The Crisis of Bourgeois Social Sciences, Religion and Culture

Crises, in ever quicker succession, are shaking capitalist society: Corona pandemic, deep setbacks for the world economy, social emergency, the initiated global environmental catastrophe, the growing threat of world war, or the increasing danger of fascism.

The bourgeois social sciences, religion and culture try to give answers, but are themselves affected by the state of crisis. They are far from "ideology-free" but instead spread the bourgeois worldview! This book espouses the ideology of the exploited and oppressed of this world and their justified cultural, ecological and social needs. It develops an unsparing critique of bourgeois-decadent culture while at the same time defending all valuable and progressive products of human culture. The book develops liberating visions of how a socialist society will solve the issues raised in a forward-looking way.

This is the fourth volume of the book series, The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology, and the Doctrine of the Mode of Thinking.



Stefan Engel, born in 1954, is a trained mechanic and works today as a free publicist. Since 1968 he has been actively involved in the building of the

MLPD, and since 1975 has been one of its leading representatives. From the late 1980s up until 2016 he held positions of responsibility in the international revolutionary working-class movement.



Monika Gärtner-Engel is MLPD Internationalism Secretary and Main Coordinator of the revolutionary world organization ICOR. She is co-author of the book, New Perspectives for the Liberation of Women, and an acknowledged representative of the international militant women's movement.



Part IV: The Crisis of the Bourgeois Social Sciences, Religion and Culture



Introduction 7



1. The Crisis of Religion 12

1.1. Religion as Historically First Ideological Foundation of Class Societies 12

1.2. The Crisis of Religion, and the Dialectical-Materialist Criticism of Religion 22

1.3. Anthroposophy – a Semi-Religious and Elitist Philosophy of Life 35



2. The Unscientific Nature of the Bourgeois Social Sciences 41

2.1. The Fantasies of Bourgeois Economics 41

2.2. The Dilemma of the Bourgeois Agricultural Sciences 50

2.3. Bourgeois Historiography Degenerates into Revision of Historical Facts 58

2.4. The Tightrope Act of Bourgeois Pedagogy 68

2.5. Manipulation of Public Opinion by Bourgeois Sociology 82

2.6. Questionable Theory and Practice of Bourgeois Jurisprudence 91



3. The Crisis of Bourgeois Culture 107

3.1. The Ambivalent Role of Culture in Bourgeois Society 107

3.2. The Part Played by Language in the Struggle of World Outlooks 117

3.3. Beethoven's Music as a Product of the Enlightenment 129

3.4. Creative Potential and Crisis of the Visual and Performing Arts 134

3.5. Imperialist Sports Culture as Vehicle of Bourgeois Ideology 146

3.6. The Fundamental Fiction of the "Free Media" 159

3.7. Increasing Decadence in Bourgeois Mass Culture 172



4. The Necessity of Further Developing the Proletarian World Outlook and the Doctrine of the Mode of Thinking 186



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