So was Marx a Deist?

[BornDeist]

"Marx states in the 1844 Manuscripts that he is not an atheist; for Marx, to positively assert that God does not exist is childish. “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. ... The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.” Likewise, political economy cannot be abolished other than by abolishing the world of which it is the 'aroma.'"

I'm still kinda confused on Marx's stance on religion.

[#FF0000]

It's pretty simple, I think. Religion's a man-made thing to deal with uncertainty and the need to explain the world as well as sort of a release valve for suffering. "The struggle against religion" is the struggle against the suffering for which people turn to religion for relief.

[Rafiq]

To marx the struggle against religion is pointless when there is no struggle against the social relations which require it. When Marx said religion does not make man, he means men do not act and behave the way they do because of religion, rather, religion exists because of their social being (their social relations).

Marx wasn't by any means a deist, he could be described as a post-theist, and therefore a post-atheist. To marx, the existence of a god is ridiculous, so much to the point where it is the religious who must affirm their identify and not those who do not believe. It is not that religion is insignificant or that it has nothing to do with class struggle, it's that it is a category of class struggle and not the other way around.

[Dave B]

In 1844 before the publication of Stirners Ego And His Own Karl was a Fuerbachian and had adopted the theoretical position and analysis of Christianity that Fuerbach, a kind of early communist, had laid out for instance in his ‘Essence of Christianity’.

Fuerbach took the position that human beings had an innate nature or human essence that was co-operative and thus humans were naturally predisposed to communism.



Fuerbach’s analysis of Christianity, or if you like original and early Christianity, led him conclude that it was also essentially communistic with its egalitarianism, rejection of hierarchy (eg humility) and notions of mutual support and communal sharing or ‘Love’ etc.

Which was also how early Christians interpreted eg the stuff in Acts on to each according to need etc.

An idea that persisted somewhat remarkably in fact right up to the end of of the 4th century. Eg Saint John, called Chrysostom (Golden Mouth);

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/ch09.htm

And according to Fuerbach, and thus Karl; early Christianity was an unconscious, irrational and spontaneous product and creation, or ‘aroma’ if you like, of the communist social instinct and human nature or human essence reacting ‘emotionally’ against the non (primitive) communist society it found itself in.

In psychoanalytical terms the communist or social instinct was ‘spontaneously’ ‘projecting’ itself or expressing itself in ‘religious’ terms.

Thus in a sense in the same ‘Freudian’ way as eating chocolate and going to the opera was a substitute for the instinct for sex or the expression of the frustrated desire for it; Christianity was a substitute for communism or the expression of the frustrated desire for that.

In fact I strongly believe in that sense that Fuerbach was the first theoretician of psychoanalysis with his idea of frustrated basic instinctive ‘drives’ manifesting themselves in strange ways.

Although I think that the idea that liking opera is a perversion of the sex drive is less plausible than Christianity being a perversion of the communistic social instinct.

Early Christianity had an albeit ‘positive’ programme ie what it was for etc.

Eg looking after each other in mutual support or ‘Love’ etc etc.

Which may also have ‘transcended’ into the metaphysical pie in the sky hereafter etc.


But it also had a reactive negative programme ie what it was against.


Which was about being against the rich, powerful and for that matter their lackeys and thus hypocritical organised religion eg as it was then the Pharisees and Sadducees etc.

Along with the shameless moral ‘workerism’; of the aggrandisement of the poor and oppressed etc.

Karl and Fuerbach thought that a return to communism in the new form and made possible advanced industrial production and abundance etc etc.

[‘Socially’ the same as primitive and natural communism.]


Would be a return to our natural ‘social instinct’ state of primitive communism in harmony with our human essence etc etc.

And that thus Christianity, as a neurotic form of communism, would disappear in the same way as opera and chocolate would in a sexually liberated society.

Or in other words;



(3) [I]Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous 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 strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

[Mather]

To marx the struggle against religion is pointless when there is no struggle against the social relations which require it. When Marx said religion does not make man, he means men do not act and behave the way they do because of religion, rather, religion exists because of their social being (their social relations).

Marx wasn't by any means a deist, he could be described as a post-theist, and therefore a post-atheist. To marx, the existence of a god is ridiculous, so much to the point where it is the religious who must affirm their identify and not those who do not believe. It is not that religion is insignificant or that it has nothing to do with class struggle, it's that it is a category of class struggle and not the other way around.

Good post.

This important point also illustrates the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the New Atheist movement and it's leading lights such as Richard Dawkins. It is kind of ironic that the New Atheists, who never stop going on about irrationality of religion and their own adherence to reason and materialism, attack religion on a purely idealistic and ahistorical basis. Then again they have straight jacketed themselves with the limitations that come with bourgeois Enlightenment thinking.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Ughhh, pretty sure he was a Taurus guys. Would it kill you to research anything? Fuck.

[tuwix]

"Marx states in the 1844 Manuscripts that he is not an atheist; for Marx, to positively assert that God does not exist is childish. “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. ... The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.” Likewise, political economy cannot be abolished other than by abolishing the world of which it is the 'aroma.'"

I'm still kinda confused on Marx's stance on religion.

I don't think there is point to be confused. Marx seems to think: God yes, religion no.

And it is my opinion too. :)