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A Relationship of a New Kind: Marxism as a Transcendental Atheism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

John Hoffman
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The atheistic character of Marxism has often been regarded as an obstruction to dialogue and debate between Marxists and Christians. A recent contributor to this discussion suggests that if Marx has anything to offer Christians, it is ‘in spite of his atheism’, while others have pressed for a modus vivendi between science and faith; materialism and religion. Yet the atheism of the Marxist tradition is, I want to argue, an atheism which ‘transcends’. It is an atheism which translates the preoccupations of world religions into the language of a dialectical science and in this way offers a way out of the conceptual rigidities in which conventional materialists and believers alike find themselves increasingly trapped. It is an atheism which is far more positive and liberating than is commonly assumed.

I shall begin by presenting the Marxist case for atheism both in historical terms and as I believe it stands in logic. Once this is done, it will become clearer why Marxism has an essentially affirmative attitude to the religious heritage which it transcends.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 66 , Issue 784 , October 1985 , pp. 417 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

*

This article is based on a talk given at a symposium, ‘Marxism and Religion’, organised by the Birmingham University staff branch of the Communist Party in March 1985. I am indebted to Dan McEwan for his discussion and advice on the subject and to Christopher Hughes for his Hegelian enthusiasms.

References

1 See Michael, Langford, ‘Marxism and Atheism’, After Marx: The Jubilee Lent Lectures for 1983. Ed. Kenneth, Leech (London: The Jubilee Group, 1984), p. 13Google Scholar; Irene, Brennan, ‘Marxism, Scientific Method and Religious Belief’, Polytechnic of Central London Seminar, 1980Google Scholar.

2 Marx, Engels, Collected Works (hereafter MECW), Volume 1, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975). p. 3Google Scholar.

3 Rousseau, The Social Contract (hereafter SC (London: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 49.

4 SC, p. 124.

5 SC pp 186–87.

6 MECW 3, p. 154; p. 167.

7 SC p. 84–85.

8 MECW 3, p. 167. SC. p. 49; p. 84; p. 114.

9 SC, p. 80.

10 Capital, Volume I, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970), p. 71; p. 79.

11 Grundrisse, (London: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 92.

12 MECW 5, 9.39.

13 Capital 1, p. 372.

14 Dialectics of Nature (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), p. 198.

15 The Poetry and Prose of Heindrich Heine Ed. F. Ewen, (New York: The Citadel Press, 1948). pp. 540–41.

16 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 10.

17 ‘Democracy and Marxism : A Mutual Challenge’, Marxism Today May 1982, p. 9.