Let’s talk about the well-known and misused phrase of Karl Marx: «Religion is the opium of the people»

Both, those who reject Marx’s phrase and those who take it as a flag, have not actually read where Marx used it or they have read it wrongly.

It is similar to those who have the Bible or the Koran as a source of wisdom; they know a few verses which they handle in every opportunity even when brushing their teeth, but they have never read those books properly; that is to say, they have not read it with a due honesty capable of finding all the good things those books have, as well as the inconsistencies and contradictions they also have. They read and interpret what interests them, what they need to read and understand in their own way.

Marx didn’t mean that religion is opium, but that we turn it into opium, into a drug.

Both, those who reject the phrase and those who use it as a “flag”, have interpreted it under the idea that Marx said: «religion is bad», that it is used by those with power to deceive the people with the intention of taking them to wherever they want, with deceptive promises that later (after death) they will have a fair compensation for their sufferings, their shortcomings, their frustrations; all of that produced by someone as evil as Satan.

Marx never said «religion is the opium of the people» with the idea that it is bad, as the Marxists assure with great paraphernalia, giving the sense that religion is bad and deceitful.

What Marx actually said was:

“Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks.“
(Religious misery is both an expression of real misery and a protest against real misery. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, as the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people).

That is to say: Religion is that drug that, being oppressed, by living in a world without a heart, offers you a false illusion that allows you to cope with your sorrows; therefore, it is not bad, it is good; but it is not the real solution; as, you don’t have to disguise reality, you have to change it.

Implying that: The misery of religion is not in itself, but in being an expression (consequence) (it is not the cause, but the «caused») of the true (existing) (human) misery and is (therefore, in turn) the protests against that miserable reality. Religion is the sigh (breathing) of the tormented (oppressed) creature; it is the soul of a soulless (heartless) world, and also is the spirit (the soul) of spiritless (soulless) conditions (situations) devoid of spirit. In that projection (religion) is the opium of the people.

For example: Is morphine good? No; It would be absurd to have morphine for breakfast every day, but it helps you when you have excruciating pain. Is it necessary to eliminate morphine? NO, what you have to do is avoid what led to the pain.
Should we eliminate religion? NO; what it’s needed to be done is to prevent religion from being the only refuge for the helpless; we must ensure that there are no helpless people; but if we continue having helpless people and the only thing we do is to eliminate religion with gunshots and hammer blows to replace it with the messianism of radical populists, absolutists; we have only changed the color of the drug container or we have changed the drug; but we’re still drugged.

As well as the respective believers, interpreting the Bible, the Koran or any other holy book to their liking, Marxists kept fixed to that phrase: «Religion is the opium of the people», ignoring the true meaning of Marx’s words and, with that in mind, took away all religious men and women, monasteries and temples, as much as they wanted, so convinced that they were «cleansing the world», obviously, to create their own one, where they should be the leaders with their own new religion. Same way was the same with many others who are not Marxists.

Today, Karl Marx would have to enlarge his spectrum: the prism has spread light much more and now he would have to say: “Religion, Nazism, Fascism, Populism, Communism, Castroism and Chavismo and Bolivarianism, Nationalism and Separatism and many other –isms are the opium of the people”.

They are (as Marx really meant) the escape valve, the drug, by which people seek new ways not to see the reality of their misery; and not external misery, but the internal one. That’s the one they don’t want to see, neither the personal, nor the social one.

In all these -isms, a leader is personalized to be revered, extolled, almost adore (and even prayed, embalmed, raised to the altars, worn on T-shirts and flannels). A leader who is always applauded even when saying stupidities; which will never be seen as such by those who live under that opium.

In all these -isms, their leaders (with personal interests in maintaining that «religion») invent and point out to some specific wicked one or ones (the other or the others: they) who is the cause of our misfortunes: the priests, the Jews, the workers, the high caste, capitalism, gringos, the Spanish people, the non-Scots, the non-Catalans; someone whom we must hate, reject, and push away (and, if possible, eliminate).

The leader and his closest clique will give people a unique version of current and historical facts as suitable as possible to reinforce their religion; because definitively, it is another type of religion (opium of the people). They will distort things as much as necessary so that the people, drugged (drunk) with their new religion, will feel strengthened with that inaccurate vision of the truth; anything justifying them is valid.

When one is not drugged by any of these harmful «-ism» substances, one feels impressed by the enormous amount of absurdities and ridicule assertions that get to be affirmed, either out of ignorance or by bad and poisonous intention. It is impressive the statements that one can find here and there (or, if you prefer: left and right); but their «parishioners» don’t perceive the falsehood.

Of course, as in every religion, there is a promise of a better future as soon as the «enemy» has been eliminated and the new religion prevails. A future that, however, when the corresponding religion manages to get imposed, it’s never completely satisfactory or, as minimum, it isn’t as nice as it was displayed when the leaders were preparing «their panacea».

But, as long as we don’t learn to find happiness in ourselves and continue looking for it outside and in others’ promises, we will continue in the misery that pushes us to seek religions (ideals, movements, revolutions, etc.) that lull us to sleep with fantasies of believing ourselves better than anybody else, the possessors of the truth, the renewers of the world, totally floating in false incense of «justice» and «truth» that all those «opiums of the people» promise us, whether they are managed by priests or managed by politicians; it doesn’t matter.

But, if it is insane to turn religion or ideals into opium, into drugs; it’s almost worse to turn drugs into religion.

Pablo J. Luis Molinero
27th May, 2017

Reviewed April 23, 2023