He criticized and changed the church
Socialism has always had a critical view of religion – if it is not even hostile to it. Karl Marx laid the foundation stone for this. But his view of religion was far more complex than thinking in black and white.
By Christoph Paul Hartmann | Bonn – 24.01.2021
The Leipzig University Church, the Garrison Church in Potsdam or the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow are just three examples of churches that were deliberately destroyed in states that call themselves “socialist” or “communist”. Belief seemed to have no place in the new system. This referred to the theorists: After all, Karl Marx already spoke of religion as the “opium of the people”.
But making Marx an indiscriminate enemy of religion falls short of the mark – just like calling him the intellectual wrecking ball of any church tower. Actually, he didn’t say much about religion. The only text in which he specifically devotes himself to the subject is “On the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” from 1844 – the keyword opium is also mentioned there. This text stands at the end of numerous coinages that Marx experienced personally and intellectually.
First, let’s take a look at Marx’s personal religious environment: The families of his two parents have already produced numerous rabbis, so Marx has a great Jewish legacy behind him. But the religious tradition of his family is interrupted: his father Heinrich works as a lawyer. Religion is not a problem as long as the local Trier is under French rule and the Civil Code grants extensive freedoms. But then after the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) the rulers change and the region becomes Prussian. Suddenly Heinrich Marx, as a Jew, can no longer work as a lawyer. He is therefore forced to convert and become evangelical. In order to enable Karl to attend higher schools (Jews were not allowed to attend grammar school), he too was baptized in 1824 at the age of six. Karl’s mother only becomes Protestant the following year. Even in childhood, Karl is religiously uprooted.
Influence of Feuerbach’s criticism of religion
As a student he then met with left supporters of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In these intellectual circles he encounters Ludwig Feuerbach’s criticism of religion. He assumes that everyone has certain abilities, but does not recognize them as such. Instead, it would be projected onto a higher being: If someone is kind or knowledgeable, this will result in mercy and omniscience. “The person who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he was looking for a superman, will no longer be inclined to find only the appearance of himself, only the monster, where he searches for his true reality and has to search, “summarizes Marx. Given this approach to religious criticism, he asks himself: Why do humans project their own abilities onto a god? In view of the urban proletariat living in poverty as a result of industrialization and rural exodus, he asks this question particularly with regard to the workers.
He provides an answer in the essay from 1844. For Marx, religion has two functions: On the one hand, it is a protest function, because it formulates an ideal image of the world – and thus creates a challenging contrast to reality. On the other hand, it has a consolation function because it can comfort people over the grievances in their lives with expected rewards in the kingdom of heaven.
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The situation of the workers was in the foreground for Marx.
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For Marx it is clear: religion contributes to the bond between the worker and the factory owner by always putting him off for eternal life and thus hindering the workers’ own liberation. For Marx, religion thus contributes to the support of the existing conditions, from which the clergy belonging to the authorities certainly benefit. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the mind of a heartless world as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Marx did not invent the opium metaphor, his distant relative Heinrich Heine wrote in a memorandum against Ludwig Börne in 1840 about the effect of religion as “spiritual opium”: “Heaven was invented for people to whom the earth no longer offers anything. ” Opium is on everyone’s lips at the time of Marx: In order to weaken China and gain access to its markets, the British are smuggling opium into the country and trying to make many people dependent on it – the conflict culminates in two opium wars, which China loses . In addition to its numbing effect, opium also stands for economic interests, violence and politics in the context of the times. It is precisely this political (and thus capitalist) dimension of religion that disturbs Marx. His close confidante Friedrich Engels can experience the consequences of this henchman function in his own environment, as he reports in the letters from his homeland, Wuppertal: “But the rich manufacturers have a broad conscience and letting a child more or less deteriorate is no good Pietist soul to hell, especially if she goes to church twice every Sunday. ” So religion could be an instrument of oppression for the poor and a means of self-soothing for the rich.
From Marx to Lenin
One more distinction is important here: Marx speaks of the “opium of the people” – people thus, to a certain extent, deceive themselves with their religion. Only with the clearly more violent Lenin does it become the “opium for the people”, so someone deliberately stuns another. A tightening is taking place here, which already led to closings under Lenin and then to numerous demolitions of churches in Russia (especially Moscow) under Stalin – states like the GDR follow suit later.
But Karl Marx “ticks” differently: throughout his life, he is concerned with freedom and self-determination. He does not want to forbid religion – he wants it to become superfluous, that it no longer has to develop an opium-like effect: “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the requirement of their real happiness. The requirement to give up the illusions about their condition , is the demand to give up a state that requires illusions. “
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The Bishop of Essen, Cardinal Franz Hengsbach, went to the workers
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