Rethinking ‘Ideology’ and ‘Escape’ in Marx’s Critique of Religion

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed 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 abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition, which needs illusions. 1

Communio Viatorum, 2021

Starting with Karl Marx’s famous definition of religion, the article seeks to offer a re-appraisal of what lies behind the claim that religion is the heart of a heartless world. It looks at reactions to Marx, from the first papal rejections of “communism”, through to later nineteenth-century appropriations in literature, where the first signs of a contextual approach are apparent. It then moves on to twentieth-century papal and other engagements with Marx, ending with the reception of Marx in Latin American liberation theology. Positively, the article argues, theologians have responded to Marx’s refusal to accept that alienation and exploitation are natural or right, giving a theological grounding to the claim and seeking to show that, if not religion, at least Christ is the heart of the world.

Topoi, 1983

Historical Materialism, 2010

Th is article reconsiders Marx's thinking on religion in light of current preoccupations with the encroachment of religious practices and beliefs into political life. It argues that Marx formulates a critique of the anti-clerical and Enlightenment-critique of religion, in which he subsumes the secular repudiation of spiritual authority and religious transcendence into a broader analysis of the 'real abstractions' that dominate our social existence. Th e tools forged by Marx in his engagement with critiques of religious authority allow him to discern the 'religious' and 'transcendent' dimension of state and capital, and may contribute to a contemporary investigation into the links between capitalism as a religion of everyday life and what Mike Davis has called the current 'reenchantment of catastrophic modernity'.

A brief overview of Marx's account of religion is followed by a consideration of a conception of liberation—a notion shared by marxists and adherents of religious traditions alike—that is substantive enough to overcome the marginalization and exploitation of countless numbers of human beings. The final section deals with the possibility of a rapprochement between the marxist and the adherent of a religious tradition.

2019

This inquiry seeks to establish that, in his writings, Karl Marx offers his perspectives on religion. The origins of Marx's conception of religion can be traced to his family history, adolescence, and time at the University of Berlin. Marx's criticism of contemporary philosophy offers a penetrating account of his views on religion, proving critical of the individualism and idealism implemented by his contemporaries. In Marx's judgement, religion offers a false sense of solace in a world marked by abuse. Religion rationalizes domination, sows societal divisions, and preserves oppressive institutions. Marx's materialist approach focuses on the real-life relations and activities within society, without dogma or idealism. Thus, his empirical approach offers practical and rational solutions in the face of injustice.

History of Political Thought

Marx is famous for uttering that religion is opium of the people and thus he is known as one of modern thought’s most uncompromising critics of religion. In this article I look deeper into the philosophical connotations pertaining to this metaphor by presenting and discussing other prominent thinkers’ employment of similar metaphors. Thus, the article follows the trail of opium imagery in connection with different approaches to the criticism of religion. This leads to a discussion of the influence on Marx by G.W.F. Hegel, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess, Ludwig Feuerbach and emphasising the influence of Heinrich Heine and Immanuel Kant. The ensuing analysis of Marx’s opium metaphor establishes that Marx’s thinking in A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction is at a cross road. His dependence on German philosophy in 1843 is highlighted as the context within which Marx’s shift from 1845 and onwards to focus on economic theory takes place. The interpretation also underscores that even though Marx thought the criticism of religion was in the main complete within German philosophy he continued to make use of religiously coloured language in order to further the revolutionary agenda in his writings.

Like any other social category, the meaning and conceptual boundary of “religion” is ambiguous and contentious. Historically speaking, its semantics have been transformed in highly complex ways. What is meant by “religion” reflects the specific norms and imperatives of the classifier. This article critically reflects upon the idea of “religion” employed by Karl Marx in the early 1840s. Marx reimagined the encompassing notion of “religion,” which was predominant in his time, by privatizing it in his attempt to critique the theological foundation of the Prussian state. In this process, young Marx’s discourse siphons what is claimed to be “religious” out of the categories of “philosophy,” “science,” and “politics.” In this way, Marx constructs the realm of nonreligion where he associates his own discourse with natural reason, against the reified notion of “religion” as fantastic illusions.

Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 2005