The Religious Text

You often hear talk of Marxism being like something with religious texts. This is often merely an attempt to disparage any close respect for these authors. However, it might have a point: due to the looseness with which the texts are often taken, the promotion of them often turns into merely a group where the texts merely function as something 'proferring' authority when convenient. In this way, the more extreme, offensive elements can be hemmed in.

However, more pertinently, what is a 'religious' text? It is not merely reducible to an 'important text.' Religious texts are texts taken as common currency within a given section of a community. In this way, they can unite diverse political strands, agendas or theologies. This, however, is problematic. In this way, this community is posited as an absolute while ignoring the overall historical period or situation. As a result, it tends towards 'mystification.'

Hence, generally religions tend to operate or be developed in this manner. This development reaches its peak in many Christian elements, which is often content to 'render unto Caesar' in the most liberal ways imaginable. Christianity is a religion which tends in this direction, a religion which hs been developed - especially in the West - into one about religious journeys that are less stringently connected to social forms than Islam or Judaism. It subverted things such as the 'law ' and for this substituted the particular or personal and a bunch of often conflicting and contradictory religious sayings, thus suiting an atomised capitalism. However, as capitalism often subverts or forms an obstacle to human conduct, it also requires a religion of consolations that weaken or undermine this personal direction. Hence, it ends up reduced and necessarily reducible to vague gestures.

Hence, Marx and so on criticised religions as 'idealistic' or lacking a connection to the overall society, for foisting their deity as a substitute and consolation for the ills of this accepted society. The deity is hence super-imposed on existence, in a categorical and constant manner. This is generally made transhistorical, and hence has no real 'history.' Hence, in this sense the religious text is an apt expression of such a community.

However, religious texts must go beyond this simple unity, and formalised it in the shape of a deity. Hence, this unity is stamped 'by' the mark of a deity, and hence people are forced to listen to this deity. As a result, this abstraction from particular human traits may only be made possible by 'religion,' here, by a mark of authority to it which can allow this to be official. This is generally 'superstitious,' or religious. Hence, they not only 'go beyond' this unity, but attempt to formalise it in the shape of a 'religious figure.' Otherwise, they are not positively religious.

Hence, their religious character is easily bound up with this social role. This element of society requires the 'religious' form, and habitually takes it. However, 'holy writ' has another aspect. It also serves as a sort of 'currency,' or turns the religious into a standardised object. The content of holy writ hence appears as an embodiment of the religious community, and hence as 'divine.' This can occur even if it were of human hand, and hence not by or involving a creature channeling God directly. In this sense, Christianity is a further development of this, by claiming a person who directly expresses God and hence culminates and completes the circle of finite creatures attempting from a 'limited' perspective to express the divine infinity. To dilute the latter would problematises the whole endeavour. Hence, the 'holy text' of organised religion represents a community's imagined sufficiency. The ghettoisation that Jews are accused of can also be found in the other major Judaic religions. In a sense, Marx is more critical of Judaism than Christianity and most others, and in the process also confronts the other major religions. He is not satisfied with merely leaving Christianity be, and then criticising its basis in Judaism. Hence, he substitutes for the conservatism of Hegel, and similar accounts of a transition from Judaism to Christianity, the hope for a radical change.

In the transition from Judaism to Christianity, a theological transformation, we can see clear parallels with the Hegelian schema. Hence, Marx again defends 'humanism' of a sort, or the progression beyond religion towards human empowerment. This is notably represented in his early writings on Prometheus. In this sense, Marx's critique of Hegel for religious belief is probably valid, although they were not alone in this. Hence, humanity does not set fictitious limits to themselves, such as God or the Idea. Rather, Marx diverges from Ecclesiastes to offer a more hopeful perspective of the human, one that is not utterly degrading to the self. Hegel also tries to do this, in a way. Nonetheless, in rejecting this transition, and characterising it as essentially the internalisation of alienated man - the Judaic replacement of humanity with alienated man - the early Marx touches on a profound point. Further, he associates this in part with a capitalistic society, a hedonistic and barren one, rather than the 'strictness' it might expect. Why? This internalized alienation leads not to less, but actually to more interaction with the world - indeed, to being lost in it, to rejecting things of human note. Hence, the introduction of 'idol worship' into Judaism, via Christ, is in some ways an inevitable concomitant of this dynamic. People eventually dissipate and become nothing, due to a belief, which hence is actually quite harmonious - religiously - with tendencies which might seem its negation.

Marx hence does not view such a straightforward progress, a raising to a higher level, as a model. If the 'historical materialism' of the Christian is their transition from Judaism, Marx seeks to avoid this foundation. And this attempt was clearly of interest, in his earlier works. Hence, his 'anti-Semitic' language is merely a part of his strenuous attempt to shed the Hegelian-Christian context and its concomitants. In this, he associated Christianity with the internalised form of an alienation and worldliness bred by the Jew, that as a result succumbs to illusions and is confronted by personal traits. As a result, Marx views as necessary the destruction of this general form, and of its ultimate basis and Judaic and racial foundations.

Religion is the absorption of the human into external forces, which are then raised above him. Hence, an organised religion - one which is assimilated into the social structure - requires also the systematic organisation of these external factors. This takes place in the form of the religious community.

However, a text is also cut off from the religious community in which it is 'currency' - it is a specific book, that faces the reader on its own, not a  communal form. Hence, religious texts are usually divergent from the communities which they give rise to. They are also often slightly incoherent - the Bible's contradictions are famous - due to this need to function in divergent forms. This appears as a 'religious' difference, as it is not reducible to this community and stands alone. It hence 'diverges' from the religion. However, this is not necessarily a difference which is purely 'religious,' rather one which is personal and concrete. It is, ultimately, a form of separation from this community, in favour of the concrete - expressed, as it must be, in the form of a personal separation. Hence, the religious tends to boil down to merely the attempt to weaken the stricter elements of a text, which however already weakens itself. To seek ultimate fulfillment from organised religion is an exercise in futility.

Nonetheless, what this ultimately leads to is the divergent and concrete elements having to be treated as a part of the religious. Hence, they must be religiously formalised, treated as a religion. This is somewhat inorganic. Marxism resembles this function. Hence, the apparent form of 'religious texts' in Marxism - the secular elements are given a religious format. Nonetheless, this is not native to them. It is valid that Marxism is often unsure about, well, itself and its theoretical structure, and hence reduces to merely a community with certain texts. This is, however, not necessarily its aim. It can, nonetheless, approach a 'religious' tone, and this should be avoided.

As a result, a 'religious text' is one which performs a complex yet problematic role. In religions, it might seem to be defiled, yet it partakes of this in some measure itself. Hence, caution about it is advised. A community around a belief must centre around the belief or theory, or it is reduced to a religion with texts as communal currency. This must always be avoided.