[Sleeping in EQ]

Let me try to justify this thread's presence in the religious studies forum.

Have you, or your family or friends, ever run into that person who thinks that Marx's quip that religion "is the opiate of the people" settles everything?

Maybe you were a sophmore in college and somebody dropped that on you at a party?

Often the person spouting this line has completed a sociology class or two and knows just enough to be dangerous. Other times he wears a beret and spends too much time hanging out at the indy theater.

Fortunately, there are some simple arguments that usually convince Mr. Marx to cool his jets:

1. Just say two words: Max Weber. It's better if you take the time to read Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but Weber's main point is this: If Marx is right and religion is just another institution in the economic superstructure that dehumanizes and supports the status quo, a set of ideas that flow from economic conditions, why is it that 16th century protestantism actually preceded 19th century capitalism? Weber makes strong arguments that institutional religions can create new economic realities. Don't let Mr. Marx softplay this--Weber is a heavyweight thinker and can't just be dismissed. Moreover, Weber's historical narrative fits religion much better than Marx's does.

2. The quote as commonly referenced is a bit out of context. Marx was reacting against mid-19th century protestantism (and especially Hegel's valorization of such), and Marx's comment cannot explain religions that seek to challenge the status quo, or who have no notion of a happy afterlife. Here's the fuller quote:

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and 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 a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."

Think of a shoulder with a bullet in his chest. For Marx, religion is like the opium that will make him feel better, but it's doing nothing to get the bullet out. For Marx religion is misplaced compassion. It is just one more thing that keeps the soldier from being motivated to remove the bullet.

3. For Marx, the content of religion--theology, ritual, particular beliefs and so on--is irrelevant. What is relevant is how religion functions in society (to perpetuate economic relations and class consciousness). If Mr. Marx is trying to skewer someone about a particular belief, he's caring about something that Marx's thinking purposefully ignores. In other words, he's either feigning or entertaining an ideology that Marx would say is also part of the superstructure.

4. There are problems with Marx's theories of value and surplus value that undermine his economic determinism (it isn't relativism, TB), and thus call into question his base(economy)-superstructure(ideology) formulation. In this way they indict the positing of religion within such a framework. To be brief, Marx was mistaken in thinking that human labor would be more profitable than machine labor and that the connection between labor and value was more important than the subjective judgment of purchasers.

For all of that, Marx is right that religion and economics sometimes wash each other's hands. His indictment of the way 19th century protestantism smoothed the excesses of industrial capitalism does have merit. But don't fall for the "opium" line as some kind of comprehensive and air-tight explanation.