National organization for the reform of Marijuana laws

Extract

[...] Marx, the capitalist need to relentlessly expand operations in order to stay competitive and maximize profit leads to the colonizing of other territories and set up the same exploitative mode of production; a word, it creates a world after its own image modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped [the proletarian] of every trace of his national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeoisie prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeoisie interests” (23,26). [...]

[...] For Protestants, religious rituals fueled the fire of fear and hate against the Catholics and justified treating them as less than human. For elites, this control served a dual purpose of distracting the workers with their religious obsessions that culminated in sectarian conflict and of keeping the Protestant workers blindly aligned behind their decidedly anti-labor, exploitative interests. Hence, religion worked as an and as a means of “divide and rule” throughout the novel Instances of such discrimination are manifested in sale of apprenticeships which few Catholic families could afford,” or the sudden “unavailability” of such [...]

[...] The success of religion as the vehicle for fueling division among workers was strongly suggested in the novel when Reverend MacIvor decided to branch off from the capitalists and form anti-Catholic rising led by his own elitist group called the Knights of Christ. “MacIvor hypnotized the throngs” with his dramatic sermons and it was his pious appeal that partially prevented the Protestant and Catholic workers from uniting; Seamus explained that the labor movement was heard and made inroads, the Protestant working class of Ulster examined its own situation and found it not to be all that exalted. [...]

[...] Thus, the supposed values of the Protestant religion serve as a legitimating mechanism that gives Protestants a powerful moral conviction (free of charge for the elites) for hating Catholics and consequently supporting the Unionist agenda. Reflecting Marx's insights that religion was a tool used purposefully and strategically by ruling interests, there is a passage from Frederick Weed, defending his decision to allow radical preacher Oliver Cromwell MacIvor to stoke the fires of the Protestant rage, he observed; [elite] base of power is in Protestant unity, the Orange Order, if you will. [...]

[...] In mourning at Kilty's wake, Seamus observed how the conditions of the Irish peasants predisposed them to religious obsession; were the weary down there, the craggy-faced, knobby, leather-handed toilers rehearsing their own demise, yielding in pitiful weakness to the scythe of mystery kept poised a lifetime at their jugulars too simple and too tired to protest too frightened to seek the truth succumbed in silence, for without it what was there left to believe?” (24). This reflection shows that the promise of eternal salvation was too tempting a belief for such desperate people not to cling to; without it, their pain and sacrifice in life would mean nothing and hence religion appears as the major force that keeps the Irish submissive and hard- working. [...]