{"id":23895,"date":"2015-01-20T17:48:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T22:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=23895"},"modified":"2024-06-03T17:48:43","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T22:48:43","slug":"karl-marx-on-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2015\/01\/karl-marx-on-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Marx on Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marx\"Religious people sometimes express disdain for Karl Marx and his philosophies because he supposedly characterized religion as \u201cthe opiate of the masses.\u201d It turns out that this isn\u2019t exactly what Marx said. Furthermore, he wasn’t necessarily negative about religion and its role in social life.<\/p>\n

Appearing in Marx’s projected but never completed A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy<\/em>, Marx’s words on religion are of course in German. He uses the German word \u201cVolk,\u201d which usually translates as \u201cthe people\u201d rather than \u201cthe masses\u201d as his detractors choose to claim.<\/p>\n

Then, too, it’s important to remember that opium and opium derivatives were for the most part legal during the period in which Marx wrote and that they were thought of largely as medicinal. Any suggestion that Marx was equating religion to an illegal, addictive narcotic is therefore off-target.<\/p>\n

Marx’s actual words regarding religion deserve reflection. My best translation of those words is as follows: \u201cReligion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, Marx is speaking not as a man of faith but rather as a secular humanist. However, he does appear to suggest a largely positive role religion could play in an exploitative and alienating society. Human beings have the distressing habit of killing one another because of religious differences, and some of our most religious citizens wear the biggest of blinders. But Marx is right that our society can use a \u201cheart\u201d and a \u201csoul\u201d wherever we might find it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religious people sometimes express disdain for Karl Marx and his philosophies because he supposedly characterized religion as \u201cthe opiate of the masses.\u201d It turns out that this isn\u2019t exactly what Marx said. Furthermore, he wasn’t necessarily negative about religion and its role in social life. Appearing in Marx’s projected but never completed A Contribution to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-processes-rhetoric","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30816,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23895\/revisions\/30816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}