The Opiate of the Masses

The Opiate of the Masses

Why have communist regimes traditionally been against religion?

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What exactly did he mean by this, and is there any truth to it? Marx saw the development of religion as a balm for people who were suffering in the physical world. He saw it as a remnant of the past that had continued into the current age. He saw the issue with religion as being how it can make people complacent and can hinder their desire to change their material circumstances. In addition to that it gives a lot of power to religious leaders over people, which can go against the good of the people at large.

Do we still see religion making people complacent today, or wielding incredible power over people? We have to look no further than the situation in the U.S. where religion still plays a huge role in politics. No president ever dares claim to be anything but a flavor of Christianity, and an endorsement from certain pastors holds a lot of weight. Billy Graham was a huge example of this, but other religious leaders still have an incredibly far-reaching platform today, Pat Robertson and James Dobson as more recent examples.

Then you have situations like the genocide in Palestine, where Israel feels they are a chosen people and that their god has promised them the entire piece of land, and that their god has given them a divine right to massacre any “others” for them to have it.

These sorts of massacres occurred as well with Christianity and The Crusades, where groups of Christians felt they had a divine right to the “Holy Land”, of course they didn’t have the U.S. delivering them munitions and aircraft to carry out the killings in quite as extreme of a wholesale fashion at that time though.