Comrade Dalai?

I just read an article on The Buddhist Channel in which the Dalai Lama is quoted as saying he's a "Marxist monk." That's liable to ruffle a few feathers, but I suppose he phrased his comments in these terms to reach out to the Chinese.  I'm sure the Dalai Lama wouldn't advocate, for example, a violent revolution from the proletariat to overthrow their oppressors.

If you think about it, though, in its most basic form, Marx just wanted the people at the bottom to have control over the fruits of their labor.  If I understand it correctly, he wanted everyone in society to give what they can of themselves and take only their fair share.  That doesn't sound so bad to me.  The problem is that what we called communism wasn't communism at all: it was authoritarianism with a centrally planned economy.  Simply trading one form of oppression for another wasn't what Marx had in mind.

I remember studying this a bit when I was in graduate school the first time (never finished the degree, though).  I did two years of course work in political science.  One interesting thing I learned is that Marx said capitalism would first spread around the world, then the workers would get fed up with being used and abused and would naturally rise up and overthrow the fat cats taking advantage of them.  What Lenin and Mao did, however, was to try and force a largely uneducated agricultural population directly into a communist system.  Obviously, it didn't work.  What's interesting is that now, capitalism is spreading around the world.  I wonder what that will bring in the future.

As for religion, Marx also never said governments should try to do away with it.  He said it would naturally wither and die when the proletariat didn't need it anymore to asuage their pain and suffering from being oppressed.  I think there's more to faith than that, however.  And as for Buddhism, some (especially in the modern west) don't approach it as a faith at all and instead approach it as a form of psychology, though I think they're missing out on a great deal of the richness of the tradition by limiting themselves in this way.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of this.  

Comments

[scruffysmileyface]

There are certainly ideas in Marx's original works that would be agreeable to Buddhism, generally speaking. But what the West has come to call Communism is a different matter altogether. Good post!!!

[Tom Robertson]

I don't nessesarily agree that people that aproach Buddhism from a non religious perspective are missing out all that much.

You can be addicted to the religion in so many ways. Austerity can be ornimental. Doctrine can be used to cloth yourself in your 'correctness'. It can even just be an answer to bordom.

Not that I think the religious life is vice in plainer clothing, no, I just think that some people use faith as a crutch when they cannot puzzle out the direction they should be taking.

But what do I know? ;)

[Rinchen Gyatso]

The flip side, Tom, to that issue is that people can reject the religious aspects of Buddhism in order to keep it in a box. Some people secularize it to such a degree that it becomes a kind of narcisistic (sp?) self-help pop psychology. Or worse, a product to be bought and sold. ...Though I suppose religion can be bought and sold as well.

It just feels to me like the Dharma is becoming a product in this country, rather than a way of life.

[Tom Robertson]

As long as we have the current culture of matierialism, your words will be all too true.

I just saw Buddha statues in Joanne fabrics on sale for 30 bucks. They are being sold as decorations. Part of me is happy that people would have these statues in their homes, but unfortunately, they will not be using them for reminders to reconsider their lives, but as something to "complete" a look in their living rooms.

But other religions are being sold this way too. Paganism, Christianity, it's endless...

[Tibetan Calligraphy Student]

Great post!!!

I really enjoyed reading it.

[Christian]

This is not news. I remember the Dalai lama writing, in his autobiography (1990?), how he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He also expressed sympathetic views towards marxism.

By the way, Marx advocated that workers gain control of the means of production (not control on the fruit of their work) and lead a dictatorship. Problem is that the Marxist categories do not map well onto current economy. For instance, a baker who owns his bakery would be categorized as a "bourgeois", while a CEO, who is hired to run a company, who be a proletarian.

Definitely needs upgrading or a refreshing of the pre-marxist alternatives, which where crushed by the liberal utopias (nowadays a widespread reality, unfortunately).

Interesting post.