It is especially easy for us to observe socialism's hostility to religion, for this is inherent, with few exceptions, in all contemporary socialist states and doctrines. Only rarely is the abolition of religion legislated, as it was in Albania. But the actions of other socialist states leave no doubt that they are all governed by this very principle and that only external difficulties have prevented its complete implementation. This same principle has been repeatedly proclaimed in socialist doctrines, beginning with the end of the seventeenth century. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century doctrines are imbued with cold skeptical and ironic attitudes toward religion. If not consciously, then "objectively," they prepared humanity for the convergence of socialist ideology and militant atheism that took place at the end of the seventeenth century and during the course of the eighteenth. The heretical movements of the Middle Ages were religious in character, but those in which socialist tendencies were especially pronounced were the ones that were irrevocably opposed to the actual religion professed by the majority at the time. Calls to assassinate the Pope and to annihilate all monks and priests run like a red thread through the history of these movements. Their hatred for the basic symbols of Christianity--the cross and the church--is very striking. We encounter the burning of crosses and the profanation of churches from the first centuries of Christianity right up to the present day.
Finally, in Plato's socialist system, religion is conceived as an element in the state's ideology. Its role amounts to education, the shaping of citizens' opinions into the forms necessary to the state. To this end, new religious observances and myths were invented and the old ones abolished. It seems that in many of the states of the ancient Orient, official religion played an analogous role, its central function being the deification of the king, who was the personification of the all-powerful state.
The Socialist Phenomenon
Finally, in Plato's socialist system, religion is conceived as an element in the state's ideology. Its role amounts to education, the shaping of citizens' opinions into the forms necessary to the state. To this end, new religious observances and myths were invented and the old ones abolished. It seems that in many of the states of the ancient Orient, official religion played an analogous role, its central function being the deification of the king, who was the personification of the all-powerful state.
The Socialist Phenomenon
