Audio here!
In 1843, Karl Marx captured the way that religion is both an escape for millions whose lives consist of daily exploitation and oppression and is a mental shackle that keeps masses from understanding and making revolution to overcome those conditions of oppression, in his now famous statement, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”
This week on Equal Time for Freethought, Sunsara Taylor will talk with Raymond Lotta about the past experience and future prospects of Marxist revolutions. They will explore both how these revolutions have popularized a scientific understanding of the world and made strides in overcoming the conditions that drive people to seek comfort in religion and some of the shortcomings of this experience, in part through engaging some of the work of Bob Avakian on questions of religion, morality, the role of myth, and the importance of bringing millions into an unfettered search for the truth as part of emancipating all of humanity.
Raymond Lotta is a Maoist political economist. He has written extensively about trends in the global economy, conditions in the “Third World,” and the experience of socialist revolution in the 20th century. His book America in Decline is a wide-ranging study of the economics and politics of empire. An activist-scholar, Lotta participated in antiglobalization conferences and protests in India, the Philippines, and Canada in the mid-1990s. He was a featured speaker at antiwar teach-ins in the early 2000s. Lotta has been involved in initiatives to defend dissent and critical thinking in academia