Sigh.
I could see it as lense people adopt to make sense of an awful world. As conditions deteriorate and revolutionary thought is suppressed, religion is the only thing people can grasp to as an explanation for why things are happening and death almost being something to look forward to because it’ll be better in the afterlife.
I don’t see it exactly the same as Hakim’s recent post about Islam and the people of Palestine, but I think it rhymes. People living in such awful conditions need something to grasp, especially when family and friends aren’t a certainty day to day
I think also in times of hardship joining a religion is an easy way to find community and mutual aid networks. Also a good way to avoid persecution and have an advantage if the state favours a certain religion.
Idk if you were referring to it but the first paragraph is essentially Marx’s intro to the critique of philosophy of right. The most thought provoking few paragraphs he ever wrote imo.
Oh interesting, I wasn’t aware and will check it out.
My first “This Marx guy is stealing my ideas”
Haha
It’s here, just the first few paragraphs (ending with “the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”), not the whole thing. It’s so interesting and many non-Marxists dont know about his non-economic writing. This was written when he was around 25 years old, before the Communist Manifesto, when he was still involved with left-Hegelian circles.
Marx was an atheist but he was critical of a particular brand of what he considered “vulgar materialists” at his time who advocated for the abolition of religion without understanding its material basis. Marx agreed religion is illusory but that it is a necessary means of coping for many people. So the philosophers shouldn’t be focused on taking away the coping mechanism but to resolve the conditions that require coping.
