Marxism and religion: A case of strange bedfellows

After reading my Sunday Monitor opinion of May 6 titled, “Karl Marx 200th birthday: Tribute to a global citizen,” some friends sent me feedback in which they wondered how I could be a devoted and practising Christian and at the same time be a “Marxist” of sorts. My short answer was that I am a “Christian socialist.” Let me explain.

The role and understanding of religion in Marxist thought is more subtle than is often acknowledged. The crude and derogatory assertion that “religion is the opium of the people” is more a reflection of 18th Century “Age of Enlightenment” prejudices and arrogant self-images of petty bourgeois intellectuals, such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Kant, than the nature of religion.

French political scientist, journalist and author Raymond Aron argued rather cynically in a book published in 1955 that, “Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals” parodying the description of religion as the opium of the people. Despite the secular sensibilities of many leftist intellectuals and activists, religion permeates and pervades the lives of the vast majority of people in capitalist countries, such as the United States, UK, Germany and France.
Marx and Engels understood religion as a profound human response to and protest against intolerable and unacceptable conditions which sadly exist in most African countries.

Against this background, characterisation of religion as the opium of the people is not mere political pacification imposed from above, but a historically restricted, existential and experiential condition of being. In such a situation, dehumanised people are stuck under deplorable socio-economic conditions familiar to most Ugandans who have been brutalised, humiliated and marginalised for decades by a corrupt and decadent regime.

Marx characterised religion as “alienation” not because it is “unscientific” and “pre-modern,” but because it often overlooks or underestimates the socio-economic conditions which shape and mould its expression. Religion tends to delimit the power and efforts of human beings to transform intolerable and unacceptable socio-economic and political conditions imposed upon wananchi by mediocre and self-condemned leaders.

In a nutshell, the Marxist critique of religion is not a philosophical rejection of religion, but a social analysis of and historical judgment of religious practices, many of which leave a lot to be desired, as my colleague Alan Tacca has pointed out in his column.

“Alienation” and “justification” are two concepts rooted in Scripture, in particular, in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians. As a Lutheran, whose parents were Jews of rabbinical ancestry, Karl Marx was conversant with the Bible.
For Marx and Engels, religion, at its worst, serves as an ideological means to preserve and perpetuate prevailing unjust social and historical circumstances and realities. At its best, religion is a means of protest, change and liberation, in addition to providing a utopian vision of life hereafter.

Liberation theology
The centrality of religion and morality are prominent aspects of the works of Antonio Gramsci who was the first European Marxist to examine ways in which “cultural resources” enabled or disenabled political struggles among exploited, oppressed and marginalised people in capitalist societies.

Third world Marxists have naturally been in the forefront of efforts to address rigorously and confront the religious component of culture and the trailblazers, in this regard, were China’s Mao Zedong, Africa’s Amilcar Cabral and Peru’s Jose Carlos Mariategui.

Unlike in the past, the interdependence between religion and revolutionary struggles is today a topical subject for historical analysis, in addition to being a major item on the agenda of contemporary Marxism.
The emergence of “liberation theology” which began in Latin America is rooted in Christian thought and practice and stems from the just struggle of Christians against oppressive and repressive regimes embodied in the works of, inter alia, Gustavo Gutierrez, Reuben Alves, Victorio Araya, Elsa Tamez and Paulo Freire.

For Christian socialists, the greatest challenge of our time is to build a just society based on new production relations; to put an end to domination and bullying of weak countries by powerful ones; to put an end to domination, exploitation and oppression of wananchi by reactionary and tribal cliques; the ultimate goal being genuine freedom and peace for all.