Submitted by Bea Lumpkin, Chicago, IL.

I welcome Roberta Wood’s discussion of materialism and the need to welcome religious people to the Communist Party. Her article is also an example of using simple, everyday language to express profound ideas. We are making progress in that direction.

Now we talk about workers and capitalists instead of proletarians and bourgeoisie. And we don’t get upset when progressives talk about saving “middle class jobs” when they refer to  working class jobs that pay a living wage. Sure, we want to sharpen understanding of class divisions. Whatever people call it, they see class divisions sharpening with 85 of the world’s richest people having more wealth than 3,500,000,000 of the world’s poorest people.

Actually there is a problem with the Marxist use of the word “materialism”. In common usage it has come to mean a desire for more personal belongings, personal gain, the very opposite of what we stand for.

I used to think, “Why don’t we just say ‘realism’ instead of materialism?” But I learned that “realism” has already been used for something else. So how can we describe our outlook of dealing with the real world and how it is changing, and how we can help change it to benefit working people?

Materialism, as used by Marx, is an old word for something we now call the scientific method. As we know, some scientists are religious, some are atheists and some say they are neither. But when practicing science, all scientists deal with the real world as it is, not as they would like it to be. The scientific method, based on the real world, is accepted for the natural sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, geology and others. Marxists believe it is just as necessary for the social studies.

Many do not use the method of science in studying economics or history or government. That’s because opposing class interests are at play. Here’s an example from social science, the history of the Great Depression. In the official but unscientific study of history, they claim that President Roosevelt gave us our “Safety Net”. I was there and I know that’s not true.

It is true that Roosevelt signed the laws that provided unemployment compensation, social security, the 40-hour week, union rights and abolished child labor. That made him a great president. But he did it only after the people made him do it by organizing and marching in the millions in our cities and the nation’s capital. Some of the marches were called by the Communist Party USA and Communists often lead the hunger marches.

Why isn’t that history in the textbooks? Because the big capitalists don’t want us to know that workers and their allies won the safety net by organizing and fighting for their rights. They don’t want us to know that we have the power to make history. World history has also been rewritten to justify racism and imperialism. The truth is that people of color built the foundations for modern civilization, misnamed “Western Civilization”. If that historical fact were known, it would expose the racist lies of inferior or superior “races”. So the official, capitalist and racist study of history makes the racist claim that civilization began in Europe.

In social sciences, as in natural sciences, Marx, Engels,Lenin and others realized that the scientific method could not be oversimplified. They understood that everything is always changing and interacting. Studying the laws of change and applying these laws is a large part of the scientific method. That’s what Marxists mean when they speak about dialectics, not just materialism but dialectical materialism.

Sure, we need simpler language to explain dialectical materialism. For example, gradual changes in quantity can suddenly bring about a change in quality. Nature gives us lots of examples of this. Just put a bottle of water out on a cold night in Chicago. The water will get colder and colder, gradually. It’s still a liquid and will flow. But as it continues to cool down to 32o Fahrenheit (0o Centigrade), the water  does not go down 31o . It suddenly becomes solid ice and expands. The quantitative change of cooling liquid water has produced a new quality, water ice. The water ice still has the same molecules as the water liquid. They’re just arranged differently.

The same scientific method of dialectical materialism is used in Marxist economics. Karl Marx was not the first economist to say that the economic base of a society is the key factor in what kind of culture that society develops. But Marx took it further. He understood that culture, in turn, affects the economy. They interact.

Since Marx was also a champion of the workers’ cause, he had no problem with the  discovery that exploitation was built into capitalism. To get rid of exploitation, people have to get rid of capitalism. By the way, it’s not as though Marx did this all by himself. When he met up with Friedrich Engels, Marx was overjoyed to find that Engels had already reached the same conclusions. And there were others.

So what does all of this have to do with religion? Not much, I think. As mentioned above, some scientists are religious and others are atheists. By definition, however, practicing scientists use the scientific method in their work, not their religious beliefs.

I think we need to distinguish between religious beliefs and religious organizations such as different churches. Some churches played and continue to play a progressive, even a revolutionary role. I am thinking of the Catholic Church in the Irish struggle for freedom from British rule, of liberation theology in Latin America and many African American churches in the civil rights struggles and more. But in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, many churches allowed the fascist army to set up their machine guns in the church steeple, usually the tallest building in the town. In South Africa, Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was a leader in the fight against apartheid. But many other leading clerics supported apartheid.

These examples, it seems to me, just show that the class struggle is fought on many fields, including inside of religious structures. Those religious who are fighting for working people and agree with our goal of socialism should be welcomed to join the Communist Party.

The views and opinions expressed in the Convention Discussion are those of the author alone. The Communist Party is publishing these views as a service to encourage discussion and debate. Those views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Communist Party, its leading bodies or staff members. The CPUSA Constitution, Program, and all its existing policies remain in effect during the Convention discussion period and during the Convention.

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CONVENTION DISCUSSION 
30th National Convention, Communist Party USA
Chicago | June 13-15, 2014

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