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Karl Marx: The Great Atheist
The choice of Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Throughout history humanity has never had any more devastating atheistic influence than Marxism. The influence of Karl Marx on the ontological structure of world societies, and their choice of disbelief rather than belief has been dominant during the twentieth century.
About three billion people, nearly half of the world
Population last century, were subject to Marxism during the second half of the 20th C. The mass choice of disbelief in religion was at the heart of the theoretical as well as the practical communism ideology. The reminiscence of such ideology is still observed in socialist societies, the lasting impact in China, North Korea and Cuba.
Materialism Only
Karl Marx considers, in his work on economics, that matter is the fundament of the universe', from which materialism directly evolves. He explains the universe only in terms of the perceptible-sensible and rejects totally the intelligible and the spiritual. He considers that ideas are nothing but material things transposed and interpreted in the head.' He further considers that social reality determines the conscience and not the opposite:
It is not men's' conscience that determines their existence, it is the opposite; it is their social existence that determines their conscience.'
Rejection the Plausibility of Idealism
By rejecting the idealist explanation of the world he opts for a materialist explanation and hence rejects religious belief as an obscurity dictated by social conditions.'
Marx believes in what he sees
In German Ideology Marx writes:
Another problem, that is of the form of relationships between ideas and the real. The concept of ideology demands a materialist analysis of thought. Counter to idealism which gives preference to ideas and by deducing the existence of the world materialism asserts the primacy of matter over the spirit. In other words, this is not different to what men say about themselves, imagine or represent, but the processes of real life of which thought is the echo, by reversing sometimes these terms, as in a dark room'. If so, then belief in God does not come from a pure act of the conscience.
In order to understand the meaning, it is advisable to examine as well its functions, the interest it defends, in the material system (economic, political and symbolic) of which it is the key (the Churches). On the individual level, we demand whether this belief is satisfying, who does it favor and who does it gratify. On the level of the people and history, we demand which institutions is it the key of its vault. But this cannot be done without researching and offering the people the means of liberating themselves from this belief.' (1)
Man Invents God
Karl Marx considers that man invents religion; religion, for him, is the product of the society:
It is man who makes religion and not religion that makes man.
As a matter of fact, truth is the conscience of oneself and the feeling of man's own self which is achieved, or else it is not yet achieved, or else it is lost again. But man, is not an abstract being curled outside the world. Man is the world of man, he is the State, he is the Society. This State, this Society produces religion, a reversed conscience of the world, because they are themselves a reversed world. Religion is the general
theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium; its logic under a popular form, its universal reason is consolation and justification. It is the illusory realization of the human essence, because the human essence does not possess the true
reality.' (2)
Rejection of God
Not only Marx criticizes religious belief and rejects it but he calls for the necessity to struggle against it:
Struggling against religion is then and indirectly, struggling against this world, of which religion is the spiritual flavor.' (3)
Religion: The Opium of the People
Denying religion, the illusionary happiness of the people, he specifies that religion is the social pretext to accept misery and the suffering state as well as the servitude and obedience imposed by the bourgeoisie in collaboration with the institutions of religious belief such as the Church:
Religious misery is at the same time the expression of real misery and the protestation against real misery. Religion is the sigh of the crushed creature; the soul of a world without heart, as well as it is the spirit of a state of things where there is no spirit.
It is the opium of the people.' (4)
Rejecting religious belief as illusory and unreal Marx
considers that happiness can be achieved in this real world:
Denying religion, the illusionary happiness of the pe
people, is to require its real happiness.' (5)
The thought of Karl Marx indicates his rejection of belief in God whom he considers as a product of man's imagination'.
Rejection of God makes Man God himself
By rejecting God as an illusion and religion as the opium of the people, man becomes god himself as master of the world.
Here we have evidence of the continuation of the shift from God as the centre of the universe to man as the centre of the universe and master of his own being.
This shift has begun in the Age of Light where science replaced religious belief early in the 17th century.
Karl Marx emphasizes that by denying religion man is
liberated from the restrains of the society and hence can establish paradise on earth, the only earth that exists.'
The attitude of Marx is founded on his materialist fundament where the final goal of man is to better his human condition on earth through his will and where he lives and dies, but perishes for ever upon death.
This represents the materialist-organicist view in rejecting belief.
Utter stipulations without proof
In the rejection of God and the denial of religious belief Marx does not offer any evidence or any solid argument. His assumptions are totally founded on repetitive assertions reflecting his own convictions of such rejection and such denial.
Finally, we can conclude that the attitude of Karl Marx is a personal attitude of choosing disbelief in God and justifying this by offering societal presumptions.
The Choice of Lenin:
Lenin, as the pragmatic theoretician engineer of Marxism has precised concerning belief and disbelief in God that:
Confronting matter in its solid form, I can define it, but when it changes its form into vapor, I can no more define it. There are those who believe in a God who created matter and those who do not, I myself belong to the second group.'
He wrote further concerning God:
There is no more an abominable idea, that can ever exist, than that of a God, this idea must be uprooted from the heads of the people, and we ought to start eradicating it by education.'
Two ideologists have played a dominant role in nearly destroying religious feeling among the masses in most parts of the socialist world as well as the third world in the twentieth century.
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1. Karl Marx, Philosophical Works, Critique de la philosophie
