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Critical Sociology, Vol. 31, No. 1-2. (01 January 2005), pp. 15-38, doi:10.1163/1569163053084360 Key: citeulike:99360
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Marx's phrase `opium of the people' is one of the most frequently quoted lines he ever wrote; perhaps because of that, it has been just as frequently misunderstood. By returning to the various meanings of opium in the mid-19th century, I revisit Marx's analysis, offering a way of reading the metaphor that is more consistent with Marx's dialectical method. The paper provides a revised analysis of Marx's “Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction”, as well as suggestions about how this new more open-ended reading can contribute to Marxian analyses of religious beliefs and practices in late capitalism.
As Marx writes in
his “Theses on Feuerbach”: “Feuerbach resolves the religious essence
into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent
in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social
relations” (Marx 1977b:157).
Marx’s concern is to take the latest
developments of Hegelian philosophy, and turn them into praxis-oriented
critique of the social world, one rooted in the “categorical imperative to
overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken,
despicable being.”
The point of the text is not that “Man makes religion, religion does
not make man” – this was Feuerbach’s claim to fame – but rather to
overcome the situation in which human beings are enchained (Thesis
11, etc.). The philosophical point is but a premise or an “assumption”
(Voraussetzung) from which Marx proceeds. Philosophy, appropriated by
the proletariat, becomes praxis-oriented social-critique
These passages begin with an essentially dialectical logic. Religious suffering,
is both “expression of ” and “protest against”, both of which Marx highlights
by underlining. He further underlines their “simultaneity, when he
writes that they are expressed in einem and repeats another time und in
einem”; together they comprise a single moment, and an indivisible whole
(Rojo 1988:214).
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