Karl Marx would have agreed with the quip religion is the middleman standing between man and God. He saw a separation between God and man that the Christian religion at their time would not have agreed with. Marx as an empiricist insists on evidence from within that can confirm a god’s exists. Marx viewed religion as a political tool used by the powers that be to control the worker class. Religion for Marx is a way in which man becomes alienated not just from himself, but from the god which the religion purports to put forward. Reinhold Niebuhr holds that “Marxism’s central thesis that religion is a weapon always used by the established social forces” (Niebuhr, viiii). This essay exams Marx understanding of labor and human nature, which has also to do with his view of the origins of religion, how that relates to the individuals, and how it has been abused by power structures which contribute to an alienated and deplorable set of circumstances for mankind.
Marx points out that religion as a tool has not always been used to promote just or moral ends where “The social principles of Christianity justified slavery in antiquity, glorified medieval serfdom, and when necessary, also know how to defend the oppression of the proletariat, although they may do so with a piteous face” (Marx, 184) His criticism about Christianity lies in historically how the premises forwarded by religion played out in their place in society. And noted just criticisms of what he saw from religion’s role in life. Often it was hijacked to promote self interests often of the bourgeois class against the proletariat.
Marx sees religion mimicking the very nature of the political economy that his work is fundamentally opposed to, “with the absurd babble about society’s duties of solidarity, with imaginary surpluses and blank checks drawn on God the Father, Son and Company” (Marx, 184).
Marx argues against religion simply needing more time to develop, he sees the outcome of eighteen hundred years of development as oppressive to humanity. The criticism of religion, and religion itself ends Marx believes with the recognition that man is the supreme being, which in turn “overthrow(s) all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected and contemptible being.” (Marx, 184)
The Christian religion teaches that man exists in a deplorable state because of his own doing. The doctrine of original sin which stems from the Biblical creation story has it that God created man in all his perfections to live out a worldly bliss but man through his turning away from God and disobedience brought upon his own pain and suffering.
Marx does not agree with the premise that we are debased, and certainly not that we are debased and it is the product of our own wrongdoing. With the categorical imperative, he disagrees with Kant and lumps this into the coerced philosophies of organized religions.
Marx recognizes that more than merely being a tool for a controlling class to pacify the people, individuals use religion to pacify themselves, “Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. . . it is the opium of the people.” (Marx, 175).
In Marx there is the Christian concept of estrangement coursing through their work. Estrangement exists between man, who seeks to actualize himself, and god whose understanding, correct or mistaken is governed by religion. In the process of understanding and knowing himself, mankind must necessarily turn away from pre-established systems of thought, religion included, in order to endeavor to reset the philosophical scoreboard.
For Marx’s man’s self-acualization is a zero sum game between religion and man. “The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself . Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not.” (Marx, Estranged Labor XXII)
Economically Marx believed that the alienation of the worker was brought about by his creating a product that existed outside of him, was independent or alien from him and belonged to a power other than him. In religion this same
dynamic plays out since man’s understanding of his self, his praise of his own talents, virtues and abilities are taken from him and applied to a higher diety. Feuerbach’s perfections are taken away from man and are then applied to a religion whose underlying truths do not stem from within a man but rather from an outside entity, which imposes religion upon him.
For Marx, the alienation of the worker ceases when a worker is able to take ownership of the product he creates. The same holds true with his understanding of religion. When mankind can stop appealing to an outside instruction and instead search his own consciousness, his religion will stop being something “alien” or “hostile” to him, but instead an intricate part of his being.
All thinkers are inevitably a product of their time. Karl Marx’s view on human nature I think provided insight into what was happening with workers and industrialization in which some elite were becoming very wealthy at the expense of workers virtually forfeiting their lives and dreams in order to fuel this system. In this sense I agree with Marx’s conclusions given the circumstances he was looking at, but due not believe his observations apply a gold standard to human nature.
Works Cited
Carver, Terrell. The Cambridge companion to Marx. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Marx, Karl. "Estranged Labour, Marx, 1844." Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm (accessed April 8, 2013).
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. On religion. New York: Schocken Books, 1964.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. On religion. New York: Schocken Books, 1964.
Reinhold Niebuhr, introduction to Marx and Engels: On Religion (New York: Schocken, 1964)
