Karl Marx is more a sociologist and economist than a philosopher. Although he continued his atheistic philosophical reflection, he accepted Feuerbach's ideas and tried to apply them in the fields of economics and sociology in his criticism of capitalism. As he himself says, he is not interested in theories that lack practical application that can change the world.
He aims to understand how religion has performed over time, what it has served, and who it has served. He discovers that it has been an instrument of oppression used by the ruling classes against the poorest. This is a simplistic view, which even Marx himself must have recognized, but it is the one that best serves his theory. In other words, dialectical materialism is at the service of historical materialism.
Biography of Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Karl Marx was born in 1818 in the city of Trier, then a territory of Prussia, into an upper-class German family. His father was a successful lawyer and government advisor. At the age of seventeen, Marx went to study law at the University of Bonn, following in his father's footsteps.
However, the young university student got involved in parties and fell into a bohemian lifestyle. To put an end to this, his father, Heinrich Marx, transferred him to the University of Berlin. There, the defiant younger Marx discovered philosophy, the field in which he would earn his degree.
At the age of 23, Marx defended his thesis in Philosophy, obtaining a doctorate, which enabled him to enter an academic career. However, due to his criticism of the Prussian government, he was prevented from teaching at universities, forcing him to work as a journalist.
Marx's radical positions led to his expulsion from various Prussian, German, and French territories, and ultimately, he was expelled from Cologne, Germany, in 1848. In England that same year, he published the Communist Manifesto together with Friedrich Engels. From 1843 until the end of his life, Marx survived on inheritances, financial support from Engels, and from occasional articles he wrote for newspapers. It was in London that he wrote his most important work: Das Kapital.
Religion as the Opium of the People
The son of a Jewish convert to Protestant Christianity, Marx was even married in a church. However, he was a revolutionary. In his emblematic work, Das Kapital, he analyzed the evils of capitalism and viewed religion as an obstacle to progress—that is, to the evolution of capitalism towards socialism and communism.
Marx fully agrees with Feuerbach: God is a projection of man, and religion is therefore "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the spirit of a spiritless age. It is the opium of the people”. As well as being a projection, religion is a drug, an alienating behavior that prevents us from being ourselves, from taking the reins of our destiny or the helm of our boat. In short, it is an obstacle to progress.
Marx's atheism is more economic and social than philosophical. He has no interest in the essence of religion, be it Jewish or Christian, and is in fact ignorant of Christ or the social principles of Christianity.
What interests him is the role religion plays in society. Thus, Marx's atheism may be due to the type of religion practiced at that time, which in itself may have had little to do with Christ’s Christianity. Indeed, the classless communist society of the future could very well be the Promised Land of the Jews, the Kingdom of God of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christians.
What in Feuerbach was just a philosophical idea, in Marx it is a manifesto, an operative idea. However, it should be noted that Marx firmly believed that both capitalism and religion would collapse on their own, without the need of an intervention, like a fruit that ripens, rots and falls from the tree.
Nonetheless, his followers understood that they needed to be given a push, and that is precisely what Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong did with militant atheism, which resulted in the deaths of millions of people during most of the 20th century. Poor Marx, realizing while he was still alive that there were so many versions of his theories, even declared himself a non-Marxist.
Listen, Marx
To Marx, I would say that so far it has been more the religious who have brought benefits to humanity than the atheists, who brought gulags, dictatorships, and religious persecutions, resulting in the death of around 30 million people throughout the last century. Religion can be seen as the opium of the people when it is disconnected from life and social reality, but in essence, it is not the opium of the people.
As Karl Marx said, the human being is the moment when nature becomes aware of itself. Of all living beings, we are the only ones with the capacity to think and have some control over our destiny and life. It makes no sense that our fate should be the same as that of a louse or flea: nothingness. If that were so, I and many others would rather not have been born than share the same fate with lice, cockroaches, and fleas: nothingness.
Here lies the absurdity of atheism: it makes no sense that an intelligently ordered universe, which has progressed as far as human life, should suffer the same fate as the rest of living beings. Why would we have come this far? So that we would be more aware of our misery, and suffer more than all other living beings?
Precisely at the moment when we become aware of ourselves, of our existence, and the relative power we have over it, we also realize that one day we will die—that is, that one day we will cease to exist. At least animals, which also die, are spared this suffering of knowing. They do not think, they do not know they exist, and therefore, they do not know they will die.
Why, then, do we have consciousness? To masochistically experience suffering, pain, anguish and anxiety in the face of death and our miserable condition compared to other living beings?
Animals have no power over their own lives: nature has implanted a "chip" in their system known as instinct, which automatically governs their lives. Living beings travel on autopilot; they cannot err, nor are they ever right or wrong—or rather, they are always right, always fulfilling the vocation for which they were created. Unlike them, humans have some power over their life and can transform it into heaven, or hell by making mistakes. Wouldn’t it be better if we too lived on autopilot, given that we all share the same end?
To animals, nature is a prodigal mother, giving them everything, even clothing them. When they emerge from their mother’s womb, they are already equipped with everything they need to live. Human beings, on the other hand, are born as the most vulnerable and helpless of all living beings and it takes them a long time to reach adulthood: years of education, school and university, and then, in order to survive, they have to work most of the day to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, while our fellow animals eat, sleep and play, their days away. What is the point of all this? Wouldn’t the animal’s life be better if everything truly ended in insignificance?
Conclusion - Although certain types of religion can become alienating, the religion of Jesus, far from being opium, is rather the leaven of a more fraternal world, based on equality and justice.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
Thank you Father Jorge 🙏❤️
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