You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
Karl Marx and Religion: Life, Influences, Ideas and Legacies
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
Marxism and Religion
In this course, Dr Paul-François Tremlett (The Open University) explores Marxist approaches to religion. In the first lecture, we provide a broad introduction to Marx himself. In the second lecture, we explore what Marx said about religion. In the third lecture, we turn to two twentieth-century thinkers who worked in the Marxist tradition – Louis Althusser (1918-90) and Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) – and think about the concepts of power, ideology and hegemony in relation to religion. Next, we explore two thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School – Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) and Jürgen Habermas (1929-) – and think about the concepts of 'critical theory' and 'communicative action'. In the fifth and final lecture, we consider the influence of Marxist thought on the theological approach known as Liberation Theology.
Karl Marx and Religion: Life, Influences, Ideas and Legacies
In this lecture, we provide a broad introduction to the life, influences, ideas and legacies of Karl Marx, focusing in particular on: (i) his life and times, including his early life and education, his collaboration with Friedrich Engels, and some of his major works; (ii) the influence of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) on Marx's thought, including Hegel's conception of the history of the world as "the progress of the consciousness of freedom" and his famous philosophical method of "dialectic logic"; (iv) the influence of the philosopher of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72), including the concept of 'alienation', which Marx applied to both capitalism and religion; and (v) the shift in Marx's thought around 1845, after which point his writings become less philosophical and Hegelian, and more sociological.
Hello.
00:00:06My name is Dr Paul Francois Tremlett.
00:00:07I'm a senior lecturer
00:00:09in religious studies at the Open University,
00:00:10and today I'm going to be talking about coal marks
00:00:13and religion
00:00:16to begin with Karl Marx and religion. Life influences, ideas and legacies.
00:00:18Why Study marks.
00:00:26Marx was 1/19 century thinker trying to understand the economy and society
00:00:28of his day.
00:00:33He is perhaps most well known for writing with his friend and collaborator,
00:00:34Friedrich Engels.
00:00:38The political tracked the Communist Manifesto. However,
00:00:40he also developed an original theoretical model
00:00:43for analysing processes of social and economic change.
00:00:47And this model has been extremely influential in the discipline of sociology,
00:00:51from French and Italian social theory to the Frankfurt school
00:00:56but also theology.
00:01:00Over the course of these lectures,
00:01:03we will explore Marx's writings,
00:01:05the intellectual context in which his ideas emerged and their
00:01:07influence on wider debates in the social sciences and philosophy,
00:01:11with a particular focus on the way marks and later thinkers approach religion.
00:01:15Some critics of Marx's approach to religion have argued that he
00:01:20reduces it to the effects of economic and social processes.
00:01:24But this is perhaps
00:01:28a rather narrow way of understanding Marx's contribution
00:01:29to the study of religion and society.
00:01:33Marx's approach to society and religion is important because
00:01:35even if at first sight, his approach appears directed at explaining a religion away
00:01:40as a pale reflection of socioeconomic processes.
00:01:45He nevertheless reminds us that religions are implicated
00:01:48in social and economic relations
00:01:53and therefore to understand religion.
00:01:56We need to include these important layers of context in our studies.
00:01:57Moreover,
00:02:01given Marx's interest in elites,
00:02:02his approach also reminds us of the importance of power
00:02:04in the study of religions,
00:02:09from the study of seemingly untouchable institutions
00:02:10to the study of minorities struggling for a voice.
00:02:14Marx was born in 18 18 Intria,
00:02:19which today is in Germany, close to the border with Luxembourg.
00:02:22He was born into a Jewish family.
00:02:26His father was a lawyer who later converted to Christianity.
00:02:28The young Marx studied law at the University of Bonn
00:02:32and then at the University of Berlin
00:02:35before switching his studies to philosophy.
00:02:37Having fallen under the influence of a group
00:02:40of thinkers known as the young Higa Leon's,
00:02:42he completed his doctorate on the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus
00:02:45in 18 41.
00:02:49Now, Marks had hoped to pursue an academic career.
00:02:51But his radical views led him to journalism,
00:02:54and he wrote for and edited a number of radical newspapers in Germany,
00:02:56France and Belgium.
00:03:00In 18 44 in Paris, he began a lifelong collaboration with Friedrich Engels.
00:03:02Together they wrote the German ideology in
00:03:0818 46 although it wasn't published until 1932
00:03:09long after both had died,
00:03:13and the Communist Manifesto, which was published in 18 48
00:03:15marks.
00:03:19His political activities eventually forced him into exile in London,
00:03:19where he remained with his wife and Children
00:03:23until his death in 18 83
00:03:25throws his time in London, Marks wrote prodigiously,
00:03:27notably the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy,
00:03:31which was published in 18 59
00:03:34and Volume One of Capital, which was published in 18 67
00:03:36as well as numerous reports, Articles and letters
00:03:40to further incomplete volumes of capital were
00:03:44edited and published by Angles in 18 84
00:03:46in 18 93 respectively.
00:03:49From this brief sketch of Marxist life to observations are worth highlighting.
00:03:53First, the influence on Marxist thought
00:03:58of the German philosopher Hagel
00:04:01and of the young illegal aliens, a group of theologians and philosophers
00:04:03including Ludwig Fireback, among others,
00:04:07and second,
00:04:10that Marx's ideas seem to have undergone some kind of shift around 18 45.
00:04:11So let's start with Hagel.
00:04:17George Wilfred Friedrich Hagel was born in 17 70.
00:04:19His ideas were shaped by the events of his time,
00:04:23particularly the French Revolution in 17 89
00:04:26and one of his most important books was lectures on the Philosophy Is History,
00:04:30in which he argued
00:04:35that the history of the world is none other
00:04:36than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
00:04:38Hagel conceived of world history as a unified and rational process.
00:04:41Beginning his account with the ancient Chinese,
00:04:47Indian and Persian empires,
00:04:50Hagel argued that these were stationary civilizations
00:04:52where only the ruler was free.
00:04:55He then turned to the ancient Greeks.
00:04:57They're
00:05:00a concept of freedom had emerged.
00:05:01But Greek society
00:05:03of the time depended on the institution of slavery, so
00:05:05only some could be free
00:05:09with the Reformation in 16th century Europe,
00:05:11According to Hagel,
00:05:14a new culture had emerged,
00:05:16which regarded the individual as a rational
00:05:18agent responsible for its own salvation,
00:05:21and the spirit of the French Revolution in 17 89 promised to shine enlightenment.
00:05:25Reason on every corner of government and culture,
00:05:30which Hagel described as a glorious mental dawn
00:05:33for Hagel, a new kind of rational free community had emerged on the European stage.
00:05:37Now the idea
00:05:44that history was a journey
00:05:45that would conclude with the founding of a
00:05:47new political community appealed very much to marks.
00:05:49But it was also Hagel's application of dialectic logic to the study of history
00:05:53as a process wherein the internal contradictions of
00:05:57societies were ultimately resolved through change and upheaval
00:06:00that Marks found particularly compelling.
00:06:05And later Marx would argue that at the heart of capitalism
00:06:08lay a fundamental contradiction.
00:06:11Only this time it was between profit and wages.
00:06:14The pursuit of profit by the factory owner was inevitably
00:06:17pitted against the pursuit of wages by the factory worker.
00:06:21And Marx argued
00:06:25that the motor of history derived from this contradiction
00:06:26and the struggle between social classes that it precipitated.
00:06:30And he predicted
00:06:34that a decisive battle would be fought once those classes had polarised into two
00:06:35rival blocs the bourgeoisie
00:06:40and proletariat,
00:06:42with the latter
00:06:44destined to be triumphant.
00:06:45Now. A key concept
00:06:48in Marx's early writings was alienation,
00:06:50which he developed from his reading of fire back
00:06:53and which was central to both his criticisms of capitalism
00:06:56and religion.
00:07:00For example,
00:07:01Marx argued
00:07:03that industrial technology
00:07:04transformed human labour
00:07:06into a series of repetitive mechanical movements
00:07:08that rendered the worker
00:07:11both intellectually and physically. He said
00:07:12to the level of a machine
00:07:15in this way the worker was alienated from work
00:07:18and from the products of work.
00:07:21But industrial technology also
00:07:23said marks
00:07:26dehumanised workers
00:07:27and therefore alienated workers from what he called their species, being
00:07:29a distinctive quality unique to human beings, which we might call their essence.
00:07:33As for religion,
00:07:39Marks agreed with fire back,
00:07:41but the duplication of the world into a religious one and a secular one
00:07:43caused self alienation.
00:07:47But he went further,
00:07:50describing religion as the opium of the people
00:07:51and the call on them to give up their illusions was a call on them
00:07:54to give up conditions that required illusions.
00:07:58Just as labour in the capitalist economy alienated the worker.
00:08:01So religion alienated the individual from the possibility of a better,
00:08:05more humane world in the here and now,
00:08:10rather than pushed into some distant hereafter,
00:08:12fire back then was not radical enough.
00:08:16It was one thing to expose God
00:08:19as a product of thought.
00:08:21It was another to see that thought
00:08:23as the product of a particular type of society
00:08:25in need of radical transformation.
00:08:28Hence, at the end of the thesis on fire back, Marx wrote,
00:08:31The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways.
00:08:35The point
00:08:39is to change it.
00:08:39And the second observation
00:08:42concerns the claim made by the French
00:08:44thinker Louis Altizer that Marx's thought underwent
00:08:46an intellectual shift around 18 45
00:08:49after which
00:08:53it was marked by development of a new and distinctive vocabulary.
00:08:54So he was no longer talking about alienation,
00:08:58and he began talking about base
00:09:02superstructure,
00:09:04ideology,
00:09:05the relations of production, the forces of production.
00:09:06All of these concepts and terms can be found
00:09:10in the preface to a contribution to a critique of political economy,
00:09:13a piece of writing widely regarded as providing a clear summary
00:09:17of Marxist materialist approach to society
00:09:21and which we will look at in a bit more depth in the next lecture
00:09:24Now. This shift, according to Al Tusa, represented a break in Marx's thought,
00:09:29whereupon the jiggly in stamp of his early writings was left behind.
00:09:34So let's conclude this initial section with a quick summary
00:09:40of where we are and what we've covered. So far,
00:09:44we have indicated the broad sweep of Marx's
00:09:48influence on the social sciences and theology,
00:09:51and we will cover much of this in depth in the lectures that follow,
00:09:54including the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Luis Alcazar.
00:09:57The emergence of the Frankfurt school
00:10:01and also liberation theologians is
00:10:03such as Otto Maduro.
00:10:05We have noted the influence on Marxist thought of Hagel
00:10:07and the young hig aliens, including Ludwig Fire Back,
00:10:11which is evident in Marx's approach to history
00:10:14and in concepts such as alienation.
00:10:17And finally,
00:10:20we have noted the suggestion that Marx's thought underwent a shift around 18 45
00:10:21from the early writings, which expressed philosophical, hig alien ideas
00:10:26to the later writings, which are more sociological.
00:10:30
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Tremlett, P. (2021, August 23). Marxism and Religion - Karl Marx and Religion: Life, Influences, Ideas and Legacies [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/marxism-and-religion/karl-marx-and-religion-life-influences-ideas-and-legacies
MLA style
Tremlett, P. "Marxism and Religion – Karl Marx and Religion: Life, Influences, Ideas and Legacies." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 23 Aug 2021, https://massolit.io/courses/marxism-and-religion/karl-marx-and-religion-life-influences-ideas-and-legacies