by Witness 007 4 Replies latest watchtower bible
Karl Marks 1844 used these words.
I meet alot of Witnesses who have a glazed look in there eyes talking about one day being in "paradise" and having a pet lamb and Lion.....an Elder who is EXTREMELY jolly and enthusiastic about the Truth, told me against Doctors orders regarding his Pnumonia he will keep Pioneering this month????....religious people are just hooked on this drug that makes them feel better about death and suffering.
Very true. Ever notice how happy the religious are? The drug of delusion is even more powerful than opium!
http://atheism.about.com/od/weeklyquotes/a/marx01.htm
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.
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.
Thank you P Sac. for your explanation of dear old beardy Karl Marx's views on religion.
I have read the full quote before, and I too came to realise that K.M was not overly concerned about training his guns on religion, he rightly appraised that the oppresion of the proletariat came from the ruling classes, although they were aided and abetted by religion.
Yours is a very good summary of his thoughts, and you have stopped us Apostates from doing something the JW's do , taking a quote out of context, as they have of course, a number of times, with this very quote .
It's not mine wobble, it was taken from the link above.
