This article is in response to a survey that shows
"that the United States may be becoming both less religious generally and less Christian specifically. This may come as a shock to some, as over the past decade, the Religious Right has for many people come to represent the public face of the country. This has been spurred on and encouraged by the cries coming from many liberals over the past few years of an impending “theocracy.” However, the facts on the ground are quite different, as the American Religious Identification Survey, performed by Trinity College in Hartford, CT, recently proved."
It continues with a variety of stats about religious belief and thought in this country and moves on to a Marxist interpretation, some of which is cited below. It would be best to read the opening paragraphs to understand the motivation for this article.
Written by Josh Lucker
Friday, 10 April 2009
Marxism as a philosophy is atheistic, but our ideas in relation to religion are far more complex than the caricature of “Godless communists” usually portrayed in the media. If people know anything about Marx’s ideas on religion, chances are they know that he said that religion was “the opium of the masses.” He did in fact say this, but what he actually meant goes far beyond an isolated quote.
The quote is from Marx’s Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, written in 1844. In it, he takes up the German critics of religion, a trend led by Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and others, who focused their attacks, not on existing social relations, but on religion itself.
He points out that: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again… This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world… The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion… 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…
“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.”
As Marx explains, the 19th Century German critics of religion had the whole thing turned upside-down. Religion is merely the reflection of suffering in this world, inequality in this world, injustice in this world. So long as these conditions exist, religion cannot simply be “abolished,” because it has a material base. It is, as he put it, the “sigh of the oppressed creature.”
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In other words, religion cannot simply be abolished or criticized out of existence. As Marxists, we believe that if you eliminate the conditions of misery that most of humanity lives under, that is, if we create conditions for “real happiness,” then over time, the need for “illusory happiness” will disappear on its own. If you do not agree, that is perfectly fine with us. In the future we can debate all we want about life after death, but in the meantime, we should work together to create the conditions for a life before death.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://www.socialistappeal.org/content/view/709/56/