Andrew M. McKinnon^1
Opium as Dialectics of Religion: Metaphor,
Expression and Protest
This is the premise of a Marxian analysis of religion:
“Religion...is the opium of the people”. But what
does it mean to equate religion with opium? For most
twenty-first century readers, opium means some-
thing quite simple and obvious, and the comparison
between the two terms seems perfectly literal. Opium
is a drug that kills pain, distorts reality, and an
artificial source of solace to which some poor souls
can become addicted; so also religion.
Friedrich Nietzsche argues that the ‘true’ or literal
meaning of a word is one “to which one has become
accustomed due to frequent use...a metaphor...
whose metaphorical nature has been forgotten”
(1995:72). Through the “interminable repetition” of
the phrase in Marxian analyses of religion (O’Toole
1984:68), “opium of the people” has lost its metaphor-
ical sense. Even when readers of “Towards a Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” en-
counter the text as a dialectical analysis of religion,
their understanding is governed – and loses its dialec-
tical force – by a literal and presentist reading of this
central metaphor.(^1) I am grateful for the responses to the first published version of this paper, and
for those who have continued to push my thinking on the questions and challenges
posed by Marx on religion. In particular, thanks to Y. Michal Bodemann, Roger O’Toole,
William Clare Roberts, Thomas Kemple and Warren Goldstein.