Marx And Religion

Freud was just one of the many thinkers that criticized religion. Karl Marx was another one of these important thinkers. He was a nineteenth-century philosopher and political theorist, famous for being a contributor of the “Communist Manifesto,” and is considered one of the greatest thinkers in history. Marx wrote about a wide range of topics, and did not spare his thoughts on religion. Similarly, to Freud, Marx had criticized religion, especially Christianity. However, the nature of Marx’s arguments covered different topics than Freud. The center of his concern targeting religion was the impact that it had on society. To Marx, religion played an important role in allowing the upper echelons of society to control the rest of it. Additionally,
Bossuet had heavily vouched for divine right theory, and argued for the divinity of the king. His work, “Vision in Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture,” provides a window into the working of divine right in the monarchy. One of his points he argued was that, “the person of kings is sacred… and to attempt anything against them is a sacrilege.” First, for absolutism to function the way it did, the majority of the population would have been Christian. Therefore, since the monarchy established a connection with God, it could use that to validate and justify its actions. What Bossuet suggested is that disputing with the king would to be disputing with God himself. He further wrote, “One must obey the prince by reason of religion and conscience.” This perfectly aligns with Marx’s point that religion causes society to obey the authority figure. Secondly, Bossuet wrote to further validate the monarchy’s authority. He argued that absolute power was needed in order for the king to punish evil and uphold good. It was a system that could have easily been exploited by the monarchy. To demonstrate: in the event that an individual was to oppose the king, the king could argue that his actions are in accordance to what God would command, but also that the opposition is attempting to interfere with the work of God, and could result in them becoming the problem, or such. Therefore, it would be in the
This is evident in the French Revolution, that would end absolutism. The implications of the revolution were that it created a shift of power from the divine right of the king towards the people. In that sense, the people no longer saw the validity in the king’s power, and revolted as a result of their desire for social freedom, just like Marx had thought. The people had begun to avert themselves from religion, and in doing so, absolutism began to crumble since it had relied so heavily on it. As a result, the monarchy could not continually use the illusion of its connection with God to exploit the masses anymore. Furthermore, for this reason, Christianity’s role as an institution of the state was revoked in the French Republican Convention of 1793. The abolition indicates that Christianity was recognized as a problem large enough that it had to be abolished. It also indicates the possibility that the people had realized the exploitation religion had played a part in. Overall, Marx’s idea that without religion, society would revolt is illustrated in the event of the French Revolution. Moreover, the fact that it’s role as an institution in the state was abolished further reveals the problem that it