Was turning against religious their biggest mistake? It seems that communism should be compatable with christianity...

And if the Commune relieves the suffering of the masses, then it will no longer need it's opiate. So then, why not remove religion, as all people in the commune won't be oppressed?

>Opiate as in, something people use to relieve their suffering
And keeps them passive and unable to improve their situation. A comparison to opium is not positive.

> arbitrarily
Oh boy. Any communist that believes in god would get laughed out of any intelligentsia circle. If you research their actual theories you will find they are based greatly in enlightenment thinking, which bases everything on logic and reason. They reject the idea of god and especially the corrupt institutions that take advantage of people in its image. They were fedora-fags before fedora fags were a thing. Saying turning against religion was their biggest mistake is basically just saying having their ideology is a mistake. Communism is more than just sharing everything.

Thet may not gel with religion from a philosophical standpoint, but functionally there shouldn't be any compatability issue. They should have just been secular.

> 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.
>The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
The opiate is just the equivalent of a painkiller in the text.

It wouldn't need to be removed.

Im not denying that. Im just saying that it wasnt arbitrary and having a communist country that isnt antireligion is more out there than the other way around

>arbitrarily decided not to be.
>arbitrarily?
Hearts and minds

One of the greatest failings of the Soviet Union was restoring the orthodox church.

How so?

> 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.
>The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Man, even Marx btfo fedoras.

>It seems that communism should be compatable with christianity

No. Communism is materialist, Christianity is not.

>compatible
lmao

There's a difference and ultimately the biggest difference between Marx and those who used his ideas between something happening naturally and trying to force it to happen.

Marx believed communism would be the natural end result of capitalism and specifically said his model was only intended for Western Europe.

What Lenin and later Mao attempted was to force communism after completely skipping the capitalist phase.

So in the case of religion it was similar in that Marx believed that need created suffering and with the elimination of suffering religion would simply not be needed anymore.

Lenin took this idea and changed to a strongly anti-religious sentiment, that religion was a tool used by the upper class (rulers appointed by god) to keep the peasants down.

They believed that religion was a tool used by the upper classes to keep the common people from attempting to improve their lot in life, or threaten their masters. 'Do as we say, and you'll go to heaven, even if life is hard!', and so on. To be honest, that is how faith has been used by the elite, but perhaps that isn't the core reason for faith to exist. After all, there have been pious nobles throughout history.

What's frustrating to me is that I can see parts of collectivist ideologies meshing well with Christianity, moreso than unfettered capitalism does. But communism as it is popularly known is hard to divorce from its roots in materialism and anti-religious sentiment. I'm more a fan of Liberation Theology, personally.

Marx thought that Christianity (and religion as a whole) existed so that people could feel good about their failure. For example, a person might fail to cut down a tree, but that doesn't matter because God could do it.

Over history as humans became more powerful Marx thought there was less and less need for this. He advocated doing away with organized religion because it only existed to oppress people by alienating them from reality when they came upon something beyond their power.

then why were they so anti-semitic also?