Karl Marx On Religion By kwertii in Politics Tue Mar 18, 2003 at 04:30:51 PM EST Tags: Round Table (all tags)
	Perhaps Karl Marx's best known quotation is his description of religion as "the opiate of the masses." This quote is often misrepresented by those ideologically opposed to Marx as though Marx were advocating immediate and total obliteration of all religions. On the contrary, Marx viewed religion as the sole solace, often, of the oppressed proletarian classes. He would not have dreamed of tearing this away, their only consolation in life. Lutheranism was the prescribed Prussian state religion, and career advancement for non-Lutherans and especially Jews was difficult to impossible. But for Marx, religion in general was merely a symptom of a much larger issue -- the fundamentally predatorial economic relationship between the bourgeois class and the proletariat -- rather than religion being a fundamental problem in itself. As Napoleon put it, "Religion is great stuff for keeping the poor from murdering the rich."

In 1843, Bruno Bauer suggested that the abolition of any state sponsored religion would solve "The Jewish Question" -- institutional discrimination against Jews prevalent in contemporary Prussian society. Marx, in his analysis of Bauer's thesis, suggests that Bauer does not adequately address the issue with such a simplistic response, as Bauer is fundamentally misunderstanding the basis of the situation. Marx points to the examples of the United States and Canada, nations without state-sponsored religions, as examples of the inadequacy of Bauer's proposition. In these states, religious discrimination and prejudice were alive and well, despite the lack of official sanction. The only net difference in North America, in practical terms, was the fracture of one monolithic state religion into countless tiny sects which differ only in relatively minor theological details. Marx says that this separation of the theological arena from the political arena merely creates a duality in the mode of existance of individual members of such societies. They assume two roles - that of the citizen, egalitarian, community-oriented, and equal; and that of the private individual in so-called civil life - just as self-interested and prejudicial (religiously and otherwise) as ever. Marx recognizes that this separation of church from state is inevitable and a necessary step in the long chain of social development leading to a perfect state of communal society. The separation of church and state is important, significant, and necessary insofar as it represents political emancipation for the people - the ability to officially participate in the government, to vote, to run for office, etc. In a broader social sense, the seperation of church from state does little to end religious discrimination in general. It merely privatizes it. The separation is a step in the right direction, to be sure, but far from the complete solution, as Bauer would have it. In the language of Marx's historical materialism, the separation of church and state is just another necessary dialectical change that must inevitably occur on the road to the perfect communal society. Religious discrimination and even organized religion in itself are merely symptoms of underlying socioeconomic disparities, rather than endpoints. Systematic organized religions can be and are employed as a tool of oppression by the bourgeois classes, one of the central philosophical areas explored by the circle of Young Hegelians at the University of Berlin under Bauer. Christianity in particular was employed by the European and North American bourgeois, but the Young Hegelians theorized that the same principles could be applied to any state and any religion. All laws in these societies have their basis in religious texts. David Strauss argued that Christianity was originally a religion of the poor and oppressed masses, which had been appropriated by the ruling classes to control the populace. The promise of an eternal reward in the afterlife was perverted to induce people to not ever even think of rebellion against their oppressors. As Jesus himself was leading a mass movement of the poor and oppressed, not the rich, state religion was illegitimate. Despite this, Marx realized that many people among the oppressed proletarians had come to cling very dearly to religion. He felt they had essentially been brainwashed by the bourgeois ruling classes over the course of their entire lives to be docile and content with their stations in life through the promises of an afterlife. To deny this consolation to them in the course of liberating them from bourgeois oppression would be cruel, and counterproductive besides. Of much more importance is eradicating the underlying social and economic apparatuses which engender classes and class oppression in the first place, and permit the existence of religious descrimination as a scapegoat. These issues are merely cogs in a much larger machine dedicated to preserving economic disparity.

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