Spirituality, Capitalism, and Radical Politics in the Age of COVID-19
I kicked open up my copy of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet a few days ago. The book is filled with platitudes and lessons, about giving oneself up for greater good, finding love in others, seeking a spirituality greater than your own. It’s a staple of the new age movement of the 60’s. Parts of its doctrine seem cliche at this point. Deeply influenced by Sufi Islam, it’s become a staple of spiritual guidance for a white world that seeks Asian philosophy without the grips and difficult, rote routines of Asian spiritual discipline. It’s also a source of warmth and comfort, there’s a reason its popularity is enduring.
I would call my political leaning some kind of far left anarchist (Diagnosing a tendency is mostly pretty boring). It’s no question to me that Kropotkin and Marx wrote the rulebooks to a better world, and I’ve always struggled with the first part of “No gods, no masters.” Even as a lapsed or cultural Muslim, or whatever you want to call it, the idea of a blanket rejection of religion is repugnant to me.
There’s two things to be made explicit before I continue: I know there’s a rich history of liberation theology out of South America, and the Arab world, and there’s a vein of radical spiritualism that runs through liberatory histories, from John Brown to MLK and beyond. I also know that religion has been rightfully implicated in some of the greatest abuses of humankind in history, from colonialism and slavery, to exploitation of the poor and mass murder. I would also posit that despite all of this, religion has done a net positive in the world, and the articulation of religion’s cruelty should always be balanced with an acknowledgement of what it provides - both the historical provisions and in how it provides, in many places over the world, what the left cannot.
When we talk about decolonial approaches to the colonized world, I find that we often cast away the idea of traditional religions and spirituality. We’re quick to point out the achievements of Thomas Sankara while outright ignoring that he was a devout Roman Catholic. We often talk about the abolition of colonial borders without a deeper examination of religious difference that causes the upending of post-colonial states. The overreaching utopia many of us strive for has a black hole in its analysis, one that’s guided by a deliberate ignorace or assumption that religions, holistically - the tribal, the Abrahamic, the Indigenous, the polytheist - will sort themselves out once a leftist project (Whatever the fuck that might be) is achieved. We’re equally as quick to justify our allyship for Indigenous spirituality and religions by applying socialist labels to the structures they impart. We are not free from colonial impulse.
The Western world’s rapid divestment from spirituality or religion could be seen as a function of privilege, or a function of need. There’s less time in a day and more to keep us distracted, but apropos of nothing, I don’t think it’s necessarily guided by the idea that we’ve come to terms with the fact that this life is probably the only one we have. What Goop-style spirituality does emerge from new age “mysticism” is the spiritual equivalent of fast-food. Easy to digest, easy to process, and easy to feel good about. Instead of a reliance on discipline, it’s reoriented around a reliance on consumption. The spiritual is not a counterbalance to the material, but instead becomes the material. The ritual is not the discipline of frequently prostrating yourself before god, but consuming things to make yourself feel more godly. Many people I know have a rightful distaste of cultural appropriation, but more vindictive ideas around religion broadly. Given the spiritually relevant nature of items, custom, and clothing that are often appropriated, I tend to see these oppositional viewpoints in the same person as intensely patronizing. It’s not smug, greasy atheists snickering at you for believing, but it feels like the fuckboy version of that. We can decry Islamaphobia on its racist implication but also reject or sidestep the notion that the guiding principle of Islamaphobic thought extends to denying an immense swath of people the religion that constitutes a fundamental part of their humanity. When a white supremacist says “Islam is a culture, not a race,” they’re obviously speaking in bad faith, but we’re often far too willing to not interrogate the other, equally sinister half of what they’re saying.
The lack of a spiritual anchor in leftist organizing isn’t distressing, but it’s inexplicable, because the majority of religious function can be achieved without the anchor of capitalism and exploitation that drives organized religion under capitalism. Spiritual morality isn’t a bad place to organize from; a majority of the world is still seated in faith. There’s a reason the reactionary right capitalized on megachurches and congregations to push its agenda. There’s a reason fundamentalist Islam continues to creep through parts of the world hard done by colonialism. There’s a reason Hindu nationalism in India has become the foundation for a flavour of fascism we haven’t seen since the second world war. There’s a reason Israel, period.
But, the moral underpinning of a majority of religion isn’t just compatible with the tenets of socialism, it’s companion to them. Religion isn’t just an inroad to organizing, I would declare it an essential institution to work with and organize with to achieve a world without capitalism. I think a lot of people would disagree with me. I would challenge that a plurality of organizations in this world that exist to fill the wounds of capitalism are faith based or at least guided by a faithful spirituality. I think it’s been difficult to articulate that or turn that into a driving process of how we organize. Those faithful who join our movements or circles, are seen as outliers or one of the good ones, instead of an indispensable point of contact for a community of people who are living their lives and trying to be good and compassionate.
Maybe we (the left) are guided by a spiritual belief in people, or a moral anger that compels us to do the right thing, but there’s a bitterness that often hangs over leftist communities, a carceral sense of in and out groups, a classification of politics that determines who is right or wrong enough to organize with, to educate, to admonish, to reject, or to accept. There’s much talk of community and spirituality amongst your circle, but a nihilistic misanthropy that colors the world outside of that. We don’t want to organize with workers (Emphasis on workers and not bosses here) we don’t like or who hold views bluntly oppositional to ours because they’re inherently counter revolutionary and not worth our time, but what we’re really saying is that it’s too hard. We are angry and sad people, more than anything, and constant affirmations of our own tenderness are not a meaningful salve to the way we look at a world where every actor we can’t reach seems like a roadblock rather than an opportunity.
And now, the COVID-19 pandemic is upon us. Megachurches, Megamosques, Temples, and Gurdwaras have become a breeding ground for the virus, and hucksters are making bank and putting lives in danger. For the spiritual populations that are suffering because of protestant capitalism, there was never really an alternative, because an alternative was never presented. It’s happening in Iran, too. And Pakistan. It’s happening everywhere. And while we wait in social isolation for daily updates from world leaders, for WHO press conferences, and for whatever catastrophe will happen to renters on April 1, in between questions of how we organize now, and how we collectively assemble-without-assembling to take on the superstructure that would kill us in the name of profit, it’s hard to not look left and right and derive hope from scared people doing good things. It’s also hard not to look up and pray.
There’s going to be a reckoning after all is said and done. A reckoning for capitalism. A reckoning for power, a reckoning for those who did too little, and probably, in the schemes of abolishing hierarchy, perhaps even a reckoning for those who did too much. Megachurches and the people who grift off them will be held in the court of public opinion, in the court of law, and most importantly, in the court of their congregations, who will have their faith shattered, who will be on uneasy ground, and who will still yet not abandon their faith. I would argue, to bring forth the world we want, speaking to these people meaningfully is essential. I would suggest that the world may not be brought forth without them.
Am I saying every organizer, every leftist should be religious? Of course not. Am I saying that many of us are divorced from a potent, vital place from which we could organize and build strong relationships with our communities and fellow workers? Yes. If, in our present day, the first place to build power is the shop floor, and the second place is the tenants union, the third place must be the church. At the end of all of this, whatever the Western world becomes, there’s going to be a global reorientation of people’s relationship with faith. And it’s vital that reactionaries, capitalists, and the ghouls that have their claws in so much of it already aren’t going to be usurped by something much worse. Institutions of faith work for us or against us, mostly the latter, but we also don’t start from zero - many people we know are deeply religious. Many of them are involved in the movement. However, many more of us need to develop that movement from liberalism to liberation.
Despite my troubled, complicated history with religion, I’ve always been drawn to Sufi Islam. A more secular, mystic, form of the faith, it’s often seen in Western spirituality as something distinct from the religious superstructure, specifically to make it more palatable for a new age audience. I’m certain there is something colonial about my interpretation of it, the idea of an Arab magical realism, but I would also point to its guiding principle of love and faith being made poetry and prose to be some of the greatest spiritual writing ever put to page. I can say it’s given me more hope and delivered a greater affirmation of my belief in the human project of organizing, and our capacity to collectively overthrow capitalism more than say, flipping through my dog-eared copies of the Conquest of Bread or Capitalist Realism have, recently. I suspect I’m not alone.
It’s worth considering that from this point on, every piece of media we consume that was created pre 2020 (and a few afterward) will seem dated, and a little alien. It’s the same feeling of seeing the twin towers featured prominently in an older movie, only magnified. Human interaction, distance, conceptions of medicine and decline, all of these things can and will be changed in the stories that are told moving forwards.
This is likely our new normal. I am not an expert, but I expect this will continue for 18 months at least, as all the experts say it will. I suspect there will be a reshuffling of the economic and societal deck, that the crowded nature of everyday life will give way to sprawling and smaller congregate relationships. That festivals will be different, that movie theatres will have fewer, more distant seats. Places of worship will be different.
We are looking at two lost years that will be told exactly that way to future generations. We are not in the midst of societal decline, but in a reshuffling of the social and parasocial order that will not upend, but laterally move society into something we couldn’t have imagined just a few months ago - something extremely familiar, but unexpectedly different. Hopefully better.
The war against capitalism in this new paradigm will be fought, as it has always been, on many fronts, including the spiritual. Capitalism is by and large, anathema to the orders and tenets of most religions. It’s a front we can and should be fighting on. It’s a front we can win.