one should hope for in the redemption of the past and strive for in the present. In modern Christian eschatology, this critical dimension of utopia is present in voices as diverse as Enrique Dussel, Jürgen Moltmann, and Marcella Althaus-Reid, all representatives of a Marxian critical legacy in their own way.6

Religion as the Opium of the People

So, how does Marx describe religion, and why—and in what forms—does he consider it problematic? Marx’s analysis in “Toward a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” is one of the most well-known texts in modern philosophy:

The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is the expression of real suffering and at the same time the protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.7

The central metaphor used by Marx here speaks to the ambiguity at the heart of his critical analysis of religion. As the “opium of the people,” religion is both the “expression” and “protest” of a certain social situation. It attests to and arises from a complex set of material realities that conditions economic exchange which, in turn, produces “real suffering.” Emphasizing the social dimension within which religion is always producing and being produced, Marx interprets religion as both the testimony of the experience of oppression and the consequence of various contradictions at the core of the productive forces and social relations that are operative in the economic base of human experience. This aspect of Marx’s understanding of religion is highlighted in his use of the infamous opium metaphor, for in Marx’s day, the use of opium was conterminous with both the protest and suffering of the working class under capitalist conditions. As one commentator recently noted,

In the nineteenth century, opium expressed the immiserization of the people. Opium use increased with declining conditions for the working class: more health problems, and the outbreaks of epidemics such as cholera. As [Friedrich] Engels, for example, pointed out in The Condition of the English Working Classes (1845) declining health was directly related to the ravages of capitalist relations. Opium thus “expressed” in an indirect way the ravages of capitalism on the health and well being of the population, but most particularly the workers.8

An avowed atheist and historical materialist, Marx followed his friend Ludwig Feuerbach in denying the existence of God as anything other than an “illusion,” a “projection” of human desires, aspirations, and values into an abstracted, idealist transcendence that only rips humans from the soil of their lives: the real social relations and productive forces that are the stuff which make human life human. Feuerbach’s goal, the goal of all true criticism as Marx saw it, was to invert this way of thinking, to turn thought and action away from “heaven” and return it to the messy register of “earth,” “law,” and “politics” where real life processes occur. Marx thought that by setting critical thought back on its political feet, perhaps we might get to the real work that needs to be done. Marx writes in his eleventh th...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Letter from the Editors
• 1: For Money
• 2: What Marx Can Teach Christian Theology—and the Church—about Being Christian
• 3: The Blame Lies with the Christians: Helmut Gollwitzer’s Engagement with Marxist Criticism of Religion
• 4: Pamoja House
• 5: From London to Durham: A Theological Peregrination
• 6: Always Historicize! On Fredric Jameson, the Tea Party, and Theological Pragmatics
• 7: Tax Season
• 8: Power, Economics, and Christian Faith from Below: An Interview with Joerg Rieger
• 9: Scenes from the Mall
• 10: Luke 13:30: Tired Application
• 11: On the Monstrosity of Christ: Karl Barth in Conversation with Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank
• 12: The Actuality of Liberation’s Problem
• 13: Karl Marx and the Trouble with Rights
• 14: Tomatoes, Coffee, and Birth Defects: Unfair Trade and the Church’s Response to It
• 15: Marxism versus Global Finance: A Review of Kenneth Surin’s Freedom Not Yet
• 16: Silent Wealth
• Contributors