Religion is the Opium of the Masses

Marx's Views on Religion

Marx's idea of religion is somewhat ambiguous. At least the exponents of Marxist ideology have turned the table on him. That is why a clarification is to be sought. Sloganeering Marxists have repeatedly said that religion is the opium of the masses. The question is that had Marx wanted to mean what underlies in this short precept? Had he really wanted religion to be bypassed by the masses?

The truth lies elsewhere. The downtrodden people all over the world down the ages have been pained at the way they have been treated. There is every reason for them to have suffered the angst of existence. In clinical science, we have been offered to go for analgesia for the physical pains we suffer and this way we have found a true remedy for all sorts of our physical pains. With that view in mind Marx said that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature..."

What kind of sigh that is? That sigh arises out of the economic alienation they suffer due to capitalist mode of production. In the capitalist mode of production the mass of producers are totally alienated from their immediate produce as they do not have any possessive control over them and the appropriator class appropriate their labour of pain by political and economical manipulation. This kind of economic alienation is of psychological and spiritual sorts. But Marx's main thrust was on physical sufferings as caused by the economic exploitation. That exploitation leaves them physically wretched all through as they have to lead a life that is most inhuman and threadbare. This threadbare life pushes them back to the wall to wage a bitter struggle simply for mere existence.