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Richard Clarke<\/strong> outlines how religion, like any other cultural activity, is capable of both promoting political and social liberation, and being manipulated and controlled by ruling classes who attempt \u2013 and very often succeed \u2013 in turning it into a force for conservatism.<\/em><\/p>\n Most Marxists would say that it is none of their business to judge or comment on any individual\u2019s sincere and deeply-held religious beliefs, provided that these do not encourage prejudice, intolerance or result in harm to others.<\/p>\n Some religious groupings, notably the Quakers, have been prominent in the peace and anti-war movement. Many Jews \u2013 not just secular Jews but ultra-orthodox religious Jews as well \u2013 oppose the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Catholic \u2018liberation theology\u2019 has been a feature of progressive movements in South America. Many individuals \u2013 of all faiths \u2013 have managed to combine their religious conviction with a commitment to socialism, even Marxism.<\/p>\n In Britain, the fusion of Marxist theory and Christian beliefs called Christian socialism has a long and honourable tradition. Keir Hardie (1856-1915), the founder of the modern Labour Party declared that \u201cAny system of production or exchange which sanctions the exploitation of the weak by the strong or the unscrupulous is wrong and therefore sinful.\u201d And Hewlett Johnson (1874-1966), the \u2018Red Dean\u2019 of Canterbury (1931-1963) was a supporter of the October Revolution, a life-long friend of the Soviet Union, and a chair of the Board of the Daily Worker, the predecessor of today\u2019s only socialist national newspaper, the Morning Star.<\/p>\n Religion in and of itself is no indicator of people\u2019s political orientation or of their personal qualities. At the same time Marxists would challenge the liberal exhortation to \u2018celebrate all faiths\u2019. The \u2018faiths\u2019 that are purportedly celebrated are not, of course, just matters of individual conviction. They are institutionalised belief systems. Religion is primarily a social and historical phenomenon. As Marx observed, \u2018Humanity makes religion, religion does not make humanity.\u2019 Britain\u2019s own Head of State is, after all, also the head of the \u2018established\u2019 Church of England.<\/p>\n On a philosophical level, Marxism questions the truth of any religion that assumes the existence of a supernatural being not subject to the laws of nature but who responds to the adulation and entreaties of his\/her\/its worshippers. In engaging with religious believers, however sympathetically, Marxists do not conceal their materialist belief that everything that exists is part of nature and subject to laws which \u2013 in principle at least – can be discovered by human action and used by humanity to shape our own future.<\/p>\n However, notwithstanding the gendered language of his time, Marx\u2019s position on religion is a lot more subtle and sympathetic than is commonly thought:<\/p>\n 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. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man<\/strong>, the state, society. This state and this society produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness<\/strong>, because they are an inverted world<\/strong>. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur<\/strong>, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation<\/strong> of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma<\/em>.<\/p>\n Probably the best known observation of Marx on religion is that it is the \u2018opium of the people.\u2019 This is sometimes taken to mean that he saw it as a mechanism of control from above, prescribed by those in power to secure compliance and docility. To the extent that this is true it is only part of Marx\u2019s analysis. The full passage from Marx<\/a> makes his own meaning clear:<\/p>\n Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.<\/em><\/p>\n As Roland Boer points out,<\/a> Marx used opium himself to give some relief from a variety of ailments including toothache, ear aches and carbuncles; the opium metaphor had some meaning to him<\/a>. Religion, in his view, provided at least some comfort and hope to the oppressed. In an uncertain world it promises a degree of certainty; it provides an apparently alternative authority to corrupted secular institutions, and to those suffering physical or psycho-social distress, it offers comfort. Above all, it offers hope, however illusory. Marxists understand this, which is why they don\u2019t challenge genuine individual faith.<\/p>\n![\"RC](\"images\/culture\/CM_Misc\/RC_Keir_Hardie_Trafalgar_Square_1908.jpg\")
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