Marxism and Religion

Tom Riggins has written a nice little piece on Marxism and religion for Political Affairs.

Remember that Marx said that struggle against religion was indirectly
a fight against an unjust and exploitative world. Religion is an
opiate because it produces in us Illusions about our real situation
in the world, the type of world we live in, and what, if anything, we
can do to change it. The struggle against religion is not just an
intellectual struggle against a system of beliefs we think to be
incorrect. Marxists are not secular humanists who don't see a
connection between the struggle against religion and the social
struggle.

This is why Marx maintains that, "The demand to give up illusions
about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state
of affairs which needs illusions." That is to say, he wants to
abolish religion in order to achieve real happiness for the people
instead of illusory happiness. We will see that when Marx, Engels or
Lenin use the word "abolish" they do not mean that the government or
any political party should use force or coercive measures against
people who are religious.

What they have in mind is that since, in their view, religion arises
as a response to inhumane alienating conditions, the removal of these
conditions will lead to the gradual dying out of religious beliefs.
Of course, if the Marxist theory on the origin of religion is
incorrect, then this will not happen and religion will not be
abolished.

At any rate, this is what Marx means when he says, "Thus the
criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the
criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism of
theology into the criticism of politics."