Karl Marx
Nasir Khan, November 24, 2015
Note: I am reproducing one section of
Chapter 4 (pp. 146-153) from my book, Development of the Concept and
Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings (1995). My aim is to present
Marx’s ideas on religion in the context of his theory of alienation for a
wider audience. For complete abbreviations and references, see the book
(link provided at the end of this paper).
For Marx religion is primordially
an active form of ideological alienation, where inverted
world-consciousness and mystification become the essential elements of
the alienative process. Marx’s writings show that he hardly ever thought
it worthwhile to discuss theological formulations or religious dogmas.
The question of religious consciousness for Marx was a matter of little
interest. Karl Löwith writes: ‘By advancing towards the criticism of
man’s material conditions, Marx does not simply leave behind the
criticism of religion but rather assumes it on a new level; for though,
on the basis of the social-political world, religion is but a false
consciousness, the question has still to be answered: Why did this real
world at all develop an inadequate consciousness? If we assume with Feuerbach that the religious world is only a
self-projection of the human world, one has to ask: Why do the latter
project the first and create a religious superstructure? . . . It is not
enough to state with Feuerbach that religion is a creation of man; this
statement has to be qualified by the further insight that religion is
the consciousness of
that man who has not yet returned from his
self-alienation and found himself at home in his worldly conditions’
(Löwith 1949, 48, 49).
Marx’s approach to religion in his early thinking can be seen in his
letter of November 1842 to Arnold Ruge, where he says that ‘religion
should be criticised in the framework of criticism of political
conditions rather than that political conditions should be criticised in
the framework of religion … for religion in itself is without content,
it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition
of distorted reality, of which it is the
theory, it will
collapse of itself’ (CW1, 394-95). If religion is without any content,
then the whole problematic of religion can be reduced to a particular
mode of products and as such it is always a reflection of the material
historical developments. In
Anti-Dühring, Engels writes: ‘All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in
men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a
reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of
supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history, it was the forces of
nature which were so reflected and which in the course of further
evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among
the various peoples . . . But it is not long before, side by side with
the forces of nature, social forces begin to be active — forces which
confront man as equally alien and at first equally inexplicable,
dominating him with the same apparent natural necessity as the forces of
nature themselves’ (Engels 1978, 382-83). In this lucid exposition,
Engels points to the roots of religion in the early phase of historical
development of mankind. At this stage, the primitive man comes to the
realisation of his helplessness when he is face to face with the
gigantic and mighty forces of nature. His effort to appease these, leads
to primitive nature worship. But at a later stage under the
antagonistic class society, the exploited classes of society face to
face with the social oppression, and in their helplessness give birth to
and foster religion, the belief in a better life hereafter, the alleged
reward for suffering on earth (see Foreword to Marx & Engels 1972,
8).
In this connection, Kostas Axelos, the French Marxist of
Arguments
group, sums up the Marxian position: ‘Being the expression of impotence
and alienation, religion in turn, in its own modality, alienates man
from his life and from his essential forces. Far from being some kind of
index of the strength of human being, religion comes about only owing
to man’s weakness, his frustrations, his dissatisfactions, his
alienation. An abstraction from concrete conditions, religion is a
product of the alienation of man on the level of both practice and
theory. Mystery, far from implying a truth of its own, veils the truth
of reality and masks its own mystification’ (Axelos 1976, 160). Within
the sphere of developed productive forces under the institutionalized
private ownership, ‘religion begins to express the alienation of man in
relation to the products of his labour as the imaginary satisfaction of
unsatisfied real drives. The non-development of productive forces
determines the genesis of religion, and this later development
determines its subsequent “evolution” ‘ (ibid. 159-160).
At the time of writing the
Introduction, Marx’s conversion
to the standpoint of theoretical communism takes place. In the beginning
of the essay, he excellently summarises his views on religion. Marx is
referring to the philosophical critique of religion and the religious
alienation accomplished by the Young Hegelians from Strauss to Feuerbach
when he says: ‘For Germany, the criticism of religion is in the main
complete, and criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism’
(CW3, 175). There are possibly two main reasons for Marx’s viewing of
religious criticism as the premise of all criticism. First, religion
stood in the way of any political change in Germany by its adamant
support of the Prussian state. It meant that any change in the political
sphere was possible when the powerful support of religion to the
status quo
was removed. Secondly, religion per se represented the most extreme
form of alienation, and it was at this point that secularisation had to
start; religion was the pivotal point for the criticism of other forms
of alienation (see McLellan 1972, 185).
Marx succinctly summarises the accomplishment of Feuerbach’s religious philosophy:
‘The profane existence of error is discredited after its
heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [speech
for the altars and hearths] has been disproved. Man, who looked for a
superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing
there but the
reflection of himself, will no longer be disposed to find out but the
semblance
of himself, only an inhuman being, where he seeks and must seek his
true reality’ (CW3, 175). Religion, in Marx’s view, was ‘the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found
himself or has already lost himself again’ (CW3, 175). The intellectual
climate in which the young Marx lived was dominated by the Young
Hegelians’ atheistic critique of religion. In the beginning, he shared
their viewpoint, but ‘he became disenchanted with their war of words.
What eventually turned Marx against philosophical forms of atheism, as
he understood them, was their failure to grasp the fact that religion
has a justificatory function which resists philosophical critique’
(Myers 1981, 317).
A recurrent theme in Marx’s criticism is the transformational
characteristic of religion. The social structure in the first place
provides the basis for the inverted world of religion because it is in
itself an inverted world. In this, he differs from Feuerbach. Marx does
not simply reduce religious elements to any more fundamental elements:
‘The basis of irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man . . . But man is no abstract being encamped outside the world. Man is
the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an
inverted world-consciousness, because they are an
inverted world’ (CW3, 175).
Marx in his evaluation of religion uses a series of illuminating
metaphors to show the place of religion in an inverted world: ‘Religion
is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic
point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn compliment, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the
fantastic realisation of the
human essence
because the human essence has no true reality’ (CW3, 175). Religion, on
the one hand, expresses the real social distress, and on the other, it
seeks to justify the social oppression. ‘The struggle against religion
is therefore indirectly a fight against
the world of which religion is the spiritual
aroma.
Religious distress is at the same time the
expression of real distress and also the
protest
against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless
conditions. It is the
opium of the people’ (CW3, 175).
Presumably, Marx thought that taking drugs like opium helped to bring
about a condition of illusions and hallucinations; it also proved as a
palliative, a consolatory refuge from the heartlessness and hardships of
the real world. Religion for Marx is a medium of social illusions. An
alienated and alienating human existence calls for these illusions. The
need for these illusions is not illusory; it is real. Marx in his much
later work,
Capital, describes religious world as ‘a reflex of the real world’ (Marx 1977, 83).
Marx’s description of religion in the
Introduction has
sometimes been seen to contain a positive evaluation of religion.
However, this view can be attributed to a perfunctory understanding of
Marx’s ideas. McLellan in his book,
Marxism and Religion,
rightly says that if it was so, then it was an extremely backhanded
compliment: ‘Religion may well represent humanity’s feeble aspirations
under adverse circumstances, but the whole tenor of the passage is that
religion is metaphysically and sociologically misguided and that its
disappearance is the pre-condition for any radical amelioration of
social conditions’ (McLellan 1987, 13).
The way to overcome religious consciousness is therefore through the
changing of the conditions, which provide a material base to inverted
consciousness in society. ‘A strictly materialistic critique of religion
consists neither in pure and simple rejection (Bauer) nor in mere
humanisation (Feuerbach) but in the positive postulate to create
conditions which deprive religion of all its source and motivation. The
practical criticism of the existing society can alone supersede
religious criticism’ (Löwith 1949, 49). Religious persecution and
coercion as a political tool only serve to strengthen the chains of
religion. The critique of religion, accordingly, addresses itself to the
issues in the world that produce and keep religion.
The editors of
Marx and Engels: On Religion point out that
‘Marx and Engels most resolutely denounced the attempts of the
anarchists and Blanquists, Dühring and others to use coercive methods
against religion. . . . They proved that the prohibition and persecution
of religion can only intensify religious feeling. On the other hand,
Marxism, contrary to bourgeois atheism with its abstract ideological
propaganda and its narrow culturalism, shows that religion cannot be
eliminated until the social and political conditions which foster it are
abolished’ (Marx & Engels 1972, 9). The illusory consolation of
religion cannot be remedied by the removal of religion: ‘To abolish
religion as the
illusory happiness of the people is to demand their
real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the
demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore
in embryo the criticism of vale of tears, the
halo of which is religion’ (CW3, 176).
Marx in the
Introduction makes it abundantly clear that the
criticism of religion is not a goal in itself. The criticism of religion
is only a premise for every other kind of criticism; it is not more
than that. The real aim in the exposure of religion is not that it tears
up the imaginary flowers camouflaging the alienated life of the people,
but rather that the people ‘shake off the chain and pluck the living
flower’ (CW3, 176). It is essential, therefore, that the criticism of
religion becomes a criticism of politics: ‘The
task of history, therefore, once the
world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the
truth of this world. The immediate
task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the
holy form
of human self-alienation has been unmasked, is to unmask
self-alienation in its unholy forms. Thus, the criticism of heaven turns
into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the
criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of
politics’ (CW3, 176).
In these formulations, Marx went beyond the Young Hegelians like D.F.
Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, and Feuerbach, who criticised
everything by making everything a matter of religious representation.
‘The total domination,’ writes Axelos, ‘was presupposed, and religious
concepts dominated all realities and all ideas; so that, after first
interpreting everything in a religious and theological way, these
critical critics would attack that very domination as a usurpation of
the true and natural life of man. They wanted to free man from their
religious bonds. And yet, since they are the ones who viewed everything
through religion, their negation of what held man in chains remained
ideologically critical, abstract, theological in an anti-theological
form, and simply long-winded’ (Axelos 1976, 161).
Marx’s critique of religion, on the other hand, focuses on the world
from which it takes shape, and it is this malaise of alienation, which
needs to be extirpated. He gives a materialist explanation to the
religious consciousness. ‘Marx undertakes a critique of reality as it is
and of the ideology that corresponds to it, a critique that would end
by compelling the practical and revolutionary transformation of
everything in existence. The battle is engaged not in the name of
“philosophic truth” but in order to supersede alienation on a practical
level and free both productive forces and men’ (
ibid. 161).
Marx, in his early theory of alienation, views religion as a fantasy of the alienated man.
‘Religion rests on a want, a defect, a limitation. Its truth resides
in practice, though religion itself, as religion, possesses no practice,
just as it does not have a history of its own. Since practice, of which
religion is always the sublimation, did not contain real truth,
religion has been only the alienated expression of a real alienation
and, of course, has contributed to the continuance of that alienation.
Marx does not recognise any formative and basic role for religion . . .
There is not even any question of the “divine” or the “sacred”; these
are but products of the alienation of religious imagination, which is
itself a by-product of alienated material production’ (
ibid.
165). In Marx’s estimation, religion being a phenomenon of secondary
importance merited no independent criticism. In his later works, the
element of class ideology becomes his major concern.
Some writers have characterised Marxism as a religion, and have also
questioned Marx’s atheism. Robert Tucker, for instance, writes: ‘The
religious essence of Marxism is superficially obscured by Marx’s
rejection of the traditional religions. This took the form of a
repudiation of “religion” as such and espousal of “atheism”. Marx’s
atheism, however, meant only a negation of the trans-mundane God of
traditional Western religion. It did not mean the denial of a supreme
being . . . Thus his atheism was a positive religious proposition. It
rules out considerations of Marxism as a religious system of thought
only if, with Marx, we equate the traditional religions with religion as
such’ (Tucker 1972, 22; see also Reding 1961, 160). According to this
approach, Marxism is to be analysed as a religious system within the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, and as such it can be assimilated in
theology. Eberhard Jüngel in his book
God as the Mystery of the World
advocates this: ‘The Marxist critique of religion could much more
easily be accepted by theology than that of Feuerbach, if the latter
were not presupposed by the former. Certainly one can integrate
critically the specific interest of Marx’s critique of religion into
theology — and in some ways it must be done. But that is the current
fashion anyway, so that there is scarcely too little being done along
these lines theologically’ (Jüngel 1983, 341, footnote 43).
The positions taken by Tucker and Jüngel concerning Marx’s atheism in
fact confuse the issue. Our point of departure in this matter is that
Marx viewed religion, without any reservations, as a medium of social
illusions, and that all the religious belief claims were false. Marx was
a thoroughgoing atheist. In his writings from the earliest to the
latest, there is no indication, explicit or implicit, admitting the
existence of God. Marx absolutely rejects any idea of a transcendent God
or a personal God (i.e. God in the human form); therefore, any
religious belief claims like God becoming a human being or a human being
becoming God, etc. are false and nonsensical linguistic aberrations and
they are nothing more than that. Marx’s atheism cannot be reconciled
with religious and theological presuppositions. The loud exclamations
about God from the authoritarian pulpits cannot bring into being which
is a
non-being. Turner rightly suggests: ‘It simply will not do, as some Christian apologists maintain, that
Marx was only a relative atheist, that he rejected only the God espoused
by the Christians of his day, that this God (primarily the God of the
nineteenth-century orthodox Lutheran establishments) is not the God of
contemporary Christianity, or that as others suggest, his hostility to
theism may have no purchase on that contemporary Christianity. Marx
rejected not only particular forms of theism but also any reference
whatever to a transcendent reality’ (Turner 1991, 322; see also
Lobkowicz 1967, 303-35).
According to Marx, the history of the world is the creation of man
through his labour, which is explicable solely with reference to man
without the mediation of a divine being. In the
EPM, for instance, Marx writes: ‘But since for the socialist man the
entire so-called history of the world
is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but
the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable
proof of his
birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the
real existence
of man and nature — since man has become for man as the being of
nature, and nature for man as the being of man has become practical,
sensuous, perceptible — the question about an
alien being,
about a being above nature and man — a question which implies the
admission of the unreality of nature and of man — has become impossible
in practice’ (
EPM 100). This pronouncement leaves little room
for any other interpretation of Marx except that there is no room for
God in this world or anywhere else outside it.
Marx’s discussion of religion in the
Introduction, shows that he was well acquainted with the Western religions and their various traditions. In
OJQ and the
Introduction,
Marx, no doubt, has the contemporary dogmatic Lutheranism in Germany in
his view, but he writes about religion in general and therein his
rejection of it is absolute. For him atheism, as a negation of God was
inseparable from humanism which postulates the existence of man through
this negation.
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Abbreviations used:
Introduction ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’
OJQ ‘On the Jewish Question’
EPM Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
CW 3 Marx/Engels, Collected Works, Volume 3, Moscow, 1975
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Dr. Nasir Khan. Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings March 1843 to August 1844 (1995)
