Compare And Contrast Karl Marx And Religion

In this essay Karl Marx will be discussed using his arguments concerning religion and religious institutions which is thought to play a powerful role in influencing a society and the lives of its members. Karl Marx (1818-1883) referred to religion as the ‘opium of the people’ (1975), like a misused drug it administers to true needs in false ways, however Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) defines religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which united in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them”- Elementary Forms of Religious Life, however they both agree that religion is an important aspect to society. This essay

They both believed it to be socially constructed; e.g. man created religion, and society created religion to meet particular needs of individuals and of society itself. For Marx it served to meet the desires and needs of the upper-class and was used to justify exploitation in the lower class, in a class based society. Religion was exploited by the rich to preserve the existing social order, resulting to society becoming oppressed. However, for Durkheim, religion was the glue that binds society together as he believed it functioned at an individual and social level to keep society in check by assisting in social control and to provide individuals a meaning in life. Marx argued that the elimination of religion would remove societies false happiness especially within the lower-class which would then give them true happiness, as he said that religion was just a false illusion providing false hope and happiness. This does not, however, exist in the books of Durkheim who does not see society functioning well if it was to give up religion even though he acknowledges that it will ultimately disappear. However, it is a shock that two of the founders of sociology spent so much of their time writing about religion when however neither of them were in fact religious themselves, both Marx and Durkheim did not believe in the existence of god(s). Marx and Durkheim viewed society in very different ways, both have been criticised for ignoring an individual's perspective and choices, both concepts think that society shapes the individual rather than the individual shaping society. However society has changed and become more complicated so that Marxism and Durkheim do not apply as much today as before, although both arguments provide a useful view on society they don’t necessarily apply to today’s society as statistics have