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and yet he instilled in his son a
belief that religion is necessary for
morality. However, from a relatively
young age, Karl Marx criticized
the idea that a spiritual realm was
needed to maintain social order.
He later became convinced that
secularization (decline in the social
significance of religion) will liberate
people from mystical forms of social
oppression. He outlined many
of his ideas about religion in
“A Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1844).
Expanding upon the idea of
alienation, Marx argues that “man
makes religion, religion does not
make man.” People, he says, have
forgotten that they invented God,
who has come to have a life of his
own and now controls the people.
What people have created, they can
destroy. The revolutionary working
class, he believes, will realize that
the ideologies and institutions of
capitalist society, which enslave
them, are not natural or inevitable
but can be overthrown. Until then,
religion will remain as a symptom
of the disease caused by material
deprivation and human alienation,
which creates such pain for its
sufferers that they need the solace
provided by religion.
Like the French philosopher
Auguste Comte, for whom religious
belief is an infantile state of reason,
Marx believes in society progressing
scientifically toward secularism.
However, Marx is more critical of
religion as a reflection of society,
rather than as a set of beliefs.
His goal is to liberate the working
class from the oppression of
capitalism, and he argues that the
ideas of the ruling class are those
dominating society—and one of
the apparatuses transmitting
those ideas is the Church.The Church and the state
In 18th-century England, an
unknown wit described the Church
of England as a political party “at
prayer.” For Marx, any institutionthat serves capitalist interests,
including religion, has to be
contested, and ultimately done
away with. The replacement will
be a humanist society based on
socialism and communism.
According to Marx, religion
is “consolation and justification”
for the existing state and society.
Churches proclaim that the
authority of the ruling class is
ordained by supernatural authority,
thus the lowly position of the
workers is inevitable and
just. When a society is riven by
inequality, injustice is perpetuated
rather than eased. Marx declared:
“The struggle against religion is,
therefore, indirectly the struggle
against that world whose spiritual
aroma is religion.” This sentiment
was echoed in the 1960s by British
sociologist Bryan Wilson, who
claims that the role of the Church
is to socialize each new generation
into accepting their lot.
Marx aims to expose the
illusory nature of religion and reveal
it as an ideological tool of the ❯❯See also: Auguste Comte 22–25 ■ Karl Marx 28–31 ■ Friedrich Engels 66–67 ■ Sylvia Walby 96–99 ■
Max Weber 220–23 ■ Bryan Wilson 278–79 ■ Jürgen Habermas 286–87
THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
The wealth of the Catholic Church
has been criticized by many. For Marx,
religion serves capitalist interests
and is a tool used by wealthy elites to
control and oppress the working class.
Religion is used by those in
temporal charge to invest
themselves with authority.
Christopher Hitchens
British-US writer (1949 –2011)