First, I don’t know where I have to put this kind of question on Lemmy so I’m asking it here. Marx viewed religion as a negative force, often referring to it as the ‘opiate of the masses.’ If someone is religious and also identifies as a Marxist, do you think that’s contradictory, or is it just a matter of mislabeling themselves? Would it be more accurate for them to call themselves a socialist instead of a Marxist?
I think that really depends on how you define “religious” and “Marxist”.
When you say “religious”, do you just mean belief in a higher power, or dogmatic adherence to a specific church, or something in between?
When you say “Marxist”, do you mean someone who thinks his hypothesis of class struggle inevitably leading to a classless, stateless society is accurate, or someone who totally agrees with everything he ever said, or something in between?
My personal belief is, roughly, that every consciousness is a manifestation, or reflection, of a universe-spanning cosmic consciousness that you may as well call “God”. Not only does that not conflict with the end-state of Marxism, but I’d argue that it’s particularly synergetic. If we’re all aspects of the same “thing”, it only makes sense that we should aspire to cooperate freely. Even the teachings of Jesus center around mutual aid and cooperation, and there are claims that the early Christians operated under borderline communism.
On the other hand, the institutions that arise nominally under the pretense of divine mandate tend to be extremely hierarchical and exploitative. Those institutions pretty clearly prioritize adherence to church dogma over individual connection with the divine. There’s your opiate: people blindly following orders because some guy in an impressive hat told them God would punish them if they didn’t.
So yeah, you need to clearly define your terms, and confirm that the people claiming to be “religious” “Marxists” are using those terms the same way you are.