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Atheism For Lent
Week 3: Marx
March 4 – 8
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Atheism For Lent
Week 2: Freud
The Marks of Karl
Best known for his infamous Manifesto or inadvertently prescribing opium for everyone
(or for having a fantastic face full of hair, rivaled only by his co-conspirator Friedrich
Engels), Karl Marx is a name often (and rightly) associated with communism. However,
before he was a socialist, he was an atheist. His later work gave little explicit
commentary on religion, largely because the roots of the ills of his society were
economic and not religious. Religion, according to Marx, was merely a symptom to
those ills, so to treat it would be to act as one removed from the real problem.
For Marx, religion was an enslaver. Servility and submission to authority were the poles
of his apathy for religion. But even more than religion as ideology, it was the nineteenthcentury church that pushed him over the edge. The church of Marx’s day was kind in its
steely way, but it was paternalistic in its authoritarianism. The overriding emotion of the
churchgoers of his day was fear of God, guilt for sins, and a servile submission to rules,
as well as individualism in piety. This led to fear becoming cowardice, guilt becoming
abasement, obedience becoming servility, and individualism becoming egotism.
Humanity is free and self-determined and takes as its guide reason alone. It came down
to this: freedom versus servility and reason versus authority. These were the shapers of
Marx’s atheism. He was not out to destroy God, but to establish free people.
Marx was highly influenced by Feuerbach who said that religion was a projection and an
abstraction. Primitive humans projected their fears onto a personified sun or sea or
mountain and this became God. Now we project love, power, and all our best traits onto
an imagined God. We have given away all our best attributes to an imagined God,
thereby alienating ourselves from our true worth.
If atheism was an abstraction, communism was not; it was a praxis–a plan of action.
The philanthropy of the former was abstract (unreal) because it was not a praxis; the
philanthropy of the latter was real because it was an orientation to action. Atheism was
merely the reality factor in one’s assumptions.
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How have you experienced religion as “an enslaver”?
How would you compare “the church of Marx’s day” to the church of our day?
Marx was not out to destroy God but to establish free people. In what ways did
he fail and/or succeed in this task? What work is still left to be done?
Atheism For Lent
Week 2: Freud
Religion as Social Control
Class antagonism is created by the surplus exploited from the proletariat (working class)
by the bourgeoisie (upper) class. The antagonism is dealt with through a variety of
distractions sanctioned by the bourgeoisie, and religion is one such distraction, a form of
social control. Rather than being explicitly hostile toward religion as such, Marx is
concerned that religion provides an escape, which lulls the proletariat into further
submission, bypassing any felt need to challenge the systems that oppress a society.
Merold Westphal, in his book Suspicion and Faith, writes “Even if there is a God, or
better, especially if there is a God like the one described in the Bible, when religion
functions as Marx describes, killing the pains of injustice rather than challenging its right
to exists, it deserves the diatribes he directs against it.”
(Embedded video: http://youtu.be/UvtJja2ihYQ)
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Where do you see a surplus exploited from the proletariat by the bourgeoisie
class today?
In what ways do you see religion as a form of contemporary social control?
Atheism For Lent
Week 2: Freud
So Much for the Social Principles of Christianity
The social principles of Christianity justified the slavery of Antiquity, glorified the
serfdom of the Middle Ages and equally know, when necessary, how to defend
the oppression of the proletariat, although they make a pitiful face over it.
The social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling and an
oppressed class, and all they have for the latter is the pious wish the former will
be charitable.
The social principles of Christianity transfer the consistorial councillors'
adjustment of all infamies to heaven and thus justify the further existence of
those infamies on earth.
The social principles of Christianity declare all vile acts of the oppressors against
the oppressed to be either the just punishment of original sin and other sins or
trials that the Lord in his infinite wisdom imposes on those redeemed.
The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement,
submission, dejection, in a word all the qualities of the canaille [rabble]; and the
proletarian, not wishing to be treated as canaille, needs its courage, its selffeeling, its pride and its sense of independence more than its bread.
The social principles of Christianity are sneakish and the proletariat is
revolutionary.
So much for the social principles of Christianity.
(Marx and Engels, On Religion, 83-4)
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In what ways have you seen “the social principles of Christianity” as described by
Marx and Engels enacted in our world today?
What would you add to Marx and Engels’ list of “the social principles of
Christianity”?
Atheism For Lent
Week 2: Freud
Surplus Exploitation
“Surplus exploitation” is Marx’s term for the value created by the worker that is not
accounted for in the worker’s wages but instead accumulated by the capitalist.
Capitalism requires a continuous expansion of surplus (regardless of limits on
resources) accumulated by a select few, resulting in wealth disparities and class
antagonism.
An example of this is the empire of Rupert Murdoch who owns the companies that
produce Fox News as well as shows such as “Family Guy,” a cartoon that makes fun of
the same type of narrow-mindedness seen in pundits of the aforementioned network.
Far from being a contradiction, this is the capitalist ethic at its purest: the creation of
profits is ultimately the only value a capitalist system is capable of caring about and
exploiting. Marx believes everything in society (even religion) can be analyzed
according to how it relates to class antagonisms created by exploitation.
Marx’s famous equation of religion as an opium of the masses does not mean that he is
altogether antagonistic toward religion. Marx himself used opium, a common medicine
in mid-19th century Europe. For Marx, religion and opium are painkillers that are not only
addictive but even worse, since they treat symptoms rather than diseases. Religion is
both an expression of and protest against real suffering, a metaphysical and ideological
surplus exploitation.
Marx believes the need for religion will dissipate as class antagonisms caused by the
capitalist condition (surplus exploitation) is properly dealt with. Later, Marx’s partner
Engels came to recognize the end of capitalism in revolution would not necessarily kill
all forms of religion–he believed there was in Christianity a revolutionary potential that
could persist and continue to aid political liberation.
Marx is formed by Hegel’s concept of the dialectic. A particular state of things cannot
feel the need to change until it is faced with a contrasting state. The proper dialectical
solution does not simply synthesize the two contrasting states; instead, the dialectical
solution incorporates the experience of the internal antagonisms of the current state of
being and sublates into a higher mode of being. This is important to understand Marx’s
dialectical materialism. For a society to move forward (sublate) into a more liberated
political order, the antagonism of the class struggle must be felt clearly.
Christianity can, at its worst, bypass this antagonism by mitigating the proletariat’s
frustration with their impoverished existence. At its best, Christianity can provide a
narrative that 1) embraces material reality in the incarnation and, 2) after the death of
God, leaves only the Holy Spirit as the remnant among a community that desires to
bring liberation. For as Marx writes at the end of his Thesis on Feuerbach, "The
philosophers [and theologians] have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the
point is to change it."
Atheism For Lent
Week 2: Freud
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In what ways does contemporary religion fuel and serve as “surplus
exploitation”?
In your own words, what is the revolutionary potential that could persist and
continue to aid political liberation?
How can Christianity move beyond interpreting the world and potentially change
the world?
Atheism For Lent
Week 2: Freud
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Excerpts from the Introduction
"Man has found in the imaginary reality of heaven where he looked for a superman only
the reflection of his own self."
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: man makes religion, religion does not
make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-awareness of man who
either has not yet attained to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no
abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society.
This state, this society, produces religion's inverted attitude toward the world because
they are an inverted world themselves….It is the imaginary realization of the human
essence, because the human essence possesses no true reality. Thus, the struggle
against religion is indirectly the struggle against the world whose spiritual aroma is
religion."
"Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and protest
against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a
heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people."
"Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chains not so that man may bear
chains without any imagination or comfort, but so that he may throw away the chains
and pluck the living flowers."
(Read the full introduction and the complete work online.)
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“Man makes religion, religion does not make man.” Do you agree or disagree?
Why or why not?
Other than opium, what else does religion serve as for the people? Why?
(Religion is _______ of the people.)
What are the “imaginary flowers” that cover our chains today? What would it
mean to “throw away the chains and pluck the living flowers”?