Joseph Pallattil
When speaking about religion, Marx is speaking not as a man of faith but rather as a secular humanist. According to Karl Marx, religion is like other social institutions in that it is dependent upon the material and economic realities in a given society. It has no independent history; instead, it is the creature of productive forces. As Marx wrote, “The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.” The world of religion is a reflection of a particular form of society. Religion is an inverted world, because it produces inverted world consciousness. In religious belief, man finds himself reflected in the fantastic reality of heaven. In Marx’s famous words, “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”.
Opium is for relief. This relief is mere momentary. When the working class is alienated, oppressed and exploited, they go for guidance from the religion. Then the religion would say them that suffering is the virtue and advise them to undergo all the exploitation with patience and hope. Listening this advice, the working class would continue to be in the same state as they have been. This process continues. The Religion continues to survive because of oppressive social conditions. When this oppressive and exploitative condition is destroyed, religion will become unnecessary.
Religion is an expression of man’s imperfect self-awareness. Religious belief could take no hold on the working class. Marx repeated his conviction that religious delusions have no function, but throw a veil over the irrationalities of the system of production. “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again”. Critique of religion reveals this human content of all speculation about the divine. The conviction of Marx that religion does not allow human beings to come into his own. He welcomed the critique of religion as an essential part of the liberation of human kind. It is not human nature in the abstract but human beings in society who express and loose themselves in religion. The fact that people need religion shows that something is wrong in society. Religion indicates misery and is a form of protest against it. “Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress”. “The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in whom man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken and despicable being”. In capsule, Marx concludes that one’s spiritual life can only be assumed in the light of his material lie.
