Lotta people have baffleingly wrongheaded views of Marx’s critique of religion, reducing it to m*taphysics

Marx criticises religion basically from the second he enters history; but he is basically silent on metaphysical stuff like “does God exist” because *he doesn’t care the point of materialism and revolutionary philosophy is specifically to drop useless metaphysical debates for e.g. the formation and organisation of the state or the restriction of peasant rights to forest wood. But if we must discuss useless metaphysical questions, Marx comes out swinging in favour of the existence of all gods in his doctoral dissertation: “Take for instance the ontological proof [of god]: “that which I conceive for myself in a real way is a real concept for me”, something that works on me. In this sense, all gods, the Pagan as well as the Christian ones, have possessed a real existence…If somebody imagines he has a hundred thalers…he will incur debts on the strength of his imagination, his imagination will work, in the same way as all humanity has incurred debts on its gods.”(MECWvol1p104 Marx’s emphasis)

In 1842 he points out: “And as for Rome! Read Cicero! The Epicurean, Stoic or Sceptic philosophies were the religions of cultured Romans when Rome had reached the zenith of its development. That with the downfall of the ancient states their religions also disappeared requires no further explanation, for the “true religion” of the ancients was the cult of “their nationality”, of their “state”.”(ibid p189); note the fluidity of Marx’s definition of ‘religion’ and its lack of relation to “they believe in invisible entities” and its deep connection to “they believe in reified alienated social relationships”.

Three other neat quotes (mostly early Marx because he drops metaphysical bullshit like this for important stuff like factory reports by the 50s):

Up till now the political consitution has been the religious sphere, the religion of national life, the Heaven of its generality over against the Earthly existence of its actuality.

(MECWvol3 p31)

Man, even if he proclaims himself an atheist through the medium of the state, that is, if he proclaims the state to be atheistic, still remains in the grip of religion, precisely because he acknowledges himself only by a roundabout route, only through an intermediary. Religion in precisely the recognition of man in a roundabout way.

(MECWvol3 p152)

In order, therefore, to find an analogy [for commodity-fetishism] we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.

(Capital, p165)

Marx’s critique is not “man in the sky silly”, is not “people just don’t know the truth and i must preach it”; it is that religion is the result of class society, of sanctification of oppressive social structures and the recognition of humans through an alienated structure. In more abstract terms, Marx believes religion is the result of social relations not being understood by humans except through abstract mystifications such as the gods, the state, the market.

It should be made very explicit that in capital, Marx shows that our society, the society in which the capitalist mode of production predominates, is deeply ‘religious’, believing in all manner of mystical and not-real things like value, interactions between commodities. Marx even argues that the market operates in such a way that it appears to basically everyone as an all powerful all present all knowing entity which exists as an independent subject outside of them. This is what religion is. It will not disappear when people profess their undying belief in Isaac Newton; it will disappear when they stop recognizing themselves and other humans as people through Jesus (‘christians’) or the state (‘citizens’) or the market (‘property-owners’).

Marx is also much more ambivalent on religion than most marxists seem to think (as the Capital bookclub on this website has been seeing through his Biblical references). Marx uses the Bible as both a historical source and for theoretical inspiration throughout his lifetime. There were multiple copies of the Bible in his library when he died. Why? Because “Religion is the opiate of the masses” is reduction of Marx’s ideas to absurdity. A fuller version of the quote reads:

Religion is the general theory of [the world of class society], its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point of honour, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality…Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…It is the opium of the people.

(MECWvol3 p175)

I.e. “religion is a mixed bag”

In terms of Soviet policy, I haven’t studied their policy regarding the orthodox church and I refuse to have takes on stuff I haven’t investigated unless I need too. Regarding non-christian religions: the USSR did a colonialism and pissed off a ton of the marginalised peoples of Siberia and northern Russia with their r/atheism-bro nonsense, because they enforced this atheism even on local ‘grassroots’ practices, indigenous practices. Talismans were confiscated, sacred sites destroyed to prove that "the gods aren’t real. And like it’s gotta be re-iterated–many of these people supported the soviets and even integrated socialism into their religious practices (one example; some of the Buryats started revering the Paris commune matyrs as revolutionary spirits, others created ritual around fulfilling quotas) but this wasn’t good enough for the r/atheismbros so they squashed it and pissed the well intentioned people off.

would a socialist state with a party that strictly adhered to Marxism–Leninism but allowed religious freedom among its citizenship be stable?

Cuba allows Christians (even Catholics afaik) into the party, has for decades. Cuba has close ties to liberation theologists throughout latin america, because Cuba is thankfully not run by r/atheismbros. Cuba is the most stable ML state I am aware of.

I haven’t read/listened to a whole lot of theory, what literature would you recommend to better understand dialectical materialism?

Frank Black-Elk’s “Observations on Marxism and Lakota Tradition” in Marxism and Native Americans is amazing and short (and pirate-able on libgen). He (and a few other native folks) argues strongly that native knowledge systems (he argues specifically regarding the Lakota) are dialectically materialist because of their spirituality. Aikenhead & Michell’s Bridging Cultures is a good in depth examination by native scientists of the empirical basis of indigenous knowledge. If you must read something filled with Marxist buzzwords, Bertell Ollman’s Dance of the Dialectic is an absolute masterpiece despite his annoying takes on the USSR (which don’t come up much or at all in this book). This is also a good article: https://cosmonautmag.com/2023/02/karl-marx-and-radical-indigenous-critiques-of-capitalism/