“However, it’s worth considering that serious revolutionaries and Marxist…”
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The Plough1973The Fourth InternationalIrish history and its commemorationBritish troops and the occupationThe Fourth InternationalIrish history and its commemorationBritish troops and the occupation
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However, it’s worth considering that serious revolutionaries and Marxist theoreticians from Marx and Engels onwards have fought against this tendency. Both in Anti-Durhing (Engels) and in a critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx) they showed that revolutionaries present an answer to the root cause of religion. Once the basic need for religion has been eliminated, with the destruction of the bourgeois state, religion itself will wither and die, as did magic once its need was past, Any attempt to speed up this withering process, by trying to wipe out religion by force, they stressed will merely proiong the agony. Persecution has never defeated any cause; it merely gives it more importance. For Marxism has nothing to fear from religion, rather the reverse. By giving man the tools he needs to understand the capitalist system and its contradictions, Marxism supercedes religion and religion in its turn becomes meaningless.
This, of course does not absolve revolutionaries from fighting a constant propaganda war now; by exposing the role the Church pla, s and showing what religion means. We should call for a separation of church and state and for the freeing of educatio and the social services from church influence.
But, as with male chauvinism, and racism, our attack is principally aimed at their reason for existence, the capitalist system itself. Once the revolution has been fought and won we can then discuss philosophy, Then, indeed, religion and materialism can be evaluated at their true worth.
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re Of Palestinian Students’ Unions; in Sweden, an antiSubversive Bill has been passed recently in the Parliament. In Ireland, apart from the Special Powers Act in the North, in December last year, after the planting of bombs in Dublin by the British ‘SAS, the Dail passed the Offences Against the State Amendment Act, primarily against the IRA, but which can be used against all Republicans, Socialists, Trade-Union militants, More recently, in Britain, in the SHREWSBURY case, workers two Pakistani workers in London.
Moreover, as proved by the pamphlet ’’IN DEFENCE OF PEACE”, it is clear that the Conservative government, is preparing for Civil War, supporting the theories of Brigadier KITSON . _ For that purpose, Northern Ireland, as is well-known, has become an experimental field, a laboratory for Civil War not only in Britain, but in Europe as a whole. The setting-up of the. SAS, the improvement of material, CR gas, new rifles, '