Karl Markx and Religion.

By: Khairi Janbek.


When Marx said "Religion is the Opium of the People", he was charcterising religion as a painkilling drug, and shocking as it is still is to many, was eevn more radical in its day. And yet, marx more than condemning religion itself, was actually critiquing the condition of a society that would lead people to it.

What Marx really meant, was that religion functions to pacify the oppressed; and oppression is definitely a moral wrong. religion; he said, reflects what is lacking in society; it is an idealisation of what people aspire to but cannot now enjoy. Social conditions in mid-19th.century Europe had reduced worlers to little better than slaves; the same conditions produced a religion that promised a better world in the afterlife.

Therefore, to him, religion isn't merely a superstition or an illusion. It has a social function : to distract the oppressed from the truth of their oppression. So long as the exploited and downtrodden believe their sufferings will earn them freedom and happiness hereafter, they will think their oppression part of the natural order; a necessary burden rather than something imposed by other men.

This is then what Marx meant by calling religion "opium of the prople": It dulls their pain but at the same time makes them lazy, clouding their perception of reality, and robbbing them of their will to change.

What did marx want?. he wanted the people to open their eyes to the harsh realities of 19th.century bourgeois capitalism. The capitalists were squeezing more and more profit out of the proletariat's labour, and at the same time alianating from self-realisation. What workers deserved, and could have if they arose from their "slumber", was control over their own labour, possession of the value they created through work, and thus, self-esteem, freedom and power.

To that end, marx called for the abolition " of religion as the illusory happiness of the people". he wanted them to demand real happiness, which in Marx's materialist philosophy (which i talked about before) was freedom and fulfillment in this world.