The Spirituality—or Lack Thereof—in Socialism
Gaining my religion? AH! NO! AHHH!!!
Karl Marx famously wrote that religion is the “opium of the people,” a line that has been incessantly misunderstood in the same way much of Marx’s work was. Few are even aware of the full sentiment, translated into English here: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
That full context changes things, doesn’t it? It’s clear that Marx isn’t disparaging religion as a mere painkiller, but recognizing that the story-building involved in religion gives people meaning in what would otherwise be life’s meaningless struggle.
How else do you justify spending 8 hours of your day 5 days a week, to help someone else profit, if not for the idea that doing so is virtuous itself? That by being virtuous (and subservient to a system that supplied you with the stories that those virtues are justified), you are rewarded with eternal happiness in the afterlife?
Humanity needs stories, and ultimately, religion is just a set of stories. To me, those stories are material history—the shit we know happened because our forefathers went through it—and the spirituality of it, the idea that there is something “bigger than” us is well, complicated.
But insofar as spirituality and religion are tools that give us meaning and purpose, then I believe socialism may be the answer, and that if there is any one thing bigger and more significant than “us” as individuals, it’s “us” as the collective human spirit.
A Disclaimer on My Blindspots
Note that I myself am an atheist. I have never been to a church service outside of weddings or funerals, I wasn’t raised religiously, and I have frankly never had much curiosity about religion. I find its supernatural elements to be so unbelievable at face value, and unknowable to us within our natural world, that taking any time whatsoever to parse value out of religious belief feels like a waste of time.
I don’t even believe in anything particularly spiritual. I am skeptical of ghosts, spirits, tarot, astrology, soulmates, crystals, chakras, energy, manifestation, past lives, so on. These are the same kinds of meaning-seeking that caused us to create organized religion, and I don’t find them particularly useful in understanding my place in the world either. I find these things far less harmful; no one has ever done a crusade in the name of astrology that I am aware of, but are nonetheless lacking in utility.
Admittedly, I’m not even that knowledgeable about religion. Most of what I do know is through being an American and seeing what the Abrahamic religions have to offer, specifically Christianity, and specifically being pissed off at how Christian Nationalists have ruined our country. (Particularly, I loathe that some Evangelicals actually believe they can usher in a Holy War by providing arms to Israel so that the Jews and Muslims duke it out and force God to come back. That’s fucking crazy, please stop believing that.)
So I want to be clear and honest; my perspective on religion and spirituality is extremely limited and even somewhat hostile, meaning I will be writing outside of my comfort zone.
However, I can’t deny the same reality that Marx recognized: Religion gives people much-needed meaning, and I believe we’re in a crisis of meaning. If God doesn’t exist, and most traditional avenues of spirituality are a crock of shit, shouldn’t we be nihilists who are driven by nothing but our own pleasure?
The utility of spiritual systems manifests itself in three significant ways; I will establish these three ways religion or spirituality provides meaning to its followers (how we should act, what we’re acting toward, and how we act that way together), and argue that socialism can provide these things just as well.
1. That’s It: I’m Solving Morality
First, let’s discuss how we ought to act.
Many secular philosophers have tried to square the problem of determining “good” ways to act through different schools of normative ethics: Why ought we do anything in a particular way?
There are three main branches of normative ethics:
Consequentialism says acts are right if they lead to the best consequences. Utilitarianism is one of the most well-known versions of this which says that the consequences must also provide a specific utility, with “happiness” often being the utility people turn to.
Deontology says that moral acts are more like predetermined duties. This discipline is most associated with religious belief because it says that moral obligations are derived from rules inherent to the universe, religious law, or cultural values.
Virtue ethics says that acts are considered moral goods if they embody virtues, like courage or compassion, and is much more focused on the character of the individual rather than their actions.
Like many secular humanist thinkers, who reject supernaturalism or superstition as a basis for morality, I have considered myself a consequentialist—specifically, a utilitarian—for much of my life.
Because there is nothing beyond the physical world, it seems impossible to derive morality from predetermined duties espoused by deontology—which religious folks say come from their scripture, and non-religious folks say somehow come from the natural world—nor from the virtues espoused by virtue ethics—which are manmade concepts unique to each culture, and place emphasis on morality in relation to “self” rather than “others.”
I also find the criticisms of utilitarianism to be salient. Isn’t this just hedonism? Would it really be morally good for all of us to hook our brains up to a computer that dumps images of what we want to see so we get a steady dopamine drip in our brains? Is happiness itself worthy of pursuit, or is there more that humans ought to desire reflected in their worlds? And aren’t all of these questions just questions about your preferences, since they don’t come from anywhere greater than you, the individual?
To solve these problems, we must define a more robust end goal (or consequence) than happiness, and consider what morality is even in service of in the first place.
Consider the views of Hobbes, that the natural state of man is to do whatever one thinks is necessary to preserve one’s own life. Hobbes wrote that in these conditions, life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and I concur: The so-called “natural” state of humanity, where we live not as people but as beasts, would be as Hobbes describes. In this world, there is no morality, just as there is no morality between the lion and the zebra.
What separates us from that state? The social contract. By surrendering our natural rights (to do whatever is necessary to preserve one own’s life) and through collective action, humanity can create something larger than the sum of its parts—and instead of being doomed to nasty, brutish conditions, we can pursue the life, liberty, and happiness espoused by figures like the Founding Fathers. Morality itself is then emergent from social connections, which suggests that the highest moral goods are in service of preserving and strengthening those social connections.
I would argue that a desirable world is one that maximizes humanity’s potential; that the individual is empowered to pursue their interests and desires, satisfying their individual spirit but also enabling them to contribute as best they can to the collective. It is within this perfect balance—the goldilocks zone between personal liberty and collective responsibility—that humanity is at its finest, capable of innovation and creation.
An act isn’t good then if it simply maximizes happiness. In my view, in this socialism by way of secular humanism, goodness is derived out of an obligation to society, to others, to the collective instead of to something like God or some other arbitrary set of duties or virtues. It is through this obligation that we can forge a world which encourages the best of “mankind” and individual “man.” These moral choices are also no longer preferences, as they create an obligation similar to how deontology might.
Why socialism in particular, then? Because it gives the individual a bigger stake in the collective, further aligning personal success with collective well-being. As an economic and political philosophy, socialism explicitly promotes this harmony: Karl Marx wrote, “The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.” In other words, human potential isn’t a fixed value but emerges through social connections.
Having a stake in collective health, labor, privacy, security, and freedoms addresses humanity’s alienation from others without religious or spiritual belief.
Socialism, in a sense, replaces divine obligation with collective responsibility, grounding morality in the real, material conditions of human life without lurking into an individualistic type of hedonism some say other forms of utilitarianism can result in.
2. Heaven Really Could Be a Place on Earth
One strength of religious morality is how often they have a fixed endpoint: the good Christian believes their service to God will lead to eternal, heavenly happiness.
But for the utilitarian, goodness itself seems intangible. After a lifetime of moral actions, they might only take comfort in the idea that their contributions made the world slightly better—a vague, unmeasurable goal. But we shouldn’t settle for a vague concept of a better world, we should espouse a desire for the best world. In that way, Christians have their Heaven, and political philosophers should have their utopia.
During a recent political conversation (yuck, I know), someone dismissed my views as childishly optimistic, brushing them off as “utopian” in nature. How strange it is to cast aside an opinion of how the world ought to be as "utopian” in a negative light; after all, if we’re to imagine a better world, we should instead jump to imagining the best world and save ourselves the trouble. If a political project isn’t utopian, I must wonder where its priorities even rest. And, I wonder, what successful political projects weren’t optimistic in nature.
In the same way Heaven contextualizes Christian morality by mapping actions to a clear goal, utopia serves the same purpose for political projects, grounding normative ethics in a vision for the future.
For the socialist, that utopian vision is the big baddie itself: Communism. As a stateless, classless, and even moneyless society, communism seeks to resolve the systemic issues that plague any hyper-individualistic, hierarchical system.
This wouldn’t be a problem-free world—you’d still have personal failures, interpersonal conflict, grief and sorrow. Still, though, each fundamental need that society seeks to provide would be met: Every person contributes according to their abilities, and every resource is distributed based on need.
Note that I’m using the word “utopia” without any of the baggage of feasibility. Whether this utopia is truly possible or achievable remains to be seen, but just like you should imagine the perfect version of yourself to understand the self-improvement steps you should take, we should imagine the perfect version of our world to understand the collective action needed to get there.
Utopia acts as an anchor. It is the weight behind moral action, the oomph of socialist ideals. By grounding our ethics in this vision, socialism provides more than a moral framework, but meaningful direction—a Heaven on Earth, built by and for humanity.
3. The Undeniable Value of Churches
Finally, we must ask ourselves how these ideals are implemented.
For religious groups, it results in the creation of a physical space: the Church. It’s a place to gather as a community and enact the values espoused by their religion. And it clearly has its benefits; it’s good to be connected with your neighbors, it’s good to provide support to those in need, it’s good to organize around shared values and ideals.
Many people who embrace a kind of “individual spirituality” see this as the biggest problem of religion, the fact that it’s “organized.” Certainly there are problems with how Churches are organized, too, and I’ll touch on their reinforcement of unjust hierarchies shortly. We must also acknowledge, though, that the “organized” part of “organized religion” is what enables it to serve its community and create the kinds of social bonds necessary for any ideology to enact change.
We can imagine then a sort of analog to this, where community-based action isn’t overrun by anti-vax moms and dads who are looking to go viral by screaming a bunch of bullshit. Instead of some grotesque mutation of civic duty, community-based meetings would act as a place to fulfill the needs that a larger governing body might not. We might rely on government structures to provide the fundamental needs that everyone has: Healthcare and infrastructure are perfect examples of this. But we ought to rely on hyperlocal communities for our unique needs: My garden’s dying out, can anyone who knows about gardens take a look?; I need someone to help me move on Sunday, is anyone free?; My elderly neighbor needs someone to help clean their home, is anyone down to be a part of this?
The problem with churches then is not that they’re organized, but that they’re places of worship. Ideas are not to be worshipped lest they become immune to criticism.
Christian ideals are inflexible, incapable of being bent to the ever-changing needs of the people they’re meant to animate, which is why even the Catholic Socialists I agree with on 99% of issues end up hedging on abortion. Christianity (among other religions) is fundamentally at odds with socialism, in that it’s dogmatic about ways the individual should act even when the ways an individual acts have no bearing on the greater collective. What are the priorities of socialism if not autonomy?
In my hypothetical community-based meetings, worship wouldn’t be the goal. We need not worship socialism to engage in it. The meetings themselves are socialist, but they wouldn’t be about socialism.
Humanity’s Straitjackets: Hierarchy & Alienation
Marx often elevates language around labor in his work and for good reason, his theories primarily revolve around politics, economics, and philosophy. It was a deeply practical analysis, and while it touched on things like social psychology in some ways, he also lived in a very different world than ours. Capitalism hadn’t yet crystallized; people were closer to their labor, even if they were more overtly exploited than they are now. He didn’t have a crystal ball, he had a forecast.
Still, though, he seems to have accurately predicted a few things. Our hypercapitalist society is getting choked out by the very thorns Marx warned us of, particularly concerning unjust hierarchy and alienation.
Unjust Hierarchies, AKA, Fuck a CEO
Marx’s work centered on the class struggle between the proletariat working class and the bourgeoisie capital-owner classes, and while he may not have viewed it through this lens, this is an unjust hierarchy. The capital-owner class doesn’t derive its power through merit or democracy but through unilateral consolidation of resources. Churches want to recreate that hierarchy because their belief is hierarchical: God is at the top, then there are angels and their various ranks, and then there is man. Likewise, every form of Christianity has some form of hierarchy in its practical structure, with someone at the front of the room who possesses the authority to preach. These figures aren’t elected, their power is bestowed, just as it was to the monarchs of yore.
(Note that socialism doesn’t seek to abolish hierarchies altogether, which is a common misconception. If the collective decides they need a leader, they will elect one. Managers can still exist in socialism, they’re just beholden to the working class instead of the capitalists. It is the unjust hierarchies that are the issue.)
Our intuitive response has often been to reject these power structures—it’s why people who are into spirituality describe it as an “individual” pursuit, centering their egos within their cosmic understanding. If we’re all created equally, why should anyone have the authority to talk about ideas that are bigger than the individual? How could one individual possibly have access to that authority where another couldn’t?
One is a Very Lonely Number
While modern spirituality addresses and rejects those unjust hierarchies, it creates its own problems in doing so.
Marx’s theory of alienation describes the separation and estrangement of people, usually in reference to their labor. But Marx also believed this alienation draws distance between people, their world, human nature, and their own human potential.
Modern spirituality practices often reinforce this alienation, as these acts are practiced alone and not in the name of some greater good. Indeed, they’re driven by the “self”: What does my astrology sign say about me? What do these crystals mean to me? How do I wield manifestation as a tool to get things that benefit me?
Even when spirituality concerns itself with the natural world, like in the views espoused by eco-spiritual thought, it fails to provide guidance on how we should treat one another.
The problems of religion are abundant, but modern spirituality’s faults are just beginning to be felt. As we become increasingly divorced from each other’s labor—completely detached from the human capital required of our rampant consumerism—these tools feel more like doomscrolling for the soul rather than a salve. The stars and stones spell trouble, and while you have the same agency as anyone else and aren’t a cog in the machine of religious hierarchy or dogma, you are subject to being blown around in the wind, incapable of rallying a collective around common goals.
So Why Did I Use “Spirituality” in the Title?
Spirituality seems to fundamentally entail ideas that are “bigger than us,” which the collective is.
Socialism, like spirituality, is also less concerned than religion regarding specific ways you ought to act; again our moral goods are derived from an obligation to humanity, but outside of that, we seek to maximize human freedom, enabling the individual to do as they please.
Like spirituality, socialism shouldn’t emphasize worship. Marx is not an idol, which is precisely why I call myself a socialist instead of a Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, or Maoist. Nevermind that these variations of political thought are representative of massive failures of socialism (the USSR and Communist China have both done more good than the West gives them credit for, but their authoritarian streaks were still at odds with socialist thought), but they also dangerously inch toward idol-worship; this results in systems as rigid as the religious institutions I reject, who are incapable of adapting to the constantly evolving nature of humanity.
I’ve always been reluctant to frame things this way, this “socialism is kind of spiritual if you think about it” sentiment. Why get bogged down in the language of the opiates, the distractions, that prevent us from making meaningful worldly progress?
But I’ve also always maintained that we shouldn’t allow others to monopolize language. Anyone who is afraid to call themselves a socialist because of the perception it creates isn’t concerned with the reality: You are a socialist if you support socializing our economic and political structures. Want more democracy in the workplace? That’s socialism. Don’t be afraid of words that accurately describe your project.
In this case, “spirituality” accurately describes my project: It speaks to a sense that there’s something bigger than the individual, and that it’s worth pursuing. That by doing so, we better understand our place in the world, and why we’re not meaningless sacks of water bashing against each other in a cold, ugly world. Its humanist vision explains why, though we’re capable of war and hatred, we’re also capable of banding together, creating something that serves the needs of everyone, and empowering each of us individually to pursue our passions and desires.
As we become further atomized—disconnected from one another, isolated from our fellow man—we seem to be ignoring a crisis of the spirit as much as we are a crisis of material reality. And we can address that by embracing the spirituality of socialism, a belief system that requires no worship, no unjust hierarchies, no isolation, no dogma about the self, no belief in the supernatural. Instead, we can rely on the rich history of humanity, which is littered with mistakes we can use to map out a prettier picture. History books are our scripture, and their lessons are the material conditions that have limited the potential of both the collective and the individual.
What people believe is ultimately much less interesting to me than how they act, however; so if you’ve found value in some religious system or spiritual belief, it’s not my concern. But adding some socialist humanism into the mix would only help, and for those of us who don’t have any supernatural beliefs, it might be the only thing that can help fill that void of meaning. Perhaps it is time for us secularists to admit that there is value to be gained by learning from belief systems.
I hope this is comforting during these trying times. That is perhaps the most significant benefit of any belief in the supernatural: comfort. We need not invent fantastic stories to create that comfort any longer; we can lean on humanity’s intrinsic altruism, our potential to be endlessly good and create a better world guided by our image, not God’s—and in that struggle for a kinder tomorrow, we have nothing to lose but our chains.
“If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.” - Karl Marx, Reflections of a Young Man
Very good!!