Karl Marx on Religion
Is Religion the Opiate
of the Masses?
By Austin Cline
This quote is reproduced a great deal and is probably the only Marx
quote that most people are familiar with. Unfortunately, if someone is
familiar with it they are likely only familiar with a small portion that,
taken by itself, tends to give a distorted impression of what Marx had
to say about religion.
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression
of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion
is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit
of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition
of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required
for their
real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition
is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." Karl
Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right
Usually all one gets from the above is “Religion is the opium
of the people“ (with no ellipses to indicate that something has
been removed). Sometimes “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed
creature“ is included. If you compare these with the full quotation,
it’s clear that a great deal more is being said than what most
people are aware of.
In the above quotation Marx is saying that religion’s
purpose is to create illusory fantasies for the poor. Economic realities
prevent them from finding true happiness in this life, so religion
tells them
that this is OK because they will find true happiness in the next
life. Although this is a criticism of religion, Marx is not without
sympathy:
people are in distress and religion provides solace, just as people
who are physically injured receive relief from opiate-based drugs.
The quote is not, then, as negative as most portray
(at least about religion). In some ways, even the slightly extended
quote which people
might see is a bit dishonest because saying “Religion is the sigh
of the oppressed creature...” deliberately leaves out the additional
statement that it is also the “heart of a heartless world.”
What we have is a critique of society that has become
heartless rather than of religion which tries to provide a bit of
solace. One can argue
that Marx offers a partial validation of religion in that it tries
to become the heart of a heartless world. For all its problems, religion
doesn’t matter so much — it is not the real problem. Religion
is a set of ideas, and ideas are expressions of material realities.
Religion is a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself.
Still, it would be a mistake to think that Marx is
uncritical towards religion — it may try to provide heart, but it fails. For Marx,
the problem lies in the obvious fact that an opiate drug fails to fix
a physical injury — it merely helps you forget pain and suffering.
This may be fine up to a point, but only as long as you are also trying
to solve the underlying problems causing the pain. Similarly, religion
does not fix the underlying causes of people’s pain and suffering — instead,
it helps them forget why they are suffering and gets them to look forward
to an imaginary future when the pain will cease.
Even worse, this “drug” is administered by the same oppressors
who are responsible for the pain and suffering in the first place. Religion
is an expression of more fundamental unhappiness and symptom of more
fundamental and oppressive economic realities. Hopefully, humans will
create a society in which the economic conditions causing so much pain
and suffering would be eradicated and, therefore, the need for soothing
drugs like religion will cease. Of course, for Marx such a turn of events
isn’t to be “hoped for” because human history was
leading inevitably towards it.
So, in spite of his obvious dislike of and anger towards religion, Marx
did not make religion the primary enemy of workers and communists, regardless
of what might have been done by 20th century communists. Had Marx regarded
religion as a more serious enemy, he would have devoted more time to
it in his writings. Instead, he focused on economic and political structures
that in his mind served to oppress people.
For this reason, some Marxists could be sympathetic
to religion. Karl Kautsky, in his Foundations of Christianity, wrote
that early Christianity
was, in some respects, a proletarian revolution against privileged
Roman oppressors. In Latin America, some Catholic theologians have
used Marxist
categories to frame their critique of economic injustice, resulting
in “liberation
theology.”
Marx’s relationship with and ideas about religion are more complex
than most realize. Marx’s analysis of religion has flaws, but despite
them his perspective is worth taking seriously. Specifically, he argues
that religion is not so much an independent “thing” in society
but, rather, a reflection or creation of other, more fundamental “things” like
economic relationships. That’s not the only way of looking at
religion, but it can provide some interesting illumination on the social
roles
that religion plays.
