Foundations: The Opiate of the People- Karl Marx

View of God through the eyes of the philosopher/early sociologist Karl Marx

Disclosure
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Karl Marx was a philosopher; therefore, as such, he was part of a very large, pedantic, exhausting debate expanding out into many branches; beginning at least as early as Plato and continuing to today.  Marx himself contributed many volumes of writing to this debate.  While most modern educated people know something of Marx; our views should be held with caution as most of us, myself included, are not prepared or inclined to read the entire works of Marx, as well as that of his peers and predecessors, to be certain we clearly understand what he was trying to say with all necessary complexity taken into consideration.
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Having provided the above disclosure, generically speaking, Marx was a dialectical materialist; although he disagreed with dialectics and materialists independently.  Marx's primary contribution to humanity was the viewpoint that political and social reality is shaped by struggles between social classes over control of the material modes of production- broadly classified in sociology as "conflict theory."   Having observed numerous examples of this theory, and the outcome for humanity, Marx preached to the workers of the world the need to throw off the chains of oppression.

Within his "conflict theory" framework Marx exposed religion was part of the "superstructure" of reality generated by underlying reality of the material substructure.  That is, it is religion is one of the techniques that the ruling class uses to keep the subject class under control.  He said it is an opiate, a drug that immobilizes the subject class with the hope of a spiritual reward as a substitute for material possessions. Ironically, Marx's  viewpoint was so popular it became a sort of a quasi-religion, which unfortunately was used to control people, resulting in an outcome similar to that which he was trying to prevent.  That aside, Marx had a point, a careful historical analysis will demonstrate many examples of religion being used by the elite as a tool of submission. Critics of religion say religion is an implicit justification of injustice, misusing human tendency for self-serving thinking and/or wishful thinking; or in other words and offering of "pie in the sky when you die," meanwhile you can starve.

Despite Marx's atheistic tone, there are actually many clergy, particularly Catholic clergy, who preach "identification with the poor" as a primary aspirations and tenet of Christianity who find Marx as a brother in their fight, or find his works to not be a contradiction to the original teachings of Christ, but actually a supporting  viewpoint.  The "Liberation Theologists" in South America are a prime example.

From my standpoint it could be that Marx was generally correct about "Religion" and its application in society, however wrong and/or silent about the original mystic writings and writers.  Regardless of society or time, many a prophet have been murdered while the elite stood by- nearly all in fact.  It was only later that the prophet was institutionalized.  If I may claim any small piece of middle ground I propose the disconnect is somewhere in between these events.


Contribution To The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Excerpts


"The basis of the irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.  In other words, religion is the self-consciousness and self-feeling of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again.  But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world.  Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, a reversed world-consciousness, because they are a reversed world.  Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point of honor , its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its universal ground for consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality.  The struggle against religion is therefore mediately the fight against the other world, of which religion is the spiritual aroma."  


"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real stress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the distressed 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 task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of the world.  The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the saintly form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms.  Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of right and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics."  

Theses on Feuerbach

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Excerpts

I

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism -- is that the thing, reality, that which can be sensed, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as human sensory activity, practice, not subjectively. 

II
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a practical question.  In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question

III

The doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society.  The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood as revolutionizing practice.

IV

(Materialism) starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world and a real one.  (Materialism) consists in the dissolution of the religious world into a secular basis.  (It) overlooks the fact that after this is completed the chief thing still remains to be done.  For the fact that the secular foundation detaches itself from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm is really only to be explained by the self-cleavage.  This contradiction must be understood as self-contradictory and then revolutionized in practice by the removal of the contradiction. Thus, for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be criticized in theory and revolutionized in practice.

V

(Materialists), not satisfied with abstract thinking, appeal only to contemplation that can be confirmed by the senses.

VI

(Materialists) resolve the religious essence into the human essence.  But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each individual.  In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations. Materialists, who do not enter upon a criticism of this real essence (socially derived), is consequently compelled to abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself and to presuppose an abstract -isolated- human individual.

VII
This viewpoint, consequently, does not see that the "religious sentiment" is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyzes belongs in reality to a particular form of society. 
VIII
Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which mislead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in comprehension of this practice.
IX
The highest point attained by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not understand senses as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals in "civil society."
X
The standpoint of the old materialism is "civil" society; the standpoint of the new is "human society", or "socialized humanity".  
XI
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it.

Sources: 

Sociology of Religion: A Collection of Readings