Not all about opium: the Marxist attitude to religion

Those who wish to present Marx as anti-religious trot out only the last sentence, implying that Marx saw religion as a dangerous narcotic, whereas in context it's clear Marx was referring to the medical use of opiates for pain relief.

As long as humans are alienated and oppressed, many will look to religion. Marxists therefore must relate positively to workers who are religious, and to whatever movements and leaders emerge to express the grievances of workers and the oppressed. We do not judge the validity of social struggles based on how religious or secular they are.

Take the movement led by the Russian Orthodox priest, Father Gapon, who organised a workers' union in St Petersburg in the early 20th century. The Bolshevik leader Lenin was impressed with Gapon's ability to connect with the needs of the working class and even tried to recruit him.

Although it emerged some years later that Gapon was a police agent, the movement he led still played a pivotal role in the history of Russia's workers' movement. In 1905 the Gapon unions led the march to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the Tsar; the brutal murder of these marchers by the police sparked the 1905 revolution. And, this revolution made socialist organisations a mass force amongst Russia's workers for the first time.

Islamophobia

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have both written best-sellers that campaign against religion. Hitchens - a former leftist turned "critical" supporter of George Bush - is living proof that being an atheist does not make you more left-wing. He sees the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq as glorious wars for democracy, parroting Bush's line that the Islamist resistance to US and Israeli aggression occurs because "these people hate our freedoms".

Like many other anti-Muslim bigots today, Hitchens appeals to the values of the Enlightenment; as if Bush was motivated by his study of Voltaire! But let's remember why this European intellectual movement was progressive in the 18th century. Its appeals to reason and its hostility to religious authority were a tremendous step forward at a time when Europe was dominated by feudal relations, and when the absolutist state and the church intertwined to form the bastion of power that ruled society.

The church upheld the idea of the divine right of kings and of a "natural order" in which some people were nobles and others peasants. The church/state entity restricted what could and could not be said or thought. Attacking the domination of the church in these circumstances was an essential part of calling into question the feudal power structure, and assisting the revolutionary process.

But today's Islamophobes, like Hitchens, are not attacking the powerful in our society; they are attacking a persecuted minority. Furthermore they are providing ideological assistance to the most powerful imperialist military in history.

Richard Dawkins specialises in depicting religious people as irrational, illogical and often dangerous. In The God Delusion he writes:

Much of what people do is done in the name of god. Irishmen blow each other up in his name. Arabs blow themselves up in his name. Imams and ayatollahs oppress women in his name. Celibate popes and priests mess up people's sex lives in his name. Kosher butchers cut live animals' throats in his name. The achievements of religion in past history [include] bloody crusades, torturing inquisitions, mass-murdering conquistadors, culture-destroying missionaries ...