History, Materialism and Religion (Worker like)

Richard Mellor

I checked and it was Constantine that decriminalized Christianity and The Roman Empire that adopted it as the state religion.

But I want to add more. As with my views I share in the video, I think matter is primary. If we think about it, no human progress of any serious significance has arisen through religious philosophy.  The scientist Darwin was afraid to publish his findings and actually held back from doing so due to fear of the church, it's teachings and laws.  In Sylvia Federici's book Caliban and the Witch she gives some idea of the number of women murdered as witches in the millions over centuries as witches and demons when they were healers, midwives, and chemists and their knowledge threatened the ideology of the ruling elite. This is not to mention what the taking of this religious philosophy along with colonial expeditions meant for the colonized.

What looking at the world from a materialist perspective, and history from an historical materialist perspective does is we get to see things as they really are. This aides us in so many ways.

If we take people that have different positions on issues, lets say racism. Or the colonization of America. It could be any opposing position between two groups or individuals on an issue. We can never understand the opposing view if we don't have any understanding of the lives and experiences of the person(s) expressing it.

I remember some years back at a school gathering, a parent there with her daughter, I knew her. But she was inebriated, not crazy drunk but I could tell in so many subtle ways and I knew that her daughter could.

This is a real sensitive issue with me as there were many times when I was a small child that my father attended similar events and I knew he was tipsy. I knew other adults were aware of it and it embarrassed me and I felt embarrassed for him and angry at him at the same time. But I couldn't speak it.

If someone didn't know that history they might not understand why I would react to a scene like that not involving me and 55 years on. And how has it affected me?

I'm writing more than I intended here but I didn't want to make a long video on the trail. But that's why the ruling class uses racism, sexism and all sorts of social tricks to divide the masses of the people who produce or work in society. If you get to know other people as individuals, races, culturally different and most importantly how the society we all live in relates to them, then it helps you understand some of their way of thinking and they yours. The only real way to do that with individuals and communities, is to mix in a healthy way; to eat with them, to visit their homes to socialize etc. The workplace is designed to divide, as is society.  In any class society, the ruling  class, a minority, has to divide those on whose backs their riches are produced. Competition between the subjugated is the prime driver of division and helps maintain the status quo.

That's why in invasions, colonization wars etc. the populations of the occupied have to be demonized as the ruling class has to justify its barbaric conquest by portraying those that resist as uncivilized and less than human, as do any workers in any society.