Opium of the people: Encyclopedia II - Opium of the people - Explanation

Opium of the people - Explanation

This quote is very often taken out of context and misinterpreted. Marx is not saying that religion is a tool used by the bourgeoisie to keep the masses quiet and complacent (although this is what some of his Young Hegelian contemporaries thought.) Instead, Marx calls religion the "soul of the soulless conditions, the heart of the heartless world." It is an expression -- a manifestation, a mirror -- of a condition of suffering. But instead of focusing directly on the causes of suffering, religion -- like opium -- works on the imagination to generate illusory causes and illusory solutions to human suffering. The causes of suffering in Christianity are Original Sin and Devils. The solutions to human suffering is a Heaven in an after-life for believers.

For Marx, religion is something that the oppressed people cling to and delude themselves with simply because they have no idea of the real causes and solutions to their suffering. These causes and solutions are economic.

When Marx wrote this text, opium was a very popular medicine and recreational drug. Marx says that religion is a way the oppressed workers can convince themselves that their lives are worth living, though it is an illusion, a fantasy, like an opium dream.

From a wider perspective, anything which relocates the focus of attention from the real causes of and solutions to human suffering is metaphorically an "opiate." Marx, as a Young Hegelian, was rebelling against the religious orientation of German educational institutions. So, in a wider sense, educational institutions, in so far as they focus on religious and other irrelevancies, are also acting as opiates of the people.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Explanation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki