The Big Money has an entry up, Karl Who? China is a Communist country, but I have yet to meet an actual Communist. After reading the first paragraph I began to think of the clear analogies between conventional supernatural organized religion and Marxist-Leninism, in particular, in its ideological flexibility (e.g., the transformation of the cult of a pacific Jewish prophet into a universal religion of a martial empire). The Chinese see the analogy too:
Xu boasted China’s engineering triumphs: the 88-story building in Shanghai, designed by an American architectural firm but built by Chinese engineers; the 67 bridges over the Yangtze River; the Olympic structures; high-speed rail; supercomputers. And when we asked how we would square the experience of modern China—parts of Beijing are a luxury retailer’s paradise—with Communist Party doctrine, he had a ready response. Karl who? “We’re not a bookish party,” he said. Besides, the Communist Party has always been flexible when it comes to dealing with national priorities. It cooperated with the Kuomintang to fight the Japanese. “Mr. Marx is still widely respected by the party and the party members. He’s a great mind in the people’s history.” Just because many of his ideas are outdated—they were devised in a period without today’s developments in science and technology—it doesn’t means he’s forgotten. “I want to compare it to God in your mind. Maybe you don’t go to church every week. But that doesn’t follow that God is not in your heart.” Marxism, like religion, is “still a power that controls the morality of the people.”
Though I do not think that the Chinese state is qualitatively different in the liberties it takes with Marxism on a historical scale, only quantitatively. The shift from Communism as an international movement with anti-nationalistic overtones toward being a tool of geopolitical influence utilized by the Soviet state was itself innovative in the early 20th century.
Actually, this is a very astute observation.
According to the Jungian definition of ‘religion’, Marxism does indeed qualify as a religion.
Many people think that ‘religion’ has something to do with ‘god’ or ‘gods’. That is not true!!!!
Anthropologists have long taught that ‘religion’ has to do with ‘belief’: the focus of this ‘belief’ is really quite incidental and varies from culture to culture, person to person. This is in agreement with the original Jungian definition – I think it’s worth quoting it in full, if you’ll indulge me:
“Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of the mind which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religio, which means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors that are conceived as “powers”: spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals, or whatever name man has given to such factors in his world as he has found powerful, dangerous, or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful enough to be devoutly worshiped and loved.”