Henry Idema: Karl Marx's perspective on religion

Religion must illuminate the economic structure of society and address its inequalities and not blind us to those inequalities.

Henry Idema: Karl Marx's perspective on religion

Marx's economic theories were disproved by history, e.g. the failures of  Stalin's collective farms and the nationalization of industry in the Soviet Union, economic failures in North Vietnam and China in the 1950s. However, Marx's interpretation of religion remains a powerful tool to make sense of the role of religion in our society, such as in last November's elections.  

Marx argued that one needs to follow the money to understand how a society and its economic system function. The structure of society, he argued, is controlled by a class system that determines how money is distributed — and controlled. The rich have the power to increase their wealth because they buy and sell the politicians who pass the tax laws that benefit them. The goal here is maintaining one's wealth and then increasing it. Think of the role of money in our politics, especially during election season.

Economic forces for Marx are the basic structure of a society. He called religion part of the superstructure, the frosting on the cake, so to speak. For Marx, the upper classes use religion to maintain their power and wealth by distracting and even blinding the lower classes to inequalities of wealth within a society and the unjust tax laws that sustain this inequality.  

In the recent presidential election, consider the role of religion. As a society, we were debating abortion as a religious issue, and the role of abortion in economic decisions was largely ignored, although the Democrats tried to make that point.

The GOP spent millions on transgender issues, e.g., can transgender women born as men, and now view themselves as women, play women's sports and use the same bathrooms? 

Henry Idema

In some states, we are now debating whether Bible stories can be taught in our schools and whether the Ten Commandments can be posted in schools.

Here, I would agree with Marx that such debates, as important as they are, diverted us, even blinded us, to the underlying economic issues in our society that should have been debated in the months before the election. I will simply list some of these:

  1. Our national debt of $36 trillion and annual deficits of trillions of dollars. 
  2. The interest on our national debt is approaching $1 trillion a year, more than our defense budget. Think of what that money could do to improve living conditions for people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.
  3. A tax code that favors the rich.  

We are heading toward economic disaster if we do not address the problem of our debt and deficits.

The Biden Administration did not cut the national debt or even come up with a plan to do so. Trump, in his first term, also did not address the national debt, and his tax policies for his second term, as in his first, will increase the national debt if spending is not cut. Trump's tax policies primarily favor the rich. Marx would ask us: Are you surprised?

Religion, if you know your Bible or Koran, speaks to economic injustice. Just read Amos or Jeremiah. Yet that aspect of religion is not emphasized in our politics. Rather religion is used to stir up emotions about cultural issues, which then blind us to such facts as the small number of people in our society that control most of our wealth.

The inability of religion in our society to highlight economic inequality, the unfairness of our tax code, the dangers of annual deficits and our national debt, and how our politicians use religion to blind us — thus preventing us from seeing clearly these underlying economic realities — is a glaring weakness. Moreover, politicians use religion to maintain their power and their own wealth, which always seems to increase dramatically once in office. This weakness of religion is why Marx said this of religion in this famous description: 

"Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions," and then he added this well-known conclusion, "religion is the opium of the people."  

Our rampant drug use is the expression of real suffering, it is a consolation people seek because of frustrations imposed upon them by the social order. Moreover, many people turn to religion for similar consolation.

Marx admitted that religion preserves a vision and conviction that human life is meant to be better than the actual conditions. The tragedy of modern religion is that it for the most part does not address these economic conditions where so many people can not pay their bills or afford housing, not to speak of college.  

If religion is going to thrive in the long run, it must return to its prophetic roots in the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Amos, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets. Religion must illuminate the economic structure of society and address its inequalities and not blind us to those inequalities.

— Henry Idema lives in Grand Haven. He can be reached at henryidema3@yahoo.com.