Socialism As Secular Religion

Some people get annoyed when I say that Socialism is a secular religion but the characteristics and similarities between the two are striking as I will attempt to show.In a recent programme about the social reformer Annie Bessant it described how she abandoned her Christian faith for Socialism as she felt that the social ends she sought to achieve via Christianity could be better achieved through Socialism.

Many on the Left I believe made a similar journey from the mysticism of faith to the mysticism of collectivism with its dogma driven certainties, absolutes,pieties,authoritarianism,anti individualism,anti Capitalism and ruthless intolerance of dissenters and appeal to irrational groupthink tendencies.

Just as Christianity sought to control people's lives from a centralist authoritarian top down hierachical structure of the Church, scattering its benisons on the masses so too did socialism seek to appeal to the infantile wish of the masses for salvation from want and indigence via the agencies of the State rather than personal effort and achievement.Capitalism it was claimed led to selfishness and greed and alienation.

But is turns out that the profound deracination of self hood and anomie could just as easily be caused by an abandonment of individual action and the contracting out of personal responsibility to the State.God is dead,long live the State.At the root of both Christianity and Socialism is self sacrifice.The former urges people to sacrifice themselves to a mystical omnipotent deity, the latter to the omnipotent State.In both cases the individual wants and requirements are sacrificed to the 'other'ie anyone but them.

Lastly the two faiths are indeed held to by their adherents very frequently despite all evidence to the contrary. For example,even though the ministrations of Socialists have had palpably deleterious effects on their supposed beneficiaries the adherents to the faith evince no self examination or revision of said belief but hold fast to their faith even more doggedly and stubbornly showing once again how both religion and collectivism rely on mysticism and irrationality for their sustenance.

It is no accident that the country that took to Socialism and Communism most readily was Russia which was steeped in the mysticism of the Orthodox church with its other worldy fatalism, obscurantism,irrationality and superstitions.This fostered a passivity and fatalism amongst the people that the Communists would utilize to their great advantage on their assault on the individual and promotion of the paramountcy of the State to shape the individual into the desired collectivist mindset of conformity and obedience.

Was Christ indeed the first Socialist?He evinced a hatred of wealth and riches and took a vow of poverty.Rich people are going to hell -it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to heaven.Give up your wealth and follow me.