By Anton
Every state, with no exception, has been an instrument by which a privileged few have wielded power over the immense the majority.
Every church has been the loyal ally of the state in the subjugation of mankind. Bakunin best sums up this relationship between inequality and religion in his book ‘god and the state’. Religion, by it’s very nature, minimises the role of humanity, instead replacing it with the glory of God.
Bakunin writes:
“God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave.”
As with the state, Religion and God are the enemies of and limit equality and liberty. Because of this, to quote Bakunin again: “if God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him”.
As long as there is a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth; as long as there is a state, we will not be free, we will not be equal, and we will be exploited by a privileged minority. Have no illusions about religion, it teaches us to be content and sit here with folded arms. Instead of bringing earth to the heavens, it tells us to be content with the conditions we are in, not to create our own paradise on earth, or so to speak.
