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19th-century German philosopher Karl Marx, the founder and primary theorist of Marxism, viewed religion as "the soul of soulless conditions" or the "opium of the people". According to Marx, religion in this world of exploitation is an expression of distress and at the same time it is also a protest against the real distress.
The Marxists adopted the same attitude towards the Marxian system. Hence, Marx's anti-dogmatic attitude exists only in the theory and not in the practice of orthodox Marxism, and dialectic is used by Marxists, following the example of Engels' Anti-Dühring, mainly for the purposes of apologetics – to defend the Marxist system against criticism.
Marxist sociology refers to the application of Marxist epistemologies within the study of sociology. [1] It can often be economic sociology , political sociology or cultural sociology . Marxism itself is recognised as both a political philosophy and a social theory , insofar as it attempts to remain scientific, systematic , and objective rather ...
Although Marx was intensely critical of institutionalized religion including Christianity, some Christians have "accepted the basic premises of Marxism and attempted to reinterpret Christian faith from this perspective". [76] Some of the resulting examples are some forms of liberation theology and black theology.
Marx sees Man's various alienations as peels around a genuine center. [68] Religion is the most extreme form of alienation: it is at once both the symptom of a deep social malaise and a protest against this malaise. [69] The criticism of religion leads to the criticism of other alienations, which must be dealt with in the same way. [70]
The term "Marxism" encompasses multiple "overlapping and antagonistic traditions" inspired by the work of Karl Marx, and it does not have any authoritative definition. [12] [13] The most influential texts for cultural studies are (arguably) the "Thesis on Feuerbach" and the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. [14]
The second theme is the criticism of Marx’s definition of the substance of value as social labour (abstract labour). The third theme is the neo-Ricardian critique of Marx, which claims to make Marx’s theory of the form of value redundant. The fourth theme is the Chartalist criticism of Marx’s theory of the money-form of value.
In this perspective, Marx saw religion as escapism. [33] Marx also viewed the Christian doctrine of original sin as being deeply anti-social in character. Original sin, he argued, convinces people that the source of their misery lies in the inherent and unchangeable "sinfulness" of humanity rather than in the forms of social organization and ...