Of all conjuring tricks, that of replacing the substantial with the insubstantial has always been at the core of every system of exploitation. Colonialism has traditionally involved not merely the expropriation of the native inhabitants,but also the subjugation of these inhabitants through the internalisation of the rulers ideology. Thus when Cromwell invaded Ireland the English had Republicanism and the Irish the land. Under the protestant ascendency, the English had the land, while the Irish were to gain the republicanism, an insidious ideology which has yet to be shaken off. In sub-Saharan Africa,the colonialists burdened the inhabitants with the Bible, while they took the land.
Faith has been peddled as a short cut to the oppressed to reconcile the swallowing up of their own interests amongst the interests of the ruling class for thousands of years. However, since the economy developed as a pseudo-autonomous category of social life, the polarisation between idealist Kant and the manifestation of sensory human activity as abstract labour has lead to a crisis of meaning. The attempt by the universities to theorise this as post-modernism is doomed. The fragmentation of human activity through the commodification of more and more aspects of daily life sets in motion contradictory tendencies as regards universalistic semiotic systems.
The success of a religion may be marked by the extent to which its adherents are lead to view it as part of the fabric of the universe rather than a cultural product of human activity. In this the atheistic scientist rooted in the conceptions of the European Enlightenment is as much a slave to religion as the most fundamentalist of Mullahs. As De Tocqueville observed over one hundred and fifty years ago, the French Revolution functioned "in relation to this world, in precisely the same manner that religious revolutions function in respect to the other: it considered the citizen in an abstract fashion,apart from particular societies, in the same way that religions consider man in general, independently of time and place. [. . .] It inspired proselytism and gave birth to propaganda. It could therefore assume that appearance of a religious revolution which so astonished contemporaries; or rather it became itself a kind of new religion, an imperfect religion it is true,a religion without God, without a form of worship, and without a future life, but one which nevertheless, like Islam, inundated the earth with soldiers,apostles and martyrs." (L'ancien régime et la revolution,Book 1, Chapter iii.). The Bolsheviks adjusted this vision to the needs of Tsarist Russia, just as the Nazi's fulfilled Nicholas Bonneville's vision of "a religion which made the fatherland and the laws the object of adoration for all citizens" where "Its Pontiff would be the king,the supreme ruler. To die for the fatherland would be to achieve eternal glory, eternal happiness. The man who violated the laws of his country would be impious . . ." (De l'esprtit des religions, 1791).
All faith is at based on the substitution of the substantial with the representational.A key element in this is the representation of sensuous human activity as money through its social organisation as abstract labour power. Faith has always liked to present itself as the polar opposite of the avaricious world of money, but money can only be a manifestation of faith. Remove faith and the coin becomes a metal disc with some idiots face upon it, the banknote becomes a piece of paper covered in occult scribblings. (Much work has been done on the occult symbolism of the U$ Dollar, but check out Network News No.9: The Eyeless Smiley, or All-Consuming Proletarian Mouth, available from Earthly Delights, P.O. Box 2, Lostwithiel, Cornwall PL22 0YY, U.K.Annual subscription i.e. 4 issues, is £5, so send at least £1.25)
Those who say money is the root of all evil have stopped their analysis at the point where it threatens the status quo. As we have demonstrated money is rooted in faith. And it is faith which creates the division between Good and Evil (as opposed to the natural distinction between good and bad). It is this faith which launchs anti-Jewish pogroms, which scapegoats Arabs for American Patriots' bombing campaigns, which channels proletarian anger into hatred for Americans and Europeans rather let it fuel the subterranean maturation of class consciousness .
Whilst money relies on faith this faith has to be backed up by force. The British pound has traditionally been as strong as the British Navy. The eclipse of the latter went hand in hand with the emergence of US Global supremacy. Faith having identified evil then launches its crusade, its jihad.With the advent of the enlightenment, there has been a permanent mobilisation of the population behind the economy, whether in its initial nationalistic form or in the more modern mobilisation behind the New World Order, under whose auspices the ruling class plan to integrate their system of control at an even higher level.
Communism is not another faith, but the abnegation of faith just as much as it is the abnegation of money and wage labour. Bolshevism attempted to negate communism by transforming it into a secular faith, i.e. by murdering the communist insurgents of Kronstadt, the Ukraine, and other smaller nuclei of revolt, purging their ranks of anyone capable of a critical consciousness,and substituting a red republicanism which served Russian national interests.
The conditions of life provoked by capitalism undermine the very faith on which it is based. The Bolshevik regime has already collapsed. The Islamic Republic of Iran has not long to last Its collapse will weaken the ideologicalgrasp of the Mullahs from Algeria to the Phillipines. Already the British monarchy is under attack to an extent unparalleled for years.