8 Theories of Religion - Marx

7/30/2019 8 Theories of Religion - Marx

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"EIGHT THEORIESOF RELIGION

SECOND EDmO_

" "Daniel L. RaIs


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4Religion as Alienation:Karl Marx .,.

Mao: ctiscov=d . .. the simple fact . that irumkind must firs' of all.. eat, drink, have sbeltu aud clothing, befaR> it can pursue politics.scienoe, art, religion.Friedrich Eogels. Speech at die Gravesieim orFreud .. . our ocher theuisIs. The views be held wen: clear aad - .pMm aswe shall sbortly see; they have also had bemaiilous inlIueoce in the mo


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122 Eigm Theories ofReUgwnand oracle. a man often obscure but also profound: Engels was the interPreterand communicator. always able to e:JCpre$8 ideas in ways that were clear. direct,and pem18&ive. Over the years, they visib:d fiIctIlries togethez; they shared resultsof their studies; they criticized eacI1 othels ideas; they joined in writing fortheir common cause; and they combined to support and advise Dew politicalparties. Together in 1848 they wrote the celebrated CoMmWlist Manifesto.Consequently. it is not really MaIX a1ooe, but MaIX and Enge\s jointly whoare the fathers ot "MarxIsm" as we \mow it today. Together they promotedtheir message of materialism, class stroggi., communism, and revolution ina way that neither could have managed as effectively on his own.Though onlinary people knew little aIiout them. the "revolutionary" ideasof MaIX and Engels were no secret to authorities: When, in 1848. revolutionsbegan to break out across Europe, Marx came under immediate snspicion.Arrested and expelled fro!D Belgiwn, he reIUIned to Germany to take part inthe revolution that was beginning there and was .again anested but had thegood-fortune to be acquilled of an cbarges in coUrt. In 1849 he)eft die Europeancontinent for London. Tbeze he chose-to live fOt the" rest of his l ife-ln exiJebut emphatically not in retiIemeot. Despite -griuding poverty and a family 00the edge of starvation, he worked tiIdessIy on fu!:ther studies in politics andeconomics. Returning regularly to a favorite chair in the reading room of theBritish Museum (where today a plaque maxks his plaoe). he wrote two workson French revolutionary politk:s, two more on political economy. and,geyersi _others on economic history and theory. Capital (1867) was of course the mostimportant of these studies. In it Marx -assembles a wealth of actuaJ data, subjects it to social analysis. and adds his acute insight into political and socialstructnres--


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126 Eighl Theories ofReligioncall God. In his system, this absolute" is a being that coostandy strives tobecome ever more aware, more conscious, of itself. It does so by pooring itselfinto material f01lD8 and ev .. s, just aa, let os say, the mind of an architectmight express itself in a beaptiful building. But because the actual never fullycaptures the ideal (aa every dissatisfied 8IclJilI:Ct knows), the materia1 form is,always inadequate, or, in Hegel's language, ali .... to spirit Try aa it may,materiai rea1ity never quite IIlCaSIlR5 up to the absohne So, each time an ev ..occurs in the materia1 world (Hegel called it a "thesis''), spirit generates anopposed event (an "antithesis"), which trieS'to COIIeCt it. 'The tension betweentheSe two 'is then resolved by ye t a third event (the "synthesis"), which bleodselements of both, ooIy to serve aa the new thesis for yet another sequence ofopposition,and resolution. Again, we shoald think of an an:hitect who designseach new building aa an improvement on earlier efforts and does so by alwaysCOIJ!bining the best elements of he previous two attempts. For Hegel, all that 'happens in the world arises in the fOlDl of this great alternating sequeo::e. whichhe calls the "dialectic"-the "give and take"-f spirit in nature and history.In the absolute alienates itself, uosatisfactorily, in one,materia1 'form; thenrosponds with another, and finally combines and smpasses them both with still ,another. In addition, Hegel thought,of this a1tcmation as happening DOl inlittle,ways but in very large social pattcms.1n his scheme, an entire culture,such as the civilization of classicalG t= or that of Renaissan.ce Europe, canserve as a great, single expresai.on of the a ! > s o l ~ thesis which, after aninterval ca1ls forth as its antithesis an opposing cultme. In time, these twothen merge into a third, richer and still higbeJ" form of civilization, ."hich canbe called the synthesis. Thus the entire world 1IIIfo1ds tbrough a gIeat andvaried process of ilmJ8ting _ aud aubCle inIrzw sbow for my WOIt. ADd finally, of- . _ _ from other indj .,Yidaol people because my pmmoIity.the IIIin&. . s f ' Dy \amo aboutme, DO looger engages _ .... justtrade the CJb.i!:cts...a. of as bas made.In _ mu1tipIe forms of aljemrim . . . find die tm e IIIioay of the humanayvtitioo And ooly wb


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130 Eiglrl1Moriu o/Religion.~ Base and Superstructure

For Mar.t, then, thecentral drama ofhisloly is the struggle of classes, a coofIictcontrolled from below by the bani realities of economic life. In a world ofprivate property; somo--usuaIIy the rich-own the means of production,. while otheis-overwhelmingly the poor-'-do nO!. But even so, economics isnot all of existence. What about the types of actiVity !hat form the other dimen-sions of our social life? What about politico and law? What about morality,the arts, literature, and various olhec intdlectuaI endeavors? And what about. religion? Whore do all of these lit in? .

Marx has much to say on each of these topics, and his starting point forall of them is to make a distinction between what he caIIs the "base" of society and its "superstructure." Through all ofhistoiloq>heIs. and moralists--bve .helped to control the poor simply by .preaching to !hem, by telling them what

Rdigion as MioratioII: /Carl Marx HIis right and what is wroog. The panicuIaI virtues !bey " " " " " " " depend. natuially, on the kind of society they live in, fot "the ideas of the mling class.>I e in every epoch the ruliog ideas ... In the Middle Ages. when fuming wasthe chief.means of production, all Lands were owned by bishops of the church(] by fendallords, who defmded their JlIOPCItYwiIh annies of vassals andscm SWOIIl to their savice.,should we be smprised, then, tiuIt the maral codeof the day stressed devotion 10 the cbun:b. aloug with wmri


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134 Eight Thu>riu ofReUgion

for a supennan in the fantastic reality of heaven . ... fOlDld nothing there butthe reftexion of himself." He then added: . ~ basis of i=Jigious criticismis: Man malus religion, religion docs not make man:m: . .Persqasjve as Feucrbach's ougumeDI8 were, Man: saw two places where theycould be made still stronger. First; if we ask why human beings refuse to talcecredit fot their own accomplisbmen1s. i f we ask why they insist on caJlingthemsClves miserable sinnerS and offer instead all praise and glory to God,Feuerbach really h8s no answer beyond an empty generality. He tends tosay, in effect, .that is just the way people ~ it is human nature to be .iilienated-unhappy with ouneIv . yet pleased with God. This will not do forMaIX. T hm is a real answer to the question of alieIiation, he insists, and itfairly leaps out at us the moment we look at IhiDgs from .a maleriiilist andeconomic ~ v e . .MaIX observes that there is a parallellietween religions and socioeconomicactivity. Both are marked by alienation. Religion takes qnalities--moralideal&-l>ut .of our naIUral human 1W> and .gives them, 11IlDJIIIlrally, to animaginaIy and alien being we canGod. o,pitalist eoo ...... ;. . take atI04IJa expession 'of our iWUral humaI!i!}'--our p.tOdoctive labor-DIIgb. ~ b i a : b and oda ioWJectmk UBISl be awabaed II> the fxt tbatthe ptapose of anaIyziDg the probkm al rdigion is _ just D> _ a DCW&Dbjcd ra.discassion; the purpose is to fiIJ:laa active S h I q y that will soI".-ethe problem. This emphasis 011 actiaIt. in aJIItraSt D> dIe.pm:ly _ eIicalCODCCillO of so many tbinkers in his day


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138 Eight Tliei>ri . ofReUgiortcollapse amid the great proletarian revolution of a ~ o r e c l i s ~ t furore. 'Nonetheless, the almost blindly enthusiastic approval Marxist theory enjoyedin past decsdes has been r e p ~ by an almost equally emphatic rejection inthe present.

Between these two oxt:reQ1es, Objectivity about either Marx or his view ofreligion is difficult to achieve.20 Pe:rbaps the best that one can do, at least althe start; is to lay aside the issue ,of praise 00: blame and try simply to be descriptive. In that regard, at least two eleu,>ents in Marx's theory th81 distingnisb itfrom olbers deserve our notice: (1) his stmtegy of unctional explanation, whichends in its own'distinctive form ofrerlnctiooism, ind (2) his stress on !he strong,ties that link religion to economics.1. Functional Explanation an d ReductionismAlthough he began writing _ than half a centnry before eiiher of them,Marx's geomaI approach to Ieliginn.is siimIar 'in farm to the functional""Planations we bave observed iu '-' reud and Dud:boim. What iDIaestshim is nol so much the conient of Ieligioua beIid&--nOt so mucb wbatpeople actually say is true aboul God, Heav ... the Bible, or any other sacredwriting or divine entity-aa the role these beliefs play in the social struggle.He agrees with Tylor and Frazer tIiat the main religious beliefs are, of .,.,."...absurd superstitions. Bnl be also agi-ees with Frend and Dwkbeim that westill have to explain why PeoPle hold to them. ~ them, he insists thatwe find the key to religioil Only when ,we discover what its fundioll is, onlywhen we discover what"its beliefs do for peopJe either socially or pSych0-logically or both. Marx's ,tresa on society pull,his view in one respect closerto Durkbeim than to Freud, foo: Frend', m p b ~ s j " as we saw, f3lIs mainly 011the individual rather than the group, 00 his view, the neurotic needs of !heindividnal personility &Ie the main canse of belief. Even so, the COOIrastis not a shall>'one because FIend ', theOy also bas social featnres, with theindividnal personality bc:ing shaped by the inlIUeuces of the family andcommwmy.At !he same time, Marx and Frend &Ie closer togeIIia-and far1ha fromDurlcheim-oo another side of the issue. Since, foo: ])nrkbeim, Ieligion is ina very real sense simply the wOlship ofsociety, he thinks it impossible toimagine human social life without some set of either Ieligious ritnals ornear equivalent. Marx and Freud, by contrast, believe no such thing. BoIhthink: religion expresses a false or:ed for iDdividual security, and they areperfecdy happy to predict the disappearmoe of zdigion once the couse of itsfantasies bas been detected and removed. Frend thinks people would be muchbetter off withont the neurotic illnsions of fsjlh, bot he seems to' teaIize many

Religion as AlimDzion.' Cm1 Men:will stili cling to them. Marx goes_. e tbinJcs pcople be beaeroff IUI1il they are withont them---that is, until =olntioo bas daDe away willtthe exploitatjoo and misery that bave created Ieligioo in the p l a c e .From this comparison. we can see that Marx's expJanatioo is DOt just functionalist but aggressively Ieductiooist as ~ The teodmcy of his tbintingtbrongboul is to describe religioo ,a1ways as an effect. an Cxpessipo. asympcom. of somedung more real aDd s.Jh$tmtiaJdw lies qrvL 1'''' iL. Eveni f be sometimes speaks of religious ideas as having some isedeI .a". ... ,. hispredcminant emphasis is always tIie other way. His SIr.IIegy is jcImtjca) 10that of Freud and Dmkheim in that beoea!h the ' surface of reIiiiioos belieisand ritnals, he is always seeking ou t the hidden cause of these things. whichis to be fouDd in something else. For Fn::u!I. that some


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142 Eighl Theoms ufReligion,quite apart from the paths of developljleIlt that may have been followed inothot societies.3. ' Marxist Political Tbeory: A ContradlctionA theory is ooiy as strong as its assumptions. Since Mantis! thinking redu=religion to economics, we cannot leave it wilbout examining, at least brielly,the geocral theOly of ecooomy 8IId society on wbich it rests. This is, to besure, no simple task. In both IXJII!IIII1DiSl8lld .II


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146 EighJ Theoriu ofReUgion8. Karl Marx, CapiJal. 3 vols . ed. Friedrich Eogels (New York: InteinaIional

Publish.,.. 1967), I: 645.9. Marx oodEDaols. 7'he GumDnldeoIo,y,Purs 1 and 3, ed. R. Pascal (New yorkJntemadOnai Pub1iabon, 1947), P. 39.

10, 'Tilt Clas.! Struggla In France (1850); 7'he ElghteenJh Brumalre uf LouisB,OIUlpat'k (1852); On 1M Civil War In France (1871).11. For the meaning of the term . . . . again. Carvec, Ma n Dictionory: under,"ideology," pp. 89-92. '

12. Karl Marx, "DocIonl1>issenalion." in McLeI1an, Early Texts, p. 13 : . . . , alsoMcLellan's CoInm' in KlJrI MtII'% (1973), p. 37.13. Tbese w..., Pre/lminory Thuu on '1M Reformalian uf Philosophy andPrincipia uf ilt Philosophy uf ilt FlIZIITe, bocb publiabod in 1843.14. Karl Marx, "ProfiIce," Econoniic and Philosophical M=cr ipu , in T. B. 'BOIIomote, ed., Karl Marx: Early Writings (New YOlk: McGraw-Hill BooIc~ y , 1964), p. 64.IS. Karl Marx, "Contiibution to the Critique of Hegel's PbjIosophy of Right~ . . in Ktul ' Ma n and Fri4driI:h Engels on Religion, introduced byReinhold Nicbahr (N ....York: Sch: 10" Boob, 1964), p. 41.16. Marx, "CritiqueofHepl's PhiIOiophy ofRighI."in NiObuhr, Ma n and Engels

on ReUgioll, p. 42.. '17. Karl Marx, "Ibosea on FeiJerbach." in NIebuhr, MtII'% and Engels on Religion,p. 72. " ,18. Karl Marx, "The O>mrmmjsm of the Pape< Rheinischu Beobachur," inNIebuhr, Mqrx and Engels on Religion, pp. 83-84. 'Marx, "Critique oflfe&el's PbiIosopby ofRighI."i n N"Jebuhr, Ma n and Engelson Religion, p. 42:20. One of the JD c ~ &,;

8 Theories of Religion - Marx

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