People on the internet are saying it’s not a condemnation of religion and to Marx opium means medicine, Im confused help me bear website!
Edit: what did Karl Marx think opium was?
People on the internet are saying it’s not a condemnation of religion and to Marx opium means medicine, Im confused help me bear website!
Edit: what did Karl Marx think opium was?
He's saying that religion takes the pain out of peoples lives by giving them ideas that make living less painful. Marx wants to get rid of the material conditions that cause suffering, so that people will no longer need religion.
The quote is about using materialist political movement to mitigate peoples suffering, not really about religion.
Yeah, the best interpretation is that a communist mode of production would remove the need for the pain dulling opiate that is religion.
The allegory actually holds up on terms of the war on drugs, where fighting against the medication that people give themselves while in pain and despair doesn't solve the underlying pain and despair, but building communities and reducing the harm that those drugs cause will over time reduce the abuse of those drugs.
Like in a socialist case, providing alternative organizational structures to churches and allowing those seeking to leave an abusive or conservative church to have a safe haven where they are respected outside their "opiate of the masses" consumption is healthy. But at the end of the day the drugs aren't what's causing the problem, it's the societal structures that drive people to use them that's the problem.