Marx has been misunderstood many times and for various reasons. Often he is shown as an exponent of the magnification of the economy in thought and as a champion of atheism, but nothing is further from the truth. To begin, we often "forget" that Marx voluntarily attended a course, the only one who was not mandatory in their curriculum on the prophet Isaiah. Not only that, because many years later, he told his wife the interest lectures was a parish priest. The truth is that Marx had a wide knowledge of the human essence of religion and this was one of the focuses of his doctrine.
The axis of the deviations in the interpretation of Marx's work part of the misunderstanding of his doctrine as a purely economic, when really only postulated that economic changes are only required to get to human development. The economy for Marx is thus a means to an end. The real objective of the economic revolution was really a social revolution.
The Marx's notion of progress is distorted by the perception that capitalism presumes that increased consumption means greater happiness. In the distortion of Communism (remember that Marx was only saying what communism was not and never defined it) was done in the Soviet Union and countries of its orbit was repeated fantasy of unrestrained consumption unless you want to associate these material advantages to increased consumption of the worker opportunities, the result is the same. This happened, for example, during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, who argued that the needs of workers should be met without questioning the validity of those needs. By contrast Marx that emphasized it limit what is unnecessary for the man because the more your needs grow more dependent (and therefore less free) is: "Forget that the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people [ ...] "(K. Marx:" Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts ").
As for the famous phrase "religion is the opium of the people", this is not just a shifting out of a passage in which he did not mean what it expresses the sentence separately. The whole passage is in his 1844 "Critique of Hegel's philosophy of law" and is as follows:
"Religious suffering is an expression of real suffering and at the time, the protest against it. Religion is the sigh of the afflicted creature, the feeling of a world insensitive and tasteless as grace. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people demand their real happiness. The call to abandon the delusions about the state itself is the call to abandon a condition which needs the deception. The criticism of religion is, therefore, originally the valley of tears criticism whose halo is religion. Critics have evicted the imaginary flowers from the chain, not for man to take the chain without fantasy or consolation, but to throw the chain and take the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusioned man to think, act and order his reality as a man disillusioned, returned to reason, to turn itself around, that is, its true role. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves around the man while it is he who turns on itself. "
What Marx actually expresses in this passage is that it has placed on religion as a tranquilizer that responds to the anxieties of a sick society. This society is sick he did use a distorted view of religion (and no human values that conveys the true understanding of religion) to appease problems caused by twisted dynamics of society. In reality the "religious conception of Marx roots in negative theology, as to not to project anything to God, which ends using values that are preached also in religion.
The axis of the deviations in the interpretation of Marx's work part of the misunderstanding of his doctrine as a purely economic, when really only postulated that economic changes are only required to get to human development. The economy for Marx is thus a means to an end. The real objective of the economic revolution was really a social revolution.
The Marx's notion of progress is distorted by the perception that capitalism presumes that increased consumption means greater happiness. In the distortion of Communism (remember that Marx was only saying what communism was not and never defined it) was done in the Soviet Union and countries of its orbit was repeated fantasy of unrestrained consumption unless you want to associate these material advantages to increased consumption of the worker opportunities, the result is the same. This happened, for example, during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, who argued that the needs of workers should be met without questioning the validity of those needs. By contrast Marx that emphasized it limit what is unnecessary for the man because the more your needs grow more dependent (and therefore less free) is: "Forget that the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people [ ...] "(K. Marx:" Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts ").
As for the famous phrase "religion is the opium of the people", this is not just a shifting out of a passage in which he did not mean what it expresses the sentence separately. The whole passage is in his 1844 "Critique of Hegel's philosophy of law" and is as follows:
"Religious suffering is an expression of real suffering and at the time, the protest against it. Religion is the sigh of the afflicted creature, the feeling of a world insensitive and tasteless as grace. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people demand their real happiness. The call to abandon the delusions about the state itself is the call to abandon a condition which needs the deception. The criticism of religion is, therefore, originally the valley of tears criticism whose halo is religion. Critics have evicted the imaginary flowers from the chain, not for man to take the chain without fantasy or consolation, but to throw the chain and take the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusioned man to think, act and order his reality as a man disillusioned, returned to reason, to turn itself around, that is, its true role. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves around the man while it is he who turns on itself. "
What Marx actually expresses in this passage is that it has placed on religion as a tranquilizer that responds to the anxieties of a sick society. This society is sick he did use a distorted view of religion (and no human values that conveys the true understanding of religion) to appease problems caused by twisted dynamics of society. In reality the "religious conception of Marx roots in negative theology, as to not to project anything to God, which ends using values that are preached also in religion.
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31 August 2009
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