Karl Marx on Religion

The famous phrase "Religion is the opium of the people" in its original context:
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve around himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself."
K. Marx and F. Engels. On Religion. Progress Publishers, 1957, p. 38.

[hasrulshocker]

Unfortunately, some leftists turned the teachings of Marx into something that should be consumed dogmatically. But still, I appreciate Marx with his criticism on capitalism and why we as workers should unite and grant to us of our emancipation from the shackles of neoliberalism and its hellish impact on economy.

[sullivandx]

He never defined what religion was to him. He said ''religion is the opium of the people'' but never gave a concept about what religion was to him. Marx himself wasn't a random person, him and his colleagues were aristocrats not random people to get ''opiumed'' by religion. So they never gave a concept of what religion was to them personally, but just addressed what it was to other people. I think he averted himself from the random citizens all the way, we'll never know what religion was to Marx

[jesusRamirez-xvxp]

It’s so interesting how he was wrong about society and people who are atheist found consolidation on worse fantasies and delusions and stupid movements

[richardque]

Unfortunately marxist itself was a form of religion.

[builtspeed]

When man starts with himself, he'll only end with himself!

This is the failure of the Ideological approach of Karl Marx.

[elie]

So that's why communism and others dislike religion. Marx books before Charles Darwin

[eryu]

History
The Hellenic State is a fascist collaborationist government formed after Greece was occupied by the Axis in 1941 and the Greek Royalist government fled abroad, forming a rival Government based in London.

Politics
The nation's current political system is deeply divided between the Hellenic Fascist Front, a group of traditional Fascists and more reformist collaborators who favor relations with Italy, and the Hellenic National Socialist Front, a group of hardliner, Nazi, Germanophile, and even esoteric Strasserists who favor ties with Germany. Since the Axis invasion, occupation and creation of the current regime, the country has faced an insurgency by Communist and Monarchist forces.

Military
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