Spiritual Communism ("Idealism Materialism"-Engels)

[William Prest]

Much is said about spirituality and communism and a lot of it is misinformed and interest slanted. At their core they are really one and the same, for both see the whole as the center of things rather than personal egoistic individualism to the exclusion of others. Spirituality and communism both go deep into history and must be interlinked if we are to have genuine communism where everyone is part of the whole to the exclusion of no one. Spirituality deals with the ideal brought into realization by praxis. Communism is the practical approach to a society that includes all where each contributes to the whole and everyone benefits from the sum of what the whole has produced from the collective of individuals. Real spirituality is not escapist and obscurantist, just as real communism is not absolutely materialistic but must be dialectic, allowing for new insights, creativity, progress and improvement.

The best source for understanding idealism materialism where the idealist philosophy is combined with the empirical, materialist view is in the works of Hegel, who served as the foundation of Marx’s thinking. Engels in particular developed the concept of Idealism Materialism. As long as these ideas are not used against humanity in isolation from each other, but in combination and subject to analysis, then there should not be a problem. The only problem that can arise is if someone wants to control information with the object of controlling the masses for their own designs and ends.

Spirituality is about liberation, not about bondage. To know yourself as you really are is to be free from what others say or think you are. What is imposed from outside is illusory and you cannot hope to achieve what another dictates that you must be. Only you know what that is; no one can tell you. With that insight you can be free to let others find their real center of being. The whole of writings dealing with spirituality reveal liberation; liberation of the mind, liberation from illusion, liberation from suffering, liberation from fear, liberation from oppression and so on. We find these ideas spoken of by Buddha, in the writings of the Old Testament profits and the New Testament sayings attributed to Jesus and John the Baptist. Buddha refers to the cessation of suffering, liberation from illusions and the great liberation. Jesus and the prophets explain that where God is, there is liberty and that people will plant and reap what they have worked on, build houses and inhabit them without others taking everything. Liberty actually comes after necessity is fulfilled.

Communism is about living in the real world and that the workers get the full product of their labors. As a collective society, everyone shares everything that is produced individually in the collective. This kind of living is described in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. It is also described as a method of living together in the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. It was an idea put into praxis by Lenin and Trotsky in a backward feudal, peasant based economy country; Russia, in contravention to the idea of Marx, that communism would be born phoenix like out of the ashes of the most advanced industrial capitalist state. Does this fact of history negate Marx? Not at all; as the capitalist order was challenged when the world capitalist rule broke at its weakest link. One reason is due to the fact that Germany deliberately intervened and interfered in Russian events in 1917 to get Russia out of the war. The other reason is that once a communist society was in existence, the capitalist world order had to make concessions to workers in the advanced industrial countries that historically they were opposed and did everything to prevent. The existence of the collective communist society of the Soviet Union forced concessions upon capitalists in order prevents the total demise of capitalism. It was a time buying tactic while a propaganda and cold war was in effect to bring down communism. Also, after the death of Lenin, the capitalist influence was able to get concessions out of Stalin in the "Socialism in one country" concept. These concessions to capitalism eventually led to the death of the deformed workers state, which the soviet society had become under Stalin.

Out of this though, other deformed workers states emerged, primarily in China, N. Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. All of these still exist (2009), though China now has a mix of capitalist influence with collectivist activity. N. Korea and Cuba are either cut off from the capitalist world by self choice or by the imposition by naval blockade from outside. Vietnam as a deformed workers state is more integrated into the capitalist world, but they won the Vietnam War against the superpower US. This is the state of things now, where deformed communist regions exist under pressure from the overbearing capitalist imperialist world order. But the greed of capitalism and individual profit at the cost of all else, is now showing its symptoms of economic disease, and this is advancing rapidly. This is impacting with extreme negativity on the working class or the employees of the capitalist employers. Due to the world economic slide toward oblivion, millions of employees are being laid off or fired, losing homes and all else. This creates a ready harvest ground for new ideas and a different way to run an economy, such as collectively and in a planned manner for the benefit of all instead of a handful of super rich and powerful capitalist lords.

Capitalism is revealed for what it is; a huge, violent, lying swindle exploiting its employees and the planet for maximum profit, without regard of anything but wealth and power, enforced by an armed state. Capitalist liberty is about exploiting all it can and keeping those in its subjugation ignorant and enslaved while enriching a few. This is about as un-spiritual as one can get. The essence of spirituality is not doing harm to others and capitalism has brought nothing but harm in its imperialist stage of demise through money manipulation, wars, slavery and poisoning everything it touches. Capitalism contains an intrinsic anarchy and chaos within its economy that results in periodic crises of overproduction. This affects employees with periodic unemployment and misery, while the "private owners of the means of production" wallow in luxurious indolence, living off all that surplus value they had former employees create from natural resources and the sweat of their labors. While thus employed, they were fed lies and kept ignorant of the real state of affairs. They received instead the religious supernatural opium and an unnatural adoration of their masters, self appointed representatives of the supernatural god, for whom they sacrificed all including the lives of their children in brutal profit seeking wars. The liberty of the few is bought through the transference of necessity to the toiling class that gets both their own necessity to fulfill and the necessity of the capitalist masters. Liberty is lost to the capitalist masters, while the toilers have nothing but bondage. The result is misery and suffering of different types to both classes. Even as the rulers struggle to maximize their own liberty, they become bonded to the constant need for security to protect them from the ones they oppress. Thus even their liberty is a sham.

Spirituality encourages selfless service to others. In reality, we all need each other. This was true in the distant past where the whole community was necessary for survival. It is no less true today. Under capitalism, selfless service is exploited to maximum profit through the opiate of religion, which is false spirituality and what Marxists correctly call, obscurantism and supernaturalism. In a genuine communist society; selflessness means service to the whole of society, which will benefit you in return for selfless service. Communism will work with nature to protect and preserve it for all over all time in contradistinction to capitalism that rapes and tears everything apart for maximum exploitation, wealth and power for immediate profit. If you want to know what the real "god" of capitalism is, you need look no further than the banks and Wall St. Homage to God is a sham to deceive the workers and keep them atomized in opposing factions and keeps them unaware of the real truth; hence the idea that religion is the opiate of the masses. The real god of capitalism is money in the form of fictitious value that is used to manipulate the toilers and to which the toilers are set to serve in homage as a god. It is one of the keys to profiteering. History has shouted these lessons for all who can hear. Communism does not acknowledge supernaturalism or a god, but does acknowledge and attempts to understand the mysteries of nature through the dialectical sciences. It acknowledges nature and respect for nature and one another, which is also the essence of real spirituality. In the Bible, a warning is written "God will ruin those who ruin the earth." Even the Christian religion that capitalism uses to suppress the toilers on all fronts does not agree with capitalist agendas and ways of doing things. The toilers can use this as a weapon of propaganda to defend themselves.

Capitalism has ruined everything it touched and touches and this is now coming back on all life forms, guilty and innocent alike. These massive crimes stand as a grand indictment against capitalism and its criminal masters, visible to all in its results. The results stand as a judgment against the imperialist capitalist order, often referred to now as the New World Order. The enrichment of a few individuals has ruined everything. One of the tasks of a communist society is to rescue the earth from the brink of ruin that capitalists have brought. This they did by forcing the toilers, who were kept ignorant to bring in the profit while the ruin of the planet unfolded.

Can the corporate and capitalist rulers be brought to sense? It is highly doubtful. Coming to spiritual liberation is a very personal thing. Communist should not suppress this in the mistaken notion that it is mere pseudo-mysticism of the bourgeois baffle gab sense. Yes, there is plenty of pseudo-mysticism, but this should not include real mysticism which has a reverence for nature and all people; something that is really needed today. People who have genuine spirituality are as opposed to capitalist crimes and exploitation as a genuine communist does. Both seek the liberation of humanity from the shackles of exploitation. Thus there is another point of identity which should be a focus of unity.