Under Lock & Key

Often we hear or read quick quotes which are taken to mean something, or infer something different from the intended meaning. Marx's quote on religion is just such an example.

We have all heard or read Marx's "statement" that "religion is the opiate of the masses." This is not an accurate quote of what Marx wrote in his "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." This quote has given rise to the belief that Marx did not take the issue of religion seriously and dismissed it as folly. This is not true.(1)

Let's review in context what Marx did write about religion:

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about conditions is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation, but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower.

Clearly Marx is not discussing the seriousness of religion, or the role it plays in the lives of oppressed peoples. Marx realizes the power of delusion that religion holds over people. I disagree with MIM(Prisons) that religion "is simply a belief in authority."(2) Perhaps that is true for some people. But I believe it is a panacea for woe and oppression — a search and hope for a better life than the one believers currently lead. It is the oppressed's answer to the question of existentialism.

Due to the anxieties of existence — anxieties people experience as the result of natural causes like floods, famine and earthquakes, or man-made causes such as enslavement, exploitation or oppression — that make people feel powerless, they often resort to magical thinking, or beliefs in supernatural agents as a plea for the anxiety to end. Thus was born religion, its roots in anxiety.

Religion is a potent tool of capitalism and imperialism. To eliminate one, all must be eliminated if the people are to experience true freedom and liberation.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Overall, we have great unity with what this comrade writes about religion and Marx's view of it. But eir disagreement with something we wrote is a bit of a strawpersyn argument. First, it is ironic to use Christopher Hitchens to criticize us as too dismissive of religion. Hitchens was popular for his atheist ideas among the Amerikan petty bourgeoisie. His attack on so-called "Islamo-fascism" was better received than his allies on the left (led by Bob Avakian) and right (epitomized in David Horowitz). All three represent the spectrum of white nationalist thinking that uses religion as an excuse to attack the oppressed nations, primarily in the Islamic world today.

The MIM article also discusses pre-scientific thinking, addressing religion's role as a "panacea for woe and oppression." In pre-capitalist times, such thinking was the norm and religion was more than just an attempt to deal with the bad times, it was an attempt to explain all aspects of reality. Once scientific thought was developed and popularized, it has been the class interests of the oppressors that have kept religious ideology alive to serve their interests, as this comrade alludes. But that doesn't mean everyone who is religious is a dupe. Muslims are currently striking some of the greatest blows against U.$. imperialism, so they must have a pretty good grasp on how to actualize their own interests in a world that throws many horrors in their direction.

I am a prisoner in the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC), where the prisoners are forced to march around in filthy, tattered uniforms, and most are packed three to a cell, with one sleeping on the floor. But in addition to a huge list of miserable conditions here, the state has a sickening carrot-and-stick method of converting prisoners to Christianity.

Our cafeteria basically serves dog food, and even that is withheld from prisoners as punishment for minor rule infractions. The prison only serves real nutritious food to prisoners who have attended a certain number of religious indoctrination programs. This amounts to many prisoners not being able to eat well unless they convert to Christianity and jump through all kinds of Jesus-themed hoops.

Prisoners are also being recruited, in the guise of "education," into an indoctrination and training program that eventually ships them to other prisons to proselytize and spread Christian propaganda. As a requirement, new recruits must sign a paper that declares their willingness to be transferred to any prison SCDC desires. Often prisoners sign up for this program to temporarily escape the violent conditions at other prisons, only to be returned to the same brutal dungeons after completing the program. In such institutions, prisoners are commonly beaten, stabbed, and raped. Who wouldn't sign up for the Christian fascist training program to escape that?

It all amounts to the prisoners being coerced into religious social control programs. And many of us must choose between going to church or going hungry; between being indoctrinated or being beaten, stabbed, or raped.

MIM(Prisons) responds: It is typical of the Amerikkkan criminal injustice system to force feed their approved form of "education" on prisoners while denying them real education through censorship or just refusal to offer programs. Religion has a long history of being used as a tool of social control by obscuring the material conditions that determine our reality on Earth.

Many people ask us about religion because they have heard that communism is anti-religion. In some ways communism is the best way for religious people to uphold their beliefs and put an end to the evils of murder, rape, hunger and other miseries of humyns. Some argue that Jesus Christ must have been a communist because he gave to the poor.

An issue with religions, however, is that they uniformly reject scientific thinking. Religions require people to accept on faith that there is a higher power controlling life for humyns. So the first problem with religions is that they are fostering idealist thinking. Even those who do not believe in organized religion often look for answers in ideas, rather than a scientific study of the material world.

In addition, historically many religions have acted as apologists for the oppressor class in power, telling the oppressed people not to worry about their terrible conditions in this life because a better afterlife awaits them if they just suffer in silence. There are notable exceptions to this, including the liberation theologists of Latin America, some Muslim activists, and others.

Overall we see the best of the religious movements and groups as allies in the fight against imperialism. But we still caution people that religion, like television, is an opiate for the mind. Even worse, religion provides a philosophical justification for never searching for real solutions to the problems and contradictions we face. Belief in spirituality or religion is not a dividing line question to work with MIM(Prisons), and we accept into USW all who take up the anti-imperialist struggle. We will be honest in our push for everyone to study materialist thinking and why we oppose idealism.

How often do we analyze the connection of religion with terror and oppression? Likewise, how much do we seek to minimize the role of Christianity in the imperialist and sinful occupation of America?

They came troding on their horses like thieves in the night; holding a musket in one hand, and a Bible in the other. They were offered as presents to the peaceful, native inhabitants; yet, they had to choose - the Bible or the bullet? To live peacefully and share America with the native people wasn't enough for these new strangers, they wanted complete control over every facet of this land.

Native blood filled the trenches of European savagery, and tears of the children brimmed the gulch of mourn. The squalling of native women vibrated throughout Mother Earth as their thighs sanguine with virgin blood from rape. In plain daylight, they could see the Grim Reaper crouched over to catch his breath from the restless slaughter of natives. The only alternative to this hideous crime is acceptance of the Bible.

At the arrival of merchant ships were crowds of black faces with the obnoxious smell of slavery; millions of lives were expired on the Middle Passage, decorating it with the Holy Grail of Africans. Then, by force of the goad of death they were ushered into the fields of back-breaking labor. Their blood seeped into the cotton they picked, and tears fertilized the soil that grew the master's economy. The only alternative was acceptance of the Bible; given to pacify the hopeless slaves with a false sense of faith and spiritual dignity.

"Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I've ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst..." (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of)

Today, the courts of law have strong links to the imperialist religion of Christianity and its Bible. In fact, it's the FOUNDATION of their laws, so they protect it. It is the peace-offering and balm for oppression, without it you'll receive the bullet. Since Christianity play an important role in carrying out the imperialistic agenda of capitalism, tantalizing the minds of the oppressed; then, America's laws are also rooted in such a design. One of their law books says: "It has been broadly stated that the common law draws its subsistence from Christianity, that Christianity is part and parcel of the common law, and that the Bible is the foundation of the common law. However, these statements have been held to have application in a qualified sense, in that Christianity's divine origin and truth are admitted, and the law will not permit Christianity to be reviled and ridiculed openly, and will punish such acts as tending to a breach of peace and jeopardy of the public welfare, as discussed in Blasphemy...1" (5A Corpus Juris Secundum (C.J.S))

The only reason this religion is so "legally protected" is because it is in fact the foundation of American life. The Bible's history is linked to and condones territorial expansion; so, its the best source of religious justification for imperialism. If one submit to the religious tenets of Christianity, oppression will go smoothly. The master gets to do what he pleases and the oppressed accepts it. However, opposition to this placebo religion will be met with the bullet! The Bible or the bullet, the American way of life.

You can not believe in Christianity and not capitalism; and you can not believe in capitalism and not believe in racism, they all go hand in hand! Hence, Christians may publicly deny Christianity's gruesome role in perpetuating tyranny, however; it just proves this enemy is a chameleon, and its conspiratorial design must remain masonic in nature. So, while protesting his system, we subliminally give him genuflection during sanctimonious services. Then, we pray to him in our legal papers with statements like:

WHEREFORE, Petitioner PRAYS that the Court grant Petitioner relief to which he may be entitled in this proceeding.

WHEREFORE, Petitioner PRAYS of this Court to appoint counsel to represent Petitioner.

One of the greatest curses from which American victims suffer is immunity of our perpetrators-government officials. They protect their employees of organized crime by granting them immunity from liability for their actions. In exchange for protecting capitalist interests of the government, he's protected. He's told to ignore his moral conscience in his despotic exercise of power. Official immunity is political bribery, as it encourage immoral acts by waiving accountability. He "can not be held liable for the neglect of the duty of that body...If there is a refusal, neglect, or failure, with respect to the exercise of power or discharge of duties of such body, IT IS THE DEFAULT OF THE BODY, AND NOT OF THE INDIVIDUAL COMPOSING IT..." 67 C.J.S. 206. The following is a statement made by Spec. Charles A. Graner, one of the U.S. soldiers allegedly involved in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

"The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer in me says I love to see a grown man piss himself..." (as quoted in The Washington Post, May 22, 2004).

It is men like him the doctrine of immunity protects. Now, if he can't be held responsible for his actions; that it is to the default of the body itself; then, how can you hold the body responsible for negligence of its duties to the public? You can not grab capitalism by the horn and drag it to an international court because it's an intangible structure! You can not charge capitalism itself for its exploitation and oppression of humanity, because it can only exist through its physical, human agents and abettors! And they can't be held liable for such an intangible "body," as it is the default of the body, and not of the individuals composing it - according to their own law books.

The fact that they are granted immunity proves they know the system is an unjust and immoral one. Why else would there be a strong need to protect them from punishment? As in slavery, slave-masters felt immune from moral accountability for the institution of slavery, because it was "ordained" by God when He "cursed Ham"; and they were only carrying out the duties imposed on them by God, who is also an intangible entity, for the institution of slavery! And to this day they have not shown public remorse for such a heinous crime. So here they are telling us to blame God Himself for the crimes committed against humanity, not them. Just as they are telling us to blame the governmental "body" and not the individuals composing it. Hence, perpetrators dexteriously evade punishment by placing the blame on intangible entities; and those whites who don't support this system are called traitors. Religiously and politically they escape punishment by using this tactic; religiously and politically they force whites to follow them for fear of being a traitor.

In America places like homeless shelters, ghettos, and prisons are cesspools of capitalism, the cellar of America's social structure. It is this element against which Congress pass laws, and against whom the courts enforce those laws and pass down punishment - not to corporate or government officials. Remember, the laws of America has capitalist roots; so it will protect and support any that help strengthen its imperialist design, it's the bullet!

Since capitalism can't escape its own nature, it find a way to capitalize on those below poverty level. It does this by making crime itself an economic market and scheme to create jobs for those willing to protect its interests. So you see the police patrolling the ghettos and harassing the poor. They're not there to prevent crime but to preserve it, to do so is to protect their asset-crime! Why else would police officers, prosecutors, judges, parole officers, etc. pursue these occupations as CAREERS when they publicly condemn crime? Some would say "to fight crime"; yet, these hypocrites must rely on crime for their livelihood for without it they wouldn't have a job! So in essence they actually support the very thing they claim to despise.

The support it to the point they provoke and partake in crimes against citizens, remember Rodney King, Amadou Diallo? They do it with faith their superiors will be loyal to them for their service in supporting the system. Unfortunately they're right most of the time by the fact countless brutalities and "justifiable homicides" go unpunished. The victims must watch the guilty go free; and justice, the ligament to peace, is broken asunder. Then there's civil unrest; a national outcry. Some go out in rage seeking to avenge the murder of the spirit of justice, and like the Rodney King riot, crimes are committed. So in the end they still profit.

Many American citizens are ignorant of how this structure operates because they have conformed to the Bible; and, censorship raised its ugly head in every institution in America to minimize detection of the bullet. It's the venom of falsehood they spit in our children's eyes, and make them blind of the truth about this nation's corruptions. They engender in our children a sense of patriotism America doesn't deserve. It's a process started early in schools with patriotic songs like:

"This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to New York Island..."

They raise our children with the false impression that America rose from a beautiful an humble beginning; implying the native inhabitants willfully shared this land with European immigrants, and everyone lived happily ever after. It's a cynical falsehood and denial of the bloody history of America. It is to deny the countless lives of Native Americans by greedy and desperate nomads in territorial expansion. Murder and imperialism spread like an epidemic across American soil, and attached itself as parasites to its native hosts.

The strong campaign of historical censorship by schools and media is responsible for victimizing our children. They victimize our children by instilling in them a sense of patriotism they may not have were education and media more honest. Yet, they grow up with this sense of patriotism, stolen from them through deceit, and join the military forces. In such forces they become the human agents of America's greatest source of international fascism and imperialism. As soldiers pumped with the embalming fluid of national pride, they go out and oppress the people of color around the world. When they arrive by water, air, and land; there's only one question to be asked - the Bible or the bullet?