What did Marx say about religion?

Karl Marx, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Karl Marx answers

The foundation of the whole analysis is a single inversion: man makes religion, religion does not make man.¹ This is not atheism in the vulgar sense — a mere denial — but a diagnosis. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.² Man is not an abstract being floating outside the world; man is the world of man, state, society — and it is this state, this society, that produces religion as an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are themselves an inverted world.³

From that follows the famous formulation, which is almost always torn from its context: religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.⁴ The opium line names a double truth simultaneously — religion is both the expression of real suffering and a protest against it. It is consolation, but consolation that makes the condition bearable rather than intolerable enough to change.

So the criticism of religion is not the endpoint. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.⁵ The demand to abandon illusions about one's condition is the demand to abandon a condition that requires illusions.⁶

The criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.⁷ By the time I was working through the commodity analysis in Capital, this structural point had deepened considerably. The religious world is the reflex of the real world — and for a society based on the production of commodities, Christianity in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, is the most fitting form of religion precisely because both rest on the abstraction of the concrete particular into a universal equivalent.⁸

The religious reflex of the real world can only finally vanish when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to nature.⁹ That is not a cultural or intellectual achievement; it requires a specific material ground-work, the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.¹⁰

The short version, then: religion is not the disease but the symptom. Abolish the condition that requires illusions, and the illusions dissolve on their own.

Sources

1. The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, p. 3

2. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, p. 3

3. Man is the world of man — state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, p. 3

4. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, p. 3

5. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, pp. 3–4

6. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, pp. 3–4

7. Thus, 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.

   Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, pp. 3–4

8. The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based upon the production of commodities...Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of religion.

   Capital Vol I

9. The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature.

   Capital Vol I

10. The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.

    Capital Vol I