 Yeah, so I think most people who perhaps know a little bit about Karl Marx and his ideas have probably heard the famous quote Religion is the opium of the people. I think far fewer probably have heard the fool The full quote of that so I thought I'd give it in full just for everyone So he says religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions It is the opium of the people So what does this mean? Well, I've never tried opium before but I'm reliably informed it has a kind of dual effect on you On the one hand. Yes, it kind of dulls your your Experience your understanding of the real world so it makes you less able to act upon it But there's also another reason perhaps that people might kind of resort to opium and one of the main reasons for this really is Because a very real suffering that they're experiencing in their lives either physical or mental And so someone will turn to this drug as a way basically to comfort themselves So religion for Marxist is not just some In a nasty trick that's thought up by the ruling class in order to fool people and stop them Acting Marxist would say that religion does play a real role in society And it has a material basis in the poverty in the suffering and the impression that exists in the world And more than anything else actually we would say that it's a it's not only a result of these things But it's a result of a lack of understanding of the causes of these things and so therefore the solutions for these things Now the situation was a little bit different when religion first emerged So if you imagine the early humans, right, they would they would hear thunder in the sky They would you know feel the winds they would feel the rain they're pouring down on their heads And they wouldn't really be able to understand what what was happening, right? But they would still try and explain why these things were happening and so without any, you know Scientific grounding or anything like that if they were left basically to resort to Explaining the origins of these things as being the result of actions of various gods And and that's what you know is known basically as animism inanimate objects or natural kind of phenomena are basically Thought to have living souls basically and that's characteristic of all early forms of religion And so there's a big difference actually between the religion then and the religion of today because Actually, that was an attempt to explain and understand the world And so it's actually a bit of a gray area really if you can even call those kind of early religions religion or idealism Now as as humanity progressed and the level of understanding of nature and science increased you increasingly have the the basis basically for a more rational understanding of nature But the the rise of class society kind of complicates matters because on the one hand it frees up a section of society to be able to think And so that allows them basically to kind of in a certain sense progress humanity's understanding of nature and society And however these same people who are freed up to do all of the thinking make up the ruling class of society And these people their lives kind of revolving around thinking if you like divorced from material production Uh themselves Well, it appears to them as if thought alone basically is is responsible for the progress of society And so this massively strengthens idealist ideas and religious ideas And now I did a quick google The day and I found that according to google there are four thousand recognized religions in the world Not sure who recognizes religions, but anyway, I'll go with that number So it's obviously an awful lot of religions right and I've got 45 minutes To speak and sure it's a lot bigger than me. So I'm going to try and keep to that Big this that that length of time So obviously I can't focus on all of the religions And so I think in it'd be best basically to focus on one religion In order to give comrades a better understanding and hopefully comrades can come in On others in the discussion. So I'm going to focus my talk basically on Christianity. Um, so Yeah, so, um, basically Marxism is if comrades have attended the philosophy talk Marxism as a materialist philosophy and so we do, you know, the existence of supernatural entities or things like this is ruled out for Marxists and the Marxist religion is not something that produces humans instead humans produce Religion and they produce it in their own image essentially And so for example Ludwig Feuerbach, who was one of the big influences on Marx and Engels He once said that if birds had a religion then the gods that they Created would have wings So religions are produced by humanity. We would argue And so what that means is that they reflect the consciousness Of a part of society at a certain time And this consciousness in the last analysis depends on the character and the health of the mode of production And so if we had to understand any religion, I'd say we have to look at the society in which it emerged And when it comes to Christianity what we're considering here when it first emerged was the roman empire in its period of decline And this was a society that was based on slavery And slavery is obviously a very extreme form of alienation Not only, you know, the capitalism are the product of our labor is alienated from us But under slavery your very body almost is alienated from you And your your your body basically is bought and sold by the highest bidder You know, there's the saying right that slaves the only thing that distinguishes a slave from at all is that it has A voice that can speak But slavery itself was a quite almost quite a strange mode of production Because whilst slavery as a form of labor became dominant It was actually less productive than the kind of labor it replaced of the free peasantry And why was that? Well, so when you're working for a boss as a capitalist Oh, you're working for a capitalist And you will do everything that you've gotten to work as little as possible, right And a friend, right who he used to Try his best to spend as much time as he physically could going to the toilet Playing video games and things like that because he would do as little work as possible, basically And and the reason for that is the product of your labor is not yours, right? So you're inclined to do as little as you can get away with And and this phenomenon is multiplying all the more under slavery So mark said that the slave is careful to let both beast and tool Know that is a different order from them by misusing the beast and damaging the tool And he further points out that it's a universal principle under slavery That only the rudest and heaviest implements are used So there's no incentive basically under slave Under a slave mode of production to introduce labor saving technology that you see Under capitalism But once the the kind of productivity, I guess of the individual slave Was was lower and the slave could be forced to work a lot harder You know because of the pure brutality of the slave master So they could produce a greater kind of surplus over the cost of subsistence than the the free peasant And so what this meant then was that there was a constant drive in the Roman Empire to To conquer new territory basically in order to find more and more new slaves that could be put to work And Now so slavery basically it brought about kind of a decline of these small Enterprises and the advance of large enterprises. It's a bit similar in that sense to capitalism But it has the opposite effect as a reduction in the in the level of productivity Now like all social systems slavery eventually reached its limits and It kind of went into a period of decline and this opened up a period of intense class struggle national revolts Civil war and in a period like this like it forces people to think right? We've been talking about that a lot over this weekend So people in a situation like this they begin to question the old ideas the old morality the old religion And it's out of this ferment that you saw at this time that christianity actually began to arise So as you know shone pointed out like ideas when they arise they don't do so by accident They they do so because they reflect The general outlook of a certain layer of people So in the first centuries of the roman empire And there were two kind of dominant philosophies at that type of epicureanism and stoicism and both of these philosophies Appealing to different classes, but they essentially advocated a kind of withdrawal from the physical world And you see a similar process whenever a society has exhausted itself. Basically. There's a generalized mood of pessimism And you know, there's no there's no need or seemingly there's no need for logical reason when society itself Is unreasonable or illogical And and this kind of atmosphere then acts to real really be a drag on on human thinking and scientific progress And so instead what you tend to see in these sorts of times is the flourishing of kind of inward looking philosophies If mysticism irrationality flourishes And that is what we saw in rome at this time And it was such such was the case that even suicide and depression became fashionable Now alongside this when you have society in crisis, it also opens the door for revolution And this period was one of countless uprisings But no class ultimately was able to show the way forward And as I said, so the if the growth of slavery means people are kind of thrown off the land basically And and move from the land to the cities And but you have a situation that's different from capitalism It's based on slave labor and so these people who are dispossessed of their land possess nothing But their labor power But are unable really to truly sell their labor power because The value of society is produced in the main by the slaves It's what you had you have the formation of a kind of army of basically unemployed people in the cities at this time And so this was obviously a bit of a problem for the government And he did see the uprisings of these layers of people And and so in order to try to avoid these uprisings the governments would tend or the government would tend to Give out free food and things like this in order to try and avoid revolution It's what you have is that unlike under capitalism you have this proletariat basically Which doesn't produce any of the wealth of society and it's essentially a kind of parasitic class that actually ultimately lives off the labor of the slaves Now there was an immense inequality and depression of the proletariat as well as the slave slaves And so that provoked, you know, you did have a series of uprisings But these uprisings of the proletariat never really questioned the kind of existence of private property of humans if you like The slaves on the other hand were kind of really too dispersed And too downtrodden to lead a revolution by themselves And so what would have been required to move society forward at that time would have been a united movement of the proletariat and the slaves But these two groups had conflicting interests, right? Do you have a phenomena of for example, there's a proletarian movement of Gracchus In 121 BC But it was crushed with the help of the slaves then 50 years later Maybe Gomeres have heard of the uprising of Spartacus And then in that case so the uprising of the slaves and in that case the proletariat was actually used to crush That uprising so what you have instead of a revolutionary overturn with a long long period of decline And but people still needed some sort of way out of this crisis, right? But a revolution was not possible And so the way out that was back and was a kind of religious one basically Um, you know, if there's some kind of bliss or whatever on earth is ruled out It's not really a surprise that people would look To some sort of bliss in the afterlife or look to some sort of messiah that could arrive and Transform society and so that's why you get a strengthening of these ideas at that time And so this kind of social need pushed philosophy basically in the direction of Plato's philosophy And and actually it's quite interesting the republic of Gomeres had read it has a story of someone called Pamphylion and this is a person who'd been killed in a war But 12 days later he rises from the dead. He tells of how his soul Reached a place where creatures sat in judgment The just was sent to heaven and the unjust were sent to the bowels of the earth to hell This was written well before Christianity emerged so you can see Christianity really was formed in this seething broth Of ideas it picked up on lots of already existing philosophies basically Um, and it reflected deep social needs that existed Now when uh, Christianity first emerged it was ridiculed actually as being a religion of slaves and women So what does that mean? Well, it was a religion of the most oppressed in society Um, it began also in a conquered province, you know, so the roman empire is uh constantly trying to seize new territory One of these areas was a province called Judea. This is where Christianity first Emerged and really it was a revolutionary movement at first that was fighting to change the world And these people were confident in victory, right? They were so confident they were willing to embrace martyrdom and willing to put their lives On the line basically for this And so you see here actually that religion doesn't play the role of Quieting the class struggle really because these people were fighting for a heaven on earth and an Engels describes the Early Christianity and he says it's it got hold of the masses exactly as modern socialism does Under the shape of a variety of sects and still more of conflicting views But all opposed to the ruling system for the powers that they Do you have a system in crisis? You have a myriad basically of competing revolutionary sects offering up solutions to this situation And so yeah, it's definitely true that these sects had a kind of religious form To them But that you can't allow just look at that form and make that you know obscure the the actual social content basically And so this was a fighting philosophy of the poorest and most oppressed players And so for example the bible um So the bible's we might know it today, right? What do we hear about it? We hear uh, you know turn the other cheek or uh, or love thy neighbor things like this It very much has the character of uh, you know meekly accepting the status quo Waiting until the afterlife for you yourself to be rewarded But it was completely different when christianity first emerged. It was a religion of revenge Really against the roman oppressors for example in the bible It talks of the whore of Babylon that needs to be fought against which is actually which is rome basically um Later also it became a movement Against the rich as a whole um, so you have uh, for example in the gospel according to st Luke maybe comrades have heard this uh Jesus is made to say It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of god Or in the epistle of st. James It says go to now ye rich men reap and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be witness against you And you shall eat your flesh as it were fire Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you Kept back by fraud You have lived in pleasure on the earth and have been wanted You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter You have condemned and killed the just and he doth not resist you be patient Therefore brethren unto the coming of the lord is very powerful stuff, right? And have the early christians on top of this kind of class hatred They advocated also a form of primitive communism for those who kind of joined the communion So every member who joined would have to in the early days at least renounce all of their Possessions. So jesus for example is made to say And whosoever that for sake of not all that he have he cannot be my disciple Sell that ye have and give alms give donations give to charity give everything you have to charity Later as well in the fourth century If this person st. John st. John and he he was basically fighting I've described this later. He was fighting against the movement of the church away from the early Days and he described the primitive Communism that existed at that time He said they gave so willingly that no one remained poor They get away with inequality and lived in great abundance and he then asks Why don't we do this again basically and he says if we did it again and then we we would make a heaven on earth now there is also a difference right between the kind of This kind of naive primitive communism that the christians were advocating and the kind of communism that we're fighting for today Because as I said, right, but so the roman proletariat lived off charity And so the the demands that they made for Collective property and it didn't really relate to the means of production. What they were advocating was A common ownership of the means of consumption basically So it doesn't much talk about collectivising the land the workshops the instruments of labour And instead it limits itself to dividing up the products that are necessary for life And on top of this as well that you can see there's quite clear limitations This couldn't really have been expanded to the whole of society, you know, if All of roman society was to try and sell their possessions in order to then live off that Well, I mean who's going to buy those possessions, right? Then even if they managed to sell all of those possessions Who's going to produce the future necessities, you know, if even the slaves have been included in the society So this communism really could only ever exist for a small part of society And and so as time went on basically you saw christianity begin to change First of all was under the impact of continual defeats of these uprisings You know the longer that people were made to wait for this Messiah to arrive for people less and less began to count on that actually happening So you have a gradual change from This belief that the kind of you know kingdom of god will descend from heaven to earth To its opposite basically instead, you know reward and punishment after death are advocated You know outside this kind of material world basically And but alongside this the church itself was beginning to change so gradually increasing numbers of Of educated and wealthy people were entering the church as well You know society itself was in a complete impact. So even these layers Were totally disgusted at the status quo and moved into the church And and these people brought wealth with them, right? Which was beneficial for the church community. It could be spread out and things like this But it also meant there was a pressure on the church to Encourage more and more of these members to join the church and so watered down some of the class struggle rhetoric in in the bible and things like this so Basically what this meant was that increasingly This communal life that the christians had been Operating under came under increasing pressure because you have the rich who come in Less and less they're having to give up all of their wealth. They just have to give a small proportion of it And and so increasingly they're separated out from the kind of rest of the community Um, so you begin to see you know the rich for example giving charity But they're needing separately from the poor the uh destruction of what you know in the early days The christians will eat together in common meals and things like this that begin to disappear And and so gradually you have the kind of importing if you like The class differences of the wider society into christianity itself Um, but that's not the form of christianity necessarily And what I'd say is that just goes to prove the materialist approach because no matter what fine speeches are made Ultimately in the end the economic conditions are decisive It's impossible to either make laws that are higher Than the mode of production and it's also impossible to just separate yourself out separately from society and live Just how you would please Now as there was another element to this that was that as the community grew Um, it became increasing increasingly necessary to have kind of special members of the society to be able to collect And administer all of these contributions from the members And so this layer which was the bishops Began to amass they would amass increasing amounts of power and also Well and prestige And they over a long period of time they began to take more and more Uh, kind of responsibilities under their remit And so gradually within the church you have this formation of a kind of bureaucratic cast beginning to form And that's every it's Bishop's individual morality doesn't really come into it. You might have had moral bishops But ultimately their role the bishop's role Was to get more and more money into the church Possibly even just to spread it around the The members of the church and so this had the effect basically of making this layer And represent a kind of opportunistic revisionist tendency within the church And other bishops may not have been moral at all And I mean the sort of situation would encourage immoral People or self-interested people to the top basically And there's a good example in the really excellent foundations of christianity by carl counts And he quotes this satire of someone called peregrinus proteus to illustrate the kind of process It says that um, so this satire says if one who knows how to take advantage of the situation was to come He would become very rich because he would leave the simple thing around by the nose You can see how you know with these bishops the immense power that they had there was this opportunity basically for them to acquire increasing wealth There's a funny aside as well. So countsky warns, right? He says this is a satire Um, so it might misrepresent the situation somewhat and he says it's just like The myths about the riches that the agitators of social democracy pile up out of the workers pennies Um, and this is very ironic if we consider who carl countsy was what party he came from Um, because he came from the german social democratic party, which itself You had a section of it basically become a kind of form of labor aristocracy Who were increasingly divorced from the workers movement because of the, uh, you know higher wages better living conditions that they were Experiencing and also who they came to believe that capitalism was there forever basically because of the long boom That was experienced And countsy didn't really do much to oppose This kind of tendency within the social democrats and he also Underplays this, you know, this process within the church. Um, anyway, so what you have is Basically between the years of about a hundred and three hundred ad There's this gradual crystallization Of the bishops as a kind of privilege strata in the church and now The christians still were facing immense persecution and because of this persecution there was this desire to kind of Unite basically to form one Church and so they did they organized themselves into a kind of single church basically and and the the power Of this united church gave equal in turn the clergy themselves a lot more power in society basically and And so what you have was that eventually this the clergy themselves the bishops became a very powerful force in roman society and this is such the case that by the third century ad In the series of civil wars and the the victor who comes to be the emperor of rome at that time was constanty And he was a guy who actually allied himself with the church. So he you know, that was one of the things that led to him becoming emperor and and he kind of Made a funny calculation basically so he said or like he thought and that you know all attempts to kind of crush The christian movement had failed, right? So what what alternative do you have if you can't if you can't beat something then why why not join it? um, and so what he did basically he never It seemingly he never actually converted to christianity But he seemed he made a deal basically he helped Along the corruption of the leaders of the church by absorbing the church into the state by making it basically an official religion of Rome so you go from a religion that's you know fighting against the horror of Babylon so to speak Then becomes the state religion And this is a common thing right like throughout history The ruling ruling classes they've always made up a small proportion in society right or small Yeah, small proportion of society And so they they can't just rule through force alone They need the power of ideas on the one hand and also they need to corrupt leaders of the masses as well in order to Control control them. Um, and so yeah, that's essentially what Constantine did but there was obviously a problem um because In order to actually utilize christianity Constantine had to kind of establish one doctrine because you know there was this situation right where there's millions of different sects all claiming slightly different Kind of interpretations of christianity and so he had to assert that one was true and and so He made a very good job of it quite a good job of it and so All gospels basically and and other writings that gave a different picture of jesus From what constantine wanted Uh, were rejected as heresy and there was a huge attempt to just destroy them. Thanks. Um Yeah, and a very important part of this was the the council of nikaya in 325 ad This council Um, it's been really covered up the existence of this council has been covered up by the church But it was essentially Constantine drew together loads of bishops from all over the roman world But also packed his council full of his own henchmen if you like um some of those who perhaps weren't on Constantine's line were murdered or tortured And eventually unsurprisingly you had uh, this well, this was the beginning basically of the formation of one single canon of christianity and yeah, so there was a Huge attempt to kind of transform the christian religion. You had the banning of books Um, it's about 50 early texts of christianity that we know Were banned, but there would have been plenty more. Um from about 392 ad um, paganism, which had been the dominant religion of Rome basically in the past Was was banned mobs of fanatical monks sent round to destroy old Temples old statues to brutally murder philosophers scientists It was a real attack on on uh on reason on uh human understanding basically And so in place basically so the church essentially Unconstantine teamed up together to Replace reason essentially with blind faith On top of this as well You had an attempt to so out of the gospels that kind of made the cuts if you like into uh, the bible And there was a there was a real attempt to water down the class content But and so I probably misspoke a little bit earlier because it was done in a very clumsy way actually And and that's why you can see some of the early revolutionary spirits still shining through That's why you still have some of those quotes. I gave earlier And and that's also the reason why for many years people were banned from reading The bible it wasn't translated into any language aside from latin in order to keep it hidden from the general population And now there's plenty of examples of this watering down of the bible I'll just give one for lack of time And this is the sermon on the mount So in the gospel according to st. Luke Jesus says Blessed be ye poor for yours is the kingdom of god However in the gospel according to st. Matthew It's really funny quoting jesus in this setting anyway So the gospel according to st. Matthew was written many decades later and it said Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven So you can see here how the class content of this sentence has been basically completely removed and essentially what you have then is that Christianity which started as this As this organization of the poorest players in society Which strove for a form of communism was you know riddled with this class Anger essentially was hijacked And eventually then became one of the staunchest supporters of of despotism um This was on the one hand obviously due to this bureaucratization of the institution But then this very bureaucratization itself allowed for this layer of the bishops to be used by Constantine, you know, it's a good pairing between the two of them But ultimately all of this it's not just a question of individuals, right? It was ultimately a result of the stage of Production of roman society. It wasn't possible to bring in a form communist society at that time So what you have then is that the church becomes a very dominant presence in in society for an extended period of time And this produces a complete collapse of of civilization in the whole of the european continent basically For about a thousand years And so the church is in this dominant position, right? And that means that it it covers all of all human action, right? So that means that for a long period of time social conflicts that emerge Throughout history tend to be fought under a religious banner or in a religious form And that's aided by these contradictions in the bible that I talked about earlier And but what this does right is that this makes it appear as though these social contradictions that Kind of bring about these class struggles that we saw Um, they appear to be the results of just, you know Disagreements about what jesus might have said or meant by what he said And so what you have then is that you get often these kind of superficial historians who will look at history Most weep and say like oh my god. Why why on earth that people just Engaging in war and destruction and all these all these things just over the interpretation of a religious text What they're doing is obviously a very superficial approach because to really understand these conflicts You need to look below the surface to see the material conditions Enforces that underline these conflicts. So an example for For one is the the english revolution, right? So all tendencies really in the english revolution used the bible as a kind of backing for what they Would do it. Um, but this obviously wasn't just a conflict over biblical Interpretations it was ultimately in the end a fight between the rising bourgeoisie and the decrepit feudal regime Now this begins to change Eventually with the french Revolution Which that revolution was fought under the banner of materialism everything in the end had to justify itself by the court Of reason and at first the revolution attacked the church But what was the result of this revolution, right? You didn't have the Bringing about to the society based on liberty equality fraternity. You have the rule At the end of the day of the bourgeoisie again a minority In society and when an organization has been around for a thousand years I think you probably learn a trick or two, right? So that was again the church put on new put on new clothes, put on its capitalist clothes and Linked up again with the with the new ruling class basically and you see this throughout history, right from from the days of constantine through feudalism And now with capitalism the clergy have always cozied up to The ruling class of the day. There's basically a fair transaction taking place, right? The the top layers of the clergy at least Are fattened up with wealth and privileges and power and things like this Whilst the ruling class of the day gets some ideological weapons to Try and hold the kind of you know masses in check basically And and that's why I would say the church has always been on the side of reaction And you know, as I said, there were vicious opponents of the bourgeoisie revolution until it happened The catholic church backed franco hitler hitler and miscellaneous And the church even cosied up to the Stalin's regime in the end once it had proved It was no fighter for a socialist society Now what you also see actually though is that when the labor movement is strong The church often presents itself as a worker friendly organization fighting for truth justice all these sorts of things So just in Welby, um, who's the archbishop of Canterbury Basically the head of the church of England He recently said that there was no moral case for governments to set budgets that disproportionately affects the poor Said that the other day They agree But the church wouldn't because they actually have an investment portfolio of about eight billion pounds And they invest in companies like sports direct. Do we know much about sports direct? This is a company which employment it's employment practices are so bad That regularly women have had to give birth in toilets because they're so scared to take time off because they have a strike system whereby if you don't take too much time off, you're sacked So that's the contradiction that you see, you know, these people can speak as morally as they want to But if their wealth and their power is affected They very very swiftly change their tune So that's why the tops of the churches at least would never be on the side of revolution always be our enemies Now I would say though that the situation is totally different When you look at the the religious workers or the kind of lower clergy either um, because now one thing I would say is in Britain, um, we're in a um The the hold of the church has been weakened quite a lot in recent decades. So according to you gov Only 27 percent of britans believe in a god And 16 percent believe in the existence of a spiritual higher power So you can see there is a clear majority for not believing in any kind of higher spiritual power basically Um, but we will still I think come across many religious people Workers who want to join the revolutionary movement And and what we must say is that anyone who wants to join the revolutionary movement The fight against capitalism is welcome to join. It doesn't matter your sex your agenda your ethnicity your religion If you want to fight against this capitalist system, uh, then you're welcome Now I have seen it but often when someone joins the marxist organization and they are religious in time Occasionally they do Start to see some contradiction between their political ideas on the one hand and their religious ideas on the other That can happen. However, I would say everyone in this room if we have a religious person who joins the organization We should not push that question. Um at all Because it is a very person. It's a very sensitive uh topic basically I'd say we should you know Basically what we should say to religious workers is well, not only are you welcome To join the fights against capitalism, but you must join the fight against capitalism Capitalism itself is causing poverty Oppression war all over the world and we can I'm sure agree to fight against these things, right However, in order for a fight to be successful We need a program we need a policy and we need a perspective and I'll say this this Can only be provided by marxism We can say right like once we have socialism we can see who's correct The marxists argue that religion will wither away once we get rid of class society Oppression all the things that come with that Religious people perhaps might say that's not correct. Uh, either it fulfills some deeper social function, whatever Or it's real who knows. Um, what what the reason might be But let's when we just leave that Let's let's overthrow capitalism Bring about socialism and we can see who's correct. I think for now we've got far bigger fish to fry I would say though it is possible to go To accept that kind of general position but then go too far the other way Because for us religion is a private affair in relation To the state we'd say that everyone should be free to practice whatever religion that they want to Um, but it's not a private affair like religion in general is not a private affair in relation to the party Yes, we say that everyone is welcome in the struggle against capitalism But that can't change the revolutionary program of the party, which is incredibly fundamental basically in order for us to be successful um So we have to conduct propaganda in favor of this materialist dialectical materialist approach We're also for the complete divorce of the church and the state And why should the church have any state funding? whatsoever And you know, I went to a state school in britain, right? And every morning we had to sing songs praising god or praising the christian god It was all christian songs that we had to sing What we'd say is if religious people From their own convictions want to gather together and fund their own churches. That's Absolutely fine for marxists. And in fact, we go further than that. We fight against oppression of different religions In in society So yeah, marxism is a materialist revolutionary Philosophy and we're a materialist organization But it's for that very reason actually that we don't include things like atheism In our program, you know marx angles Let them they all actually fought against anarchists on this question of not including atheism in their program because we would say that conditions ultimately are what creates consciousness You can't just rid society of religion just through propaganda You know, we're not like people like richard dorkins, right who think well, luckily the new messiah Richard dorkins has come along who's Happy to teach all of the stupid workers who believe in religion that they're wrong And that's the way we can get rid of religion. No, that's completely wrong This people like him want to get rid of religion without Getting rid of the actual causes the material causes of religion But more than this we would say that actual the actual participation in the class struggle itself develops consciousness Like lenin gave the example of a strike. So what happens in a strike? Well Hopefully all layers of the workers in a particular Company whatever are included and that includes religious and non-religious Workers and if at this time you were to preach atheism, but that as a condition for joining the strike We just be playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. What does the bourgeoisie try and do? They emphasize all differences apart from class differences in order to defeat Movements again on top of this though. We have to say that consciousness Changes rapidly under the influence of events can look at an example, right in the 1905 revolution You had a procession of workers of religious workers who are holding religious iconography things like this and and the Bolsheviks tried to Intervene in this demonstration would be turned up by these workers But within 24 hours under the impact of the repression that that movement faced by Bazaar within 24 hours this these religious workers were demanding weapons from the Bolsheviks Now thanks Yeah, so basically what we need to do. I would say is find a balance essentially between on the one hand this kind of Anarchistic approach and on the other hand a kind of opportunist approach We want to avoid kind of anarchism like pokes religious people In the eye and kind of pushes them out just at the crucial moment It reminds me of what Trotsky said about anarchism of being an umbrella with holes in it Useless just when you need it And but we also on the other hand need to avoid a kind of opportunist Approach which just reconciles itself to the belief in in god forever And and so therefore refuses to struggle against it You know these people are not guided really by the class struggle. They're just guided by oh, you must not offend anyone um So what we need to do I think in every uh circumstance basically is make a judgment So what in this particular scenario aids the movement the real movement of the working class So that's our task right it's the it's to unite the working class everywhere In struggle against this rotten system We want and we are fighting for a communist society But it's a communist society on a on a higher level Than the the kind of you know naïve communist societies that these Early christian martyrs were fighting for and it would be a society that would Be based on this immense development of the productive forces that capitalism has brought About be a society, which Trotsky wants to describe. He said under socialism Solidarity will be the basis of society All the emotions which we revolutionists at the present time feel apprehensive of naming So much have they been worn thin by hypocrites and vulgarians Such as disinterested friendship Love for one's neighbor sympathy These will be the mighty ringing chords of socialist poetry A society like this, you know where people's actual needs are cared for rather than uh, you know cast aside the interests Of profit this would create the conditions for humanity to rise to new heights that we've never Seen before rather than just waiting until we're dead Being no pie in the sky as the as the song goes Instead we've brought about a society where I would say there would be no need For religion and that's what we're fighting for for a real heaven on earth. Thank you