Marx’s actual words regarding religion deserve reflection. My best translation of those words is as follows: “Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.”
Secondly, can you be a good Marxist and believe in God?
Could you be a good Marxist and believe in God? No. Materialism and atheism are non-negotiable in Marxism.
Regarding this, what are some criticisms of Karl Marx’s view of religion?
According to Marx, religion is one of those social institutions which are dependent upon the material and economic realities in a given society. It has no independent history but is instead the creature of productive forces. As Marx wrote, “The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.”
What did Marx say about God?
He believed that whilst belief in God is a kind of projection, the illusion itself stems from something that is quite proper to human faculties: he argued that religion is a kind of malfunction, the result of alienated labour.
What is neo Marxian approach?
Neo-Marxism (or Sexo-marxism) is a Marxist school of thought encompassing 20th-century approaches that amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism (in the case of Jean-Paul Sartre).
What was Karl Marx’s view on God?
As unstintingly irreligious as he was, Karl Marx was not an atheist. He was a staunch opponent of supernatural belief, yet neither did he embrace agnosticism as the position of claiming no answer to the question whether or not God exists.
What was Marx’s prediction about the future of religion?
If the social factors which produced these needs were removed by transforming the structure of society, then religion would become functionless and would wither away. Indeed, Marx and Engels believed this to be already happening.
Why did Marx oppose religion?
He thought that if the comfort blanket of religion was taken away, at last the workers would have to do something about their terrible condition. In Marx’s dream of a communist revolution, religion would be abolished, and the workers would be so happy being equal they simply wouldn’t need it anymore.