Marx said what?

Originally found here .

So yesterday I went to an interesting discussion, where the quote “religion is the opiate of the masses” came up. Cool cool, we all know it, it’s used more often than not to shake off religion as something weak or stupid.

EXCEPT NO.

Here’s a bit of context around the quote:

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." (A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1844)

Marx saw religion as something people clung to to not lose all hope in their corrupt society. We see the quote today as meaning religion was a drug which kept people from seeing clearly, but in fact Marx was of the opinion that it was a drug which helped people dull the pain of a reality they were very well aware of. He wrote before the invention of penicillin (1897), at which point opium would have been widely used as a medical painkiller. So religion didn’t make people bumbling idiots who would follow every order; it was used by people to protest their deplorable socio-political situations.

As someone who really liked Marx's words, I have always been twisted up inside when people assume that Marx, Lenin, and Stalin all stood for the same thing. I saw the above as I was browsing tumblr and felt compelled to share it here.

I don't agree with Marx on this, even with the corrected interpretation, I still don't agree with him. I think religion can be many things: a balm for the hurting soul, a means to gain power, a means to control others, a means to find community, etc. I think religion is just as awesome or as awful as the people who follow it and it varies from region to region, sect to sect, congregation to congregation of each religion.

Let's read on, shall we.

Karl Marx wrote: The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

Source

Marx did see religion for the escape medium that it was to so many in his time and he saw it as an indicator of the miserable condition it was in place to mitigate. He went on to explain that by removing it he didn't mean robbing people of their last resort but rather getting people out of the condition within which they needed religion in the first place.

The final paragraph I quoted might remind people of the endless propaganda non-believers have to face from the faithful of being ultimately selfish and their own gods. I would argue that what Marx meant to say is that instead of spending our time and resources on what he considered a false consolation we would be collectively better off working for ourselves and for each other such that our world is one where we need not cling to religion. He might alternatively also have meant to say that the joy and beauty religion brings ultimately comes from within us anyway and we might as well recognize it as a part of ourselves and of our fellow people and see them for the beauty they are without the easily exploitable middle man that is religion.

I highly recommend to read the entire original article as it were. Since this is such a sensitive topic, misinterpreting passages is very easy and likely unavoidable. Lest we quote-mine to put words into each other's mouths, perhaps the author did make his meaning clear enough to answer some of our speculations about it.

this is very interesting

my position has always been that science and religior are at their heart/essentially the same thing

without ever reading even so much as the communist manifesto, i had this quasi sense that its "failure" had more to do with the inherent weakness of man than the weakness of the system itself

now i am reminded at why assumptions of any kind are so dangerous

there is an inherent weakness in a system which "calls upon the people" to substitute the "false happiness" of what they already choose to belive with the "real happiness" of what the system believes

i know this to be true because i attempt it constantly andnover and over the results are the same

the term "non believer" has always had the intellectual effect on me of "nails on a chalk boad"
usually i have heard "believers" use it to describe those outside of their own faith

but it is blatantly false as a descriptive of anyone

we are all belivers, though we dont all belive in the same things and in no other context do i see anyone attempting to define any discipline or system or activity by what it is not

but there i go, attempting to free peole of the false happiness of their illusions and replace it with the real happiness of my own

Those more versed in philosophy will draw the line between the Manifesto and the Critique of Hegel's... Sticking to the topic though

OB1Shinobi wrote: there is an inherent weakness in a system which "calls upon the people" to substitute the "false happiness" of what they already choose to belive with the "real happiness" of what the system believes

This is not something Marx proposes. Marx suggests that true happiness can only come out of within oneself and not be granted from outside. If life is such that one needs religion to cope with it, that itself indicates that it is a miserable life, so he argues. I'll leave it to the philosophers among us to clarify whether he is doing it in order to introduce a system of his own, as the quote itself would not imply that. The rejection of the consoling power of a system is not itself a system either. If it were, then nakedness would be an outfit and Off a TV channel. Being happy independent of a system doesn't make you depend on a system for that happiness.

i think the difference in perspective here
to a large degree can be understood in this:

to me

religion is

"what one belives is true
about life, oneself, reality,
and the interplay between them all"

at the fundamental level
this is the "correct" usage of the word
as i view it.

and at this level
it is impossible NOT to have a religion

to me the proccess of defining ones religion is
as he says
to "pluck the living flower"

and i recognise the essential truth that the writings are attempting to convey

insofar as to take the fragments which have been posted
on their own merits as fragments

my reflexive response
is that the attempt to institutionilize the interpretation of "flower"

is the heart of the failure of the system

because what it really does
is deny one flower
in favor of another

but one misunderstands the truth of flowers
to belive this can be done

the living flower is not static
this is what it means to be living

and the season of this flower
is as the writings indicate
an entirely internal affair

if there must be an institution
(and it does appear that there must)

then the institutions highest function must be to see to the provision of fertile soil

and clean water

and lots of sunlight

but beyond this; nothing

the flower will bloom of its own accord
and must be allowed to do so

i am enjoying the reading
and i support that it is of high value

i want to be clear
that it is the attempt to impose a philosophical doctrine upon a people that i am critical of

not the individual ideas within the doctrine itself.

people must be allowed to bloom and blossom according to their own season

we must be allowed and encouraged
and maybe even expected to blossom

but to try to tell us what kind of flowers to be
and when we must be them
is to stifle the blossam of all flowers

So yesterday I went to an interesting discussion, where the quote “religion is the opiate of the masses” came up. Cool cool, we all know it, it’s used more often than not to shake off religion as something weak or stupid.

EXCEPT NO.

Opiates are not weak or stupid. Opiates are dangerous and require users to be smart in order to benefit from it. Just like religion actually.