Communists are often slandered by our enemies as wanting to violently suppress and ‘ban’ religion. But this crude caricature bears no resemblance to a real Marxist approach. In this week's episode we look at the genuine Marxist attitude towards religion.

It’s the festive season, and the Spectre of Communism podcast welcomed Alan Woods (marxist.com editor-in-chief) onto a special live episode to discuss the origins of Christianity from a Marxist perspective. This is a fascinating story of revolution and counter-revolution in the ancient world. The recording is now available on all platforms!

To mark the holiday period, we republish the following introduction by Alan Woods to a German edition of Karl Kautsky's excellent text, The Foundations of Christianity. Originally published 23 September 2011, Alan outlines the significance of this work, and gives an overview of Kautsky's historical materialist account of the origins of the Christian faith. 

There was a time in which news of a scandal in the Vatican shocked the world. However, as story after story is unveiled, and the global number of Catholics diminishes, the mere mention of priests, the Vatican, and even the pope himself conjures up images of corruption, decadence, and depravity. It epitomises the rotting nature of the religious institutions that have been a pillar of class society for so long.

After years of debate, state discrimination against religious minorities has been enshrined in law in Quebec with the adoption of Bill 21. Unfortunately, opposition to this bill has been confused to say the least. While the left and the workers movement have generally opposed this law, no one seems to know what to do. Up until March last year, Quebec solidaire was arguing for a compromise position and

All religions have their fundamentalists; there are Christian fundamentalists, Hindu fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, Buddhist fundamentalists and so on. They all play a reactionary role, and they are all growing in number. All of them believe they are the holders of the absolute truth, while all others are heretics or even the work of the devil himself. They are all used to sow division among toiling people around the world. The phenomenon affects all countries to one degree or another.

On Friday 25 May, Ireland went to the polls to decide whether to repeal the 8th amendment of the constitution, which denied women the right to abortion as long as the unborn fetus had a heartbeat. Under these laws, which are part of the legacy of the Catholic Church’s domination of Ireland, abortion was illegal, even under the horrific circumstances of rape, incest or fetal abnormalities. The repeal of the 8th amendment is an epoch-making slap in the face against the Catholic Church and the establishment in the Republic.

Polish women staged magnificent demonstrations and strike action all over the country on Monday 3 October. They are fighting against a proposed law that would ban abortion under all circumstances, even in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life. Even in this country where the Catholic Church is so powerful, and where the right-wing Law and Justice party won power just a year ago, the spirit of struggle is alive and explosive.

Mother Teresa (1910-1997) has been beatified by Pope Francis I, after a series of miracles (where the role of modern medicine was conveniently swept under the rug) were fished out from her lifelong record running clinics for the poor in India. These years of crisis and revolution have been a lean period for the Catholic Church, which is forced to churn out saints to maintain its appeal.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the capitalist counter-revolution in China, an immense political vacuum opened up in ideology and politics on a world scale. In these conditions there was the resurgence of political Islam and religious fundamentalism.

The British press are raging about the number of British youth who may have joined ISIS, the Islamic fundamentalist organisation, supposedly a break-away from Al-Qaeda, which is fighting in Syria and Iraq. Alarms are ringing about the political consequences of having these young men, radicalised and hardened by war and military training, returning to political activity in Britain. It has been estimated that the number of Muslim youth from Europe who have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq number at least in the hundreds.

John Pickard’s book delves into the history of the three most important religions in the Western world, and this has profound political implications. If you think about it, religion dominates so many people’s lives from their birth to their death and yet, incredibly, so little is known about how religion, in particular Judaism, Christianity, and Islam really came about.

The election of Pope Francis marks a turn in the prolonged crisis of the Catholic Church. It is important for revolutionaries to understand the reasons for the ongoing struggle within the Church. Far from moving to the left, Francis is trying to entrench the Church in defence of the present system and shield it from revolution and the class struggle. Francis is calling for the Church to renew itself and to move towards the poor. This is raising expectations within the popular masses of the Church but will inevitably collide with the brutal reality and the vested interests of the Vatican apparatus.

The resignation of Pope Benedict and the global furore around the selection of Pope Francis, demonstrated the grip the Catholic Church still commands in the minds of the masses in many areas of the world. Cain O’Mahoney looks at the origins of Catholicism in the Dark Ages, and how the ‘Universal’ Church - unconsciously - acted as the ‘subjective factor’ in the transition from the slave based society of the Roman Empire to feudalism in Western Europe.

In a period of crisis and decline of capitalism, to many people religion is the one certainty to cling on to. But if the Pope himself is no longer convinced he can keep his position until his death, this illusion of solidity begins to break down. The effect of the surprise announcement of his retirement by Pope Benedict XVI on the consciousness of over a billion Roman Catholics is going to be that of a spiritual earthquake, and it is surely going to have political consequences too.