In Socialism is a Science (1994), Kim Jong-Il pointed out that nearly as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, capitalist countries started rehabilitating biological determinism, and began systematically denying any real difference between human beings and the lower animals. Thus was born a kind of faux-materialism that is qualitatively different from genuine Marxist materialism, and is in fact merely idealism in a “scientific” guise; for while Marxist materialism locates the source of specifically human traits in a materially-conditioned sociality, capitalist materialism makes the individual, in his chemically-conditioned “brain,” basically self-contained and separate from external economic and social forces. Thus the ideological basis of Nazism essentially came back into favor in the west.
(A coordinated attack on religious belief, Kim says, was part of this drive to inculcate biological determinism as the new scientific orthodoxy. Throughout the Cold War, religion and capital had been more or less allied, because the capitalists saw in religion’s insistence on an afterlife and a higher purpose for humankind a useful propaganda tool against Marxism; it was an uneasy alliance, because religion kept giving rise to phenomena like Baathism and the Sandinistas. After the Cold War, the imperialists decided to ditch their untrustworthy “friend,” and to insist that human beings are really nothing but animals, i.e., that there are no socially-created, specifically human traits. This is why, under the new material conditions created by the collapse of the socialist bloc, socialist countries should make allies of religious believers – as has been done in Korea and China).
My Americ*n may be showing here. During the 70s and 80s, there was a certain amount of fear on the part of the US government that the Hispanic minority, who have always been oppressed and who were at that time mostly Catholic, were ripe for radicalization; liberation theology, it was thought, was the conduit through which Marxist radicalization would come. So there was a deliberate attempt to foster a sort of pan-denominational, rabidly pro-American “religious right,” which would back unquestioningly whatever the US government was doing in South America. In effect, Washington was trying to head off the creation of an American IRA.
The attempt was wildly successful, but it also left the American ruling class with a synthetic ally who was, and is, completely batshit insane. (Growing up in a small town in California, theoretically the most “progressive” part of the country, I remember seeing signs on churches with messages like “Jesus Christ and the American GI are the only two people who have ever offered to die for your freedom.”) The religious right backed George W. Bush right to the bitter end, long after most apolitical people, even, had begun to regard him as incompetent and a disaster. There was thus, in the Obama years, an attempt to rebrand American imperialism by pushing, as a kind of new ideological justification for capital, the “hipster” atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, etc. I went to university during the Obama years, and if I had a nickel for every time some dumbass pseudo-intellectual told me “I’m economically conservative, socially liberal, my favorite author is Hayek, and I just read The god Delusion by Richard Dawkins,” I could probably fund the entire Belt and Road Initiative myself.
In Russia and a lot of post-Soviet countries it’s very likely different. But recall that capitalism there is a fairly new implant and as a result, the ideological superstructure is not nearly so developed.
In Socialism is a Science (1994), Kim Jong-Il pointed out that nearly as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, capitalist countries started rehabilitating biological determinism, and began systematically denying any real difference between human beings and the lower animals. Thus was born a kind of faux-materialism that is qualitatively different from genuine Marxist materialism, and is in fact merely idealism in a “scientific” guise; for while Marxist materialism locates the source of specifically human traits in a materially-conditioned sociality, capitalist materialism makes the individual, in his chemically-conditioned “brain,” basically self-contained and separate from external economic and social forces. Thus the ideological basis of Nazism essentially came back into favor in the west.
(A coordinated attack on religious belief, Kim says, was part of this drive to inculcate biological determinism as the new scientific orthodoxy. Throughout the Cold War, religion and capital had been more or less allied, because the capitalists saw in religion’s insistence on an afterlife and a higher purpose for humankind a useful propaganda tool against Marxism; it was an uneasy alliance, because religion kept giving rise to phenomena like Baathism and the Sandinistas. After the Cold War, the imperialists decided to ditch their untrustworthy “friend,” and to insist that human beings are really nothing but animals, i.e., that there are no socially-created, specifically human traits. This is why, under the new material conditions created by the collapse of the socialist bloc, socialist countries should make allies of religious believers – as has been done in Korea and China).
Wait, since when is capitalism attacking Religion? They seem ultra intertwined nowadays
My Americ*n may be showing here. During the 70s and 80s, there was a certain amount of fear on the part of the US government that the Hispanic minority, who have always been oppressed and who were at that time mostly Catholic, were ripe for radicalization; liberation theology, it was thought, was the conduit through which Marxist radicalization would come. So there was a deliberate attempt to foster a sort of pan-denominational, rabidly pro-American “religious right,” which would back unquestioningly whatever the US government was doing in South America. In effect, Washington was trying to head off the creation of an American IRA.
The attempt was wildly successful, but it also left the American ruling class with a synthetic ally who was, and is, completely batshit insane. (Growing up in a small town in California, theoretically the most “progressive” part of the country, I remember seeing signs on churches with messages like “Jesus Christ and the American GI are the only two people who have ever offered to die for your freedom.”) The religious right backed George W. Bush right to the bitter end, long after most apolitical people, even, had begun to regard him as incompetent and a disaster. There was thus, in the Obama years, an attempt to rebrand American imperialism by pushing, as a kind of new ideological justification for capital, the “hipster” atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, etc. I went to university during the Obama years, and if I had a nickel for every time some dumbass pseudo-intellectual told me “I’m economically conservative, socially liberal, my favorite author is Hayek, and I just read The god Delusion by Richard Dawkins,” I could probably fund the entire Belt and Road Initiative myself.
In Russia and a lot of post-Soviet countries it’s very likely different. But recall that capitalism there is a fairly new implant and as a result, the ideological superstructure is not nearly so developed.
Throne-altar alliance is still alive and kicking.