Can anyone explain what this quote means ? Does anyone have any good links explaing t

[tradeunionsupporter]

Can anyone explain what this quote means ? Does anyone have any good links explaing this quote ?

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. Karl Marx (http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Karl_Marx/), Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
German economist & Communist political philosopher (1818 - 1883)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/31765.html

[Revolution starts with U]

It provides hope... yet it ultimately tends to distract one from the larger problems in their life... that's how I take it.

[ComradeMan]

The "opiate of the people" is generally taken to mean an anaesthetic against the pain caused by the world, i.e. the suffering of the people.

[PhoenixAsh]

As above..

When people have a hard life, many problems and must overcome harship and find they have difficulty to overcome them they turn to mysticism and religion to find meaning and comfort.

Marx is saying that this is not a solution but a band-aid...an escape. It makes the people blind for the root causes of why people suffer these problems and does nothing to tackle these root causes.

He says that in fact it makes them blind for these root causes since turning to religion gives meaning to the suffering and people thus accept the suffering as an unavoidable reality which they just have to accept. Religion thus in actuality, according to Marx, perpetuats the causes of the suffering.


He uses the term opiate because people often turn to drugs to escape or find relive from the real world...and the problems ans stress it gives them. They do not take away the reason for the problems or the stress. Instead the combat the symptoms. The causes stilll exist....and continue.


As an extention of this you can say that the organisation behind religion (such as the Church) are institutionalised within the system and serve to further the system by offering a band aid for the suffering it causes...or...the organisation serves to offer an explanation as to why the current system is unavoidable and must be accepted as the only truth....instead of pointing to the causes of the suffering and formulate a real solution that takes away the cause.

[Dave B]

To understand it properly you have to understand the Fuerbachian position that Marx adopted in 1844.


That started off as a result of a debate of what Christianity was and where it came from, as a materialist perspective.


It started off with David Strauss and his "Life of Jesus" etc, that had the Christians spitting blood.

But it got worse for them.


Feuerbach moved on with the idea a bit; and did a ‘psychoanalytical’ or psychological analysis of Christianity or much more importantly, its essence, in his book the ‘Essence of Christianity’.

Now this is the point that is very hard for modern communists grasp as few of them have really studied it.


The essence of Christianity and for that matter ‘Early Christianity’ was not all the crap that we normally associate with it.

The essence was in fact about all the lovey dovey stuff about caring and looking after each other, that is written into the gospel stuff and non Pauline new testament.

Not only that it is in fact anti authoritarian, anti rich and anti organised religion; against the hypocrisy of a self serving priesthood deceiving the poor etc etc.


So adopting that viewpoint, on the origin of Christianity and ‘Early Christianity’, and to some extent its continuing appeal on that basis; the question was ‘what was the material basis of that?’.





Feuerbach considered that the human essence was to be communists and it was a kind of instinct and fundamental desire.


When frustrated as, it was in the Roman empire, that desire re-expressed itself psychologically in an escapist and fantasy form ie Christianity, as a kind of outlet for instinctive communist feelings.


The point being, according to the idea, that communism was a human essence or instinct and the essence of Christianity was ‘evidence’ for it, albeit an abstraction of it.

Thus;

To Ludwig Feuerbach In Bruckberg Paris, August 11 1844





but I am glad to have an opportunity of assuring you of the great respect and — if I may use the word — love, which I feel for you. Your [I]Philosophie der Zukunft, and your Wesen des Glaubens, in spite of their small size, are certainly of greater weight than the whole of contemporary German literature put together.

In these writings you have provided — I don't know whether intentionally — a philosophical basis for socialism and the Communists have immediately understood them in this way. The unity of man with man, which is based on the real differences between men, the concept of the human species brought down from the heaven of abstraction to the real earth, what is this but the concept of society!

Two translations of your Wesen des Christenthums (http://www.revleft.com/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/essence/index.htm), one in English and one in French, are in preparation and almost ready for printing. The first will be published in Manchester (Engels has been supervising it) and the second in Paris (the Frenchman Dr. Guerrier and the German Communist Ewerbeck have translated it with the help of a French literary expert).



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_08_11.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/letters/44_08_11.htm)


And that communism, like Christianity, was the expression an instinctual urge to return to a natural state; communism.


Communism = Social instinct

(This was before ideas about primitive communism as a natural instinctual condition and before Darwinist evolutionary theories had been fully formed.)

and in another 1844 expression of that idea;

Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Third Manuscript Private Property and Labor



3) Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement, and hence the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man; it is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social – i.e., human – being, a restoration which has become conscious and which takes place within the entire wealth of previous periods of development.


This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/3rd.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/3rd.htm)



After 1845 and Stirner’s ‘Ego and his Own’ they abandoned the whole thing and Feuerbach.


The idea that co-operative (communist) behaviour was or could be instinctive and that there could be a materialist or scientific basis to it was introduced by Darwin, not exactly a communist.


Darwin, C. R. 1871. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray. Volume 1. 1st edition




The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts,5 would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.

For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. The services may be of a definite and evidently instinctive nature; or there may be only a wish and readiness, as with most of the higher social animals, to aid their fellows in certain general ways.

But these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association. Secondly, as soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction which invariably results, as we shall hereafter see, from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise, as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature, nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression.


It is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are in their nature of short duration; and after being satisfied are not readily or vividly recalled. Thirdly, after the power of language had been acquired and the wishes of the members of the same community could be distinctly expressed, the common opinion how each member ought to act for the public good, would naturally become to a large extent the guide to action.

But the social instincts would still give the impulse to act for the good of the community, this impulse being strengthened, directed, and sometimes even deflected by public opinion, the power of which rests, as we shall presently see, on instinctive sympathy. Lastly, habit in the individual would ultimately play a very important part in guiding the conduct of each member; for the social instincts and impulses, like all other instincts, would be greatly strengthened by habit, as would obedience to the wishes and judgment of the community. These several subordinate propositions must now be discussed; and some of them at considerable length.

5 Sir B. Brodie, after observing that man is a social animal ('Psychological Enquiries,' 1854, p. 192), asks the pregnant question, "ought not this to settle the disputed question as to the existence of a moral sense?" Similar ideas have probably occurred to many persons, as they did long ago to Marcus Aurelius. Mr. J. S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, 'Utilitarianism,' (1864, p. 46), of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality;" but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural."

It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? Mr. Bain (see, for instance, 'The Emotions and the Will,' 1865, p. 481) and others believe that the moral sense is acquired by each individual during his lifetime. On the general theory of evolution this is at least extremely improbable.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/contentblock?hitpage=1&viewtype=text&basepage=1&itemID=F937 (http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/contentblock?hitpage=1&viewtype=text&basepage=1&itemID=F937)

The social instinct idea that was ‘discovered’ by Feuerbach through an analysis of the essence or origination of Christianity got a new lease of life.




6) On the other hand I cannot agree with you that the war of every man against every man was the first phase of human development. In my opinion the social instinct was one of the most essential levers in the development of man from the ape. The first men must have lived gregariously and so far back as we can see we find that this was the case.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_11_12.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/letters/75_11_12.htm)


As did the idea that Early Christianity was the an emotional and irrational expression of communist feelings;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm)



Followed up by Kautsky.

Needless to say the modern ‘Christians’ were just as outraged by the idea then as the even more modern Marxists are now; my SPGB friends hate it.


So in summary; in 1844, the Christianity as felt by the oppressed was the expression or sigh for the desire for a more caring and sharing society etc etc

.

[Decolonize The Left]

Can anyone explain what this quote means ? Does anyone have any good links explaing this quote ?

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. Karl Marx (http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Karl_Marx/), Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
German economist & Communist political philosopher (1818 - 1883)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/31765.html

In a nutshell, Christianity offers a "life after death" for the "soul" where (if you get to heaven) all things are great and perfect. This is an ideal. It is meant to contrast with reality, namely, the hard life most people are confronted with.

So Christianity offers an escape from reality in the afterworld - a redemption in the imaginary world of heaven. Life a drug which numbs you to what's happening, Christianity numbs you to the need of the present moment in favor of the afterlife.

This is why Marx eloquently called it "the opium of the people."
It is the "sigh of the oppressed creature" because unlike a strong creature it does not attempt to make direct change, but to consent to the present in favor of the future.
It is the "heart of the heartless world" because the world has no heart, so one is invented to make sense of it - to give it meaning.
Likewise it is the "spirit of the spiritless situation" for the same reason.

- August