The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion

An article written by Lenin which established the attitude of the workers’ party towards religion. It was written on May 13, 1909, and published in Proletary, issue No. 45, in the same day. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 17 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

Lenin first explained the reasons for writing of this article. He pointed out that religion and all matters related to religion had now attracted the attention of all strata of society, including intellectuals and workers, and that it was, therefore, necessary for the Social-Democratic Party to state its attitude toward religion at this time. This article focuses on three issues:

Firstly, it revealed the nature of religion and showed the attitude of the Russian Social Democrats towards religion. Lenin pointed out that Marxism has a historical tradition of absolute atheism and materialism, which is firmly opposed to all religions. Marx’s famous statement that “religion is the opium of the people” is the cornerstone of the Marxist view of religion. All modern religions and churches, religious groups of all kinds, are institutions used by the bourgeois reactionaries to defend the system of exploitation and to sedate the working class. Under the social system of class exploitation and class oppression, religion, in combination with the ruling class, is used to defend the system of exploitation and enslave the exploited and the oppressed. Lenin reiterated Engels’ view “that Social-Democrats regard religion as a private matter in relation to the state, but not in relation to themselves, not in relation to Marxism, and not in relation to the workers’ party.” and explicitly acknowledged that the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party had accepted the Marxist view of religion and used it as the ideological basis for the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

The second is to explain the strategy of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in its struggle against religion. Lenin pointed out that religion should be fought and must be fought well. First of all, the materialist point of view should be used to explain the roots of faith and religion among the masses, pointing out that the main root of the existence of religion is the root of society. The fear of the elusive forces of capitalism is greater than the oppression and torment brought about by nature; Social-Democracy’s atheist propaganda must be subordinated to its basic task—the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters, that is, to the struggle to achieve certain practical goals in economic and political terms. Finally, there are two tendencies to oppose: “Either to the abstract, verbal, but in reality empty ‘revolutionism’ of the anarchist, or to the philistinism and opportunism of the petty-bourgeois or liberal intellectual, who boggles at the struggle against religion.”

Thirdly, we emphasize a dialectical approach to the issues related to the Social-Democratic Party and religion. Taking the question of whether a priest can become a member of the Social-Democratic Party as an example; “if a priest comes to us to take part in our common political work and conscientiously performs Party duties, without opposing the programme of the Party, he may be allowed to join the ranks of the Social-Democrats. If, for example, a priest joined the Social-Democratic Party and made it his chief and almost sole work actively to propagate religious views in the Party, it would unquestionably have to expel him from its ranks. We must not only admit workers who preserve their belief in God into the Social-Democratic Party, but must deliberately set out to recruit them; we are absolutely opposed to giving the slightest offence to their religious convictions, but we recruit them in order to educate them in the spirit of our programme, and not in order to permit an active struggle against it.” This view of Lenin embodied the idea of broad unity among people from all walks of life.

This article showed that Lenin used the basic principles of Marxism to understand religion and society in Russia, and proposed guidelines and strategies for solving the religious problem according to the revolutionary practice in Russia. At the same time, it showed that he insisted on putting the solution of the religious problem into the process of social practice, making the processing and solution of the religious problem subordinate to the basic tasks and programs of the party and to the realistic goals of struggle. Lenin proposed to fight against religion, but not directly to declare war on religion, not to take measures to destroy religion, but to fight against the root causes from which religion arises and depends on, and to make it an important task to educate the religiously influenced masses of people and raise their consciousness. This thesis fully reflects his idea of formulating contemporary religious policies and strategies based on the concrete practice of the Russian revolutionary struggle and attracting all the forces that can be united in the struggle to achieve the goals of the workers’ party.