Cheche,+The+end+of+religion,+reply+to+Joe+Falkiner

Cheche Selepe, June 3, 2005

 * //Please spread the attached press releases. I know you’ve got lots of contacts. And please send me your press contact sheet. I am not coming to the school but next week fine. The piece on religion can go to the branch newsletter. Hey you also sent something on religion and here is my unedited response. That guy is crazy. cheche //**

=The end of religion= Joe Falkiner’s article on hegemony is confused from the word go. Hegemony is a class and not a religious concept. It won’t help smuggling religious sentiments in class language. A class concept simply means that the word’s meaning is attached to people’s relationship to the means of production and not to god. The concept could help unravel domination, primarily class domination. The premise here is that all other forms of domination including religious, racial and gender are based on the fundamental relations to the means of production. The material basis of apartheid is not racial sentiment but access to resources and decisions concerning their production, distribution and consumption -- their domination. Tightly linked to the concept is the base-superstructure perspective. This perspective asserts that a class that has the control over the economic base has control of the political, social, educational and even cultural superstructure. The superstructure therefore includes the means of mental production as well as those of suppression at the disposal of those with control over the means of physical production, the bourgeoisie. Gramsci calls the means of mental production the ideological state apparatus. Of course the bourgeoisie does not only need the means of physical and mental production to stay in power. They have to deal with the mass of dissatisfied hungry people. To do so they need the means of suppression/violence that includes the courts, the police, the army and the intelligence. Without violence apartheid and white domination would not have succeeded. And ideas reach the highest levels of acceptance once backed with the threat of violence. Hegemony according Gramsci and most Marxists is a class concept that explains the domination of ideas. This domination is derived from ownership and control of the means of production in the economy. The ruling class’ ideas are the ruling ideas and religion is a ruling class’ idea hence it cannot be used to challenge hegemonic views. Theoretically we know politics is superior to finance but practically politics dances to the tune of money. There are a dozen scandals to illustrate this fact. Theoretically again we know god to be the ‘almighty’ but practically money is the almighty. The best pastor does it for money. Therefore the ideas of the ruling class are the ones that are hegemonic, they dominate. The ruling class’ ideas are the ruling ideas and religion is a ruling idea of a hegemonic class. In analysing Gramsci’s use of the concept hegemony one will look at how areas such as religion, education and the media propagate the ideas of the rich. Put differently, one will look at how the class that has control and ownership of the means of production such as the mines, IT technology, productive land and the banks spreads and leverages its control over the means of mental production.

The means of mental production are the schools and universities, the media and the church among others. Even though Joe quotes Antonio Gramsci, who coined the concept, he simply does not understand how and when to use the concept. In short, he is abusing the concept for his religious agenda. His greatest error is to acknowledge Gramsci yet using the too technical Wikipedia Encyclopedia’s definition of the word right through his writing. Though the encyclopaedia definition is not that bad, but using it alongside Gramsci messes his thoughts.

Another gravest error by Joe is his religious use or abuse of the word as if religion might stand in opposites with capital or the ‘free-market’ sometime. Religion and the preaching of the gospel is a business Joe and so it needs markets to proliferate. Religion will always and not sometimes, as Joe alleges, be used to justify capitalist domination because it is in itself an article of trade. Where will religious people like himself sell their religion if the free-market and trade gets abolished. The only time where religion will never be used to maintain such domination is when the working class dominate capital and that will be the end of religion. Joe’s second part of the article is searching for a hopeless scenario; Religion and the church have no role in challenging the ‘hegemons’ because in itself it is hegemonic. How can one expect the hegemons to seek their own destruction? Religion has no moral basis to challenge the existing class hegemony. In the fist instance, Joe should be told that blacks never accepted discrimination. This man says he wants to use the word in order to ‘understand why blacks accepted racial discrimination for such a long time (about 300 years).’ It is very silly to say the majority of the people accepted discrimination for more than              those years. It is like saying for all these years they never fought back until FW de Klerk, a white man, released and unbanned and talks and so on. Slaves never accepted domination because of hegemony, as Joe alleges. In fact slaves revolted against domination and the church told them from the word go that they have to accept their condition. Any attempt at applying the concept to the South African situation now and in the past could never be flowed because the class contradictions have not been altered. In fact the concept is more relevant today than ever before. In the past it was still relevant because Gramsci was writing in the shadow of fascists domination by Mussolini in alliance with the national and international bourgeoisie. South African is also from a fascist domination by the Nats in alliance with its local and international bourgeoisie. The concept could help unravel domination, primarily class domination. The premise here is that all other forms of domination including religious, racial and gender are based on the fundamental relations to the means of production. The material basis of apartheid is not racial sentiment but access to resources and decisions concerning their production, distribution and consumption -- their domination.
 * Cheche Selepe