MARX
ON RELIGION
The
foundation of irreligious criticism is:Man makes religion, religion
does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and
self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or
has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being
squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state,
society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an
inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted
world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its
encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual
point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn
complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification.
It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human
essence has not acquired any true reality. 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. Religion is the sigh
of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the
soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The
abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the
demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their
illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a
condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is,
therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo.
Criticism
has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man
shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but
so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The
criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act,
and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions
and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his
own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around
man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
It
is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has
vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate
task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask
self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human
self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven
turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the
criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of
politics.