The Marxist view of religion is the argument that religion is a product of class society which helps to make inequality bearable and legitimate, by comforting the oppressed and justifying the position of the powerful. It applies the central ideas of Marxism to belief and religious institutions.
What is the Marxist view of religion?
Karl Marx wrote about religion mainly in his 1844 introduction to a critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right. He did not treat it as simply a deception imposed from above. Religion, he wrote, is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the opium of the people. The famous phrase has two meanings. Opium relieves pain, so religion offers real consolation for suffering. But opium also dulls awareness, so religion can stop people from seeing the causes of their suffering. For Marx the answer was to change the conditions that make consolation necessary and not simply to attack belief.
Marxists place religion in the superstructure, the set of institutions and ideas that arise from the economic base. Religion therefore reflects and supports the way production is organised, and it has no independent history of its own.
How does religion work as ideology?
Religion can act as an ideology that makes the existing order seem natural or divinely ordained. Teachings that stress obedience, patience and reward in the afterlife can discourage challenges to inequality in this life. The idea of the divine right of kings is a historical example, since it presented monarchy as God’s will. The wider process is explained in the post on the Marxist view of ideology.
Later Marxists developed this. Antonio Gramsci argued in his prison writings that ruling groups maintain power through hegemony, winning consent through culture and not only force, and he treated the Church as a major institution doing this work (see Gramsci). Louis Althusser classed the Church as an ideological state apparatus, which in pre-capitalist societies was the dominant one, while in modern capitalism education has taken its place.
Can religion challenge inequality in Marxist thought?
Not all Marxist writing treats religion as conservative. Friedrich Engels argued that early Christianity was a movement of slaves and the poor, and he saw radical religious movements in later periods, such as the peasant uprisings led by Thomas Muntzer in sixteenth century Germany, as expressions of class conflict. The neo-Marxist Otto Maduro argued in the 1980s that religion can be a force for change as well as for control, depending on the social groups that use it. Latin American liberation theology is a leading example. It drew on Christian teaching and Marxist analysis to support the poor against landowners and military governments.
Examples of the Marxist view of religion
Historical examples include the alliance between established churches and monarchies in medieval and early modern Europe, where religious institutions held land and wealth and taught obedience to authority. In the nineteenth century, factory owners in Britain sometimes supported church attendance and Sunday schools in the expectation that they would produce a disciplined workforce. More recent cases include the way some religious leaders in the United States have supported low taxation and opposed welfare, which Marxists would read as aligning belief with the interests of the wealthy.
What are the criticisms of the Marxist view of religion?
Max Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that religious ideas could shape economic life and not simply reflect it, which reverses Marx’s direction of causation. Functionalists stress religion’s contribution to social solidarity and meaning, which Marxism understates. Feminists note that Marxists neglect gender, although religion has often been a means of controlling women. Critics also say that Marxism is too ready to assume that believers are deceived. Religion continues to flourish in many societies and cannot be explained only as a response to class oppression, and the account of secularisation raises further questions about whether it will fade as inequality declines.
