KARL MARK ON RELIGION

BIOGRAPHY
Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5 May 1818 in Trier in western German, the
son of a successful Jewish lawyer. Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, but
was also introduced to the ideas of Hegel and Feuerbach. In 1841, he
received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jenin 1849, Marx
moved to London, where he was to spend the remainder of his life. For a
number of years, his family lived in poverty but the wealthier Engels was
able to support them to an increasing extent. Gradually, Marx emerged from
his political and spiritual isolation and produced his most important body of
work, 'Das Capital'. The first volume of this 'bible of the working class' was
published in his lifetime, while the remaining volumes were edited by Engels
after his friend's death.

RELIGION IS THE OPIUM OF MASSES"

Religion is the opium of the people" is one of the most frequently paraphrased
statements of German sociologist and economic theorist Karl Marx. It was translated
from the German original, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes" and is often
rendered as "religion... is the opiate of the masses."
The quotation originates from the introduction of Marx's work A Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which he started in 1843 but which was not
published until after his death. The introduction to this work was published separately in
1844, in Marx's own journal Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, collaboration
with Arnold Ruge
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-
consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself,
or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the
world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce
religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is
religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted
world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its
solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the
fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired
any true reality.
RELIGION AS IDELOGY
For Marx ideology is distribution and media. Of ideas in society through institution such
as the church, the education, the education the belief system that changes the people
perception of reality in ways that serves the interests of the ruling class. He argue that
the class that control economic production and also control the production and system
In Marx view religion operates as an ideological weapon used by the ruling class to
justify and suffering of the poor as something inevitable and GOD-GIVEN. Religion
misleads poor into believing that suffering is virtuous and that will be favored in the afterlife.
Such belief creates a false consciousness. LENIN also describe religion as spiritual gin- an
intoxicant doled out the masses by ruling class to continue them and keep them in their place.
Lenin argues that ruling class use religion cynically to manipulate the masses and keep them
from attempting to overthrow the ruling class by creating a mystical fog that obscures reality.

RELIGION AND ALIENATION

Marx believes religion is the product of alienation. As it is based on delusion and worship of appearances
that alienates us from underlying reality. Much as capitalism takes our productive and alienates us from
its value. Religion takes our highest ideas and aspirations and alienates us from them projecting them
onto an alien and unknowable being called a God. Alienation involves becoming from are losing control
over something that one has produce are created. Alienation exists in all classes but is more extreme
under capitalism. Under capitalism workers are alienated because they don’t own what the produce and
have no control over the produce and no control over the production process and no freedom to express
their true nature detailed division of labour in the capitalist factory where the worker endlessly repeats
the same task. Religion acts as an opiate to dull the pain of exploitation but just as opium mask pain
rather than treating its cause .so religion mask the underlying problem of exploitation that creates the
needs for it. Because religion is the distorted view of the world it can offer no solution to earthly misery.
In instead its promises of the afterlife create an illusory happiness that distracts attention from the true
source of suffering namely capitalism.

Religion and Social Control

Religion also acts as a tool of social control in a more direct sense: according to Marx
and Engels:

‘The parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord’.

This was especially true in feudal England when the landed classes’ decisions were
frequently legitimated be religious decree: as Marx and Engels saw it, the bourgeois and
the church supported one another: the former generously funded the later, and church
legitimated social inequality, thus maintaining the established social order.
 RELLIGION AS EVOLUTION
Marx show that religion may be a toll of
FUNCTION OF RELIGION
According to Marx, one of the main ‘functions’ of religion is to prevent people making
demands for social change by dulling pain of oppression, as follows:

1. The promise of an afterlife gives people something to look forwards to. It is easier to put
up with misery now if you believe you have a life of ‘eternal bliss’ to look forward to after
death.
2. Religion makes a virtue out of suffering – making it appear as if the poor are more
‘Godly’ than the rich. One of the best illustrations of this is the line in the bible: ‘It is
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of heaven.
3. Religion can offer hope of supernatural intervention to solve problems on earth: this
makes it pointless for humans to try to do anything significant to help improve their
current conditions.

Religion can justify the social order and people’s position within that order, as in the
line in the Victorian hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’:

Criticisms
Firstly, it is clear that religion does not always prevent social change by creating false
class consciousness. There are plenty of examples of where oppressed groups have used
religion to attempt (whether successful or not is moot here) to bring about social
change, as we will see in the neo-Marxist perspective on religion.

Secondly, religion still exists where there is (arguably) no oppression: the USSR
communist state placed limits on the practice of religion, including banning religious
instruction to children, however, religious belief remained stronger in the 20th century
in Russia and Eastern Europe than it did in the capitalist west.

Thirdly, and building on the previous point: just because religion can be used as a tool
of manipulation and oppression, this does not explain its existence: religion seems to be
more or less universal in all societies, so it is likely that it fulfills other individual and
social needs, possibly in a more positive way as suggested by Functionalist theorists
such as Durkheim, Malinowski, and Parsons.

REFERENCE

1 https://www.biography.com/scholar/karl-marx

2  Raines, John. 2002. "Introduction". Marx on Religion (Marx, Karl). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Page 5-6

3  History of the RSA". Archived from the original on 1 December 2008.

4  McKinnon, AM. (2005). 'Reading ‘Opium of the People’: Expression, Protest and the
Dialectics of Religion'. Critical Sociology, vol 31, no. 1-2, pp. 15-38. [1]

5  Marx, K. 1976. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of

Right. Collected Works, v. 3. New York.

6 Adapted from Collins.Haralmabos and Holborn (2008) Sociology Themes and

Perspectives, 7th Edition,