Revolution #015, September 25, 2005, posted at revcom.us
Revolution received the following correspondence from a reader who last week submitted “Time to Let Go of God”:
On Friday the 16th, on the so-called day of prayer for Katrina victims, Bush, speaking at Washington National Cathedral, stated that:
“Through prayer, we look for ways to understand the arbitrary harm left by this storm and the mystery of undeserved suffering. And in our search we are reminded that god’s purposes are sometimes impossible to know here on earth.”
I had to stop and say to myself, is he serious? Is this the crap he’s trying to give to the people to speak for the devastating flaws of this government and system overall in handling the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina? Then I thought about it—what if I were a bloodsucking conniving imperialist responsible for the death and the “undeserved suffering” of countless people on a daily basis. I’d tell people to look to god too—that he works in mysterious ways, that it’s time for prayer and atonement and whatever else that would keep them from holding me responsible and coming after me for my gruesome crimes on humanity.
Yet while he and the class of people he represents actually have an interest in putting forth this outlook, the exploited and oppressed who are taking up and putting forth this outlook that god’s purpose is responsible for all of this, they have absolutely no interest in it. This is first and foremost because no such god exists. All of this religiosity about having prayer, that it’s all in god’s hands, that people should be thanking god for his mercy, they should be repenting for the sins that brought about this judgment, this is not what the people need at all. This will give them no real solution to the problems that this system continually brings down on them. In fact, this outlook only serves to perpetuate these oppressive conditions for the people.
While there is much to understand about how hurricanes work, they, like all other natural disasters, are natural phenomenon of the earth—not some mysterious hand of god—and they are understandable through science, not prayer. In fact, all of reality is understandable through science, including human social relations. We can see that the real problem is not the sinful nature of people, or the wrath of god, or the devil, but how the people of the world are forced to organize in order to produce the necessities of life.
It is through science that we can actually identify the reality that there was needless suffering and dying of people during this natural disaster, and literally every day under this system. We can understand that the entire oppressive way that human beings must relate under capitalism continues to create miserable conditions for the majority of the planet. Through science (and once again, not prayer) we can understand and change the world so that this needless suffering—which is an avoidable product of capitalism—is alleviated with the overthrow of this system through a communist revolution.
Let’s take one example: it wasn’t the hand of god that brought Blacks to New Orleans as slaves, or the reason why Blacks there (or other places as well) are impoverished in the first place. But this was the result of how this system has historically exploited Black people through plantation and urban slave labor and sharecropping relations, and then further has systematically placed Blacks in the lowest sections of the working class where they are still exploited. Many Blacks, because this system can’t find any way to exploit them, are forced into the margins of society living from day to day without any means of economic or social security. Thus a major disaster such as Hurricane Katrina takes place and what happens? Tens of thousands of Black people are stranded without food or resources. Once again, this was not the result of the hand of god but very real material factors, the national oppression of Black people in this case, rooted in the way this system functions.
One thing that these Christian Fascists really hate is science (unless of course they can use it to make lethal weapons of warfare and destruction). It tears apart their whole mythological setup of reality and ultimately undermines every “god given” legitimacy they have to rule. They hate science, and they don’t want the masses of people to know or use science in understanding the world. As long as they can keep on putting the causes of people’s suffering on these invisible forces, they can continue to wash the blood of the masses of people off of their hands, justify unspeakable crimes on humanity, and continue to make the world a tortured existence for hundreds of millions of people. And why? Because it’s all a part of god’s plan.
Well, let’s stop and think about that for a minute — what kind of god would bring about, allow or foster this kind of immense horror and suffering on people? What kind of god would leave tens of thousands of people stranded and practically left to die, without food, shelter or resources? What kind of god would have allowed them to be poor, exploited and oppressed in the first place so that they were left without any way out? A really sadistic and horrible god, that’s what kind—a god fit to exist only in the mind of a class of people who look for every way to legitimize the oppression and suffering of the people they exploit.
Do we really want to accept their outlook of these things? Do we really need a time for “spiritual atonement” as people get their lives back together? Do we really want to accept that this was all some act of god for judgement as if the people are to blame, and that prayer and repentance is the way out? Is this what the people truly need to be following? Do we really want to let these conniving, murdering bloodsuckers off the hook for this? NO—Hell NO! Is there another outlook that is based on science and reality that actually points to the real solution? Yes, it is the revolutionary communist outlook of this very paper you are reading right now. We don’t need to believe in myths about any gods, resurrected saviors, demons or devils, angels, ghosts, or prophesies. None of these things are real, and believing in them won’t lead us to a world without oppressive social relations. We need communism, and not anything less real than that.