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Marx was an atheist from his childhood and remained such for the
whole of the rest of his life.
His atheism was not only practical but also theoretical. His
theoretical atheism is due primarily to philosophical reasons and only
secondarily to historical, social and political reasons.
Already in his thesis for the doctorate Marx proclaims in no
uncertain terms that "in the country of reason" the existence
of God cannot have any meaning. "Take paper money to a country in
which this use of paper money is not known, and everyone will laugh at
your subjective representation. Go with your gods to a country in which
other gods are worshipped, and you will be shown that you are the victim
of fancies and abstractions. And rightly. Anyone who had brought a
migrant god to the ancient Greeks, would have found the proof of the
non-existence of this god, because it did not exist for the Greeks. What
is the case in a certain country for certain foreign gods, takes place
for god in general in the country of reason: it is an area in which his
existence ceases" (K. Marx, Frammento dell'appendice della
dissertazione dottorale, in A. Sabetti, Sulla fondazione
del materialismo storico, Florence 1962, p. 415).
Marx's theoretical atheism is the consequence of three postulates: 1)
metaphysical or dialectical materialism which considers matter as the
supreme and unique cause of everything;
2) historical materialism, according to which the economic factor is
the principal and decisive factor, and the economic structure is the
carrying structure of all the other structures that compose society;
3) absolute humanism, which sets man at the summit of the cosmos: man
is the supreme being.
In my opinion the decisive reason on which Marx bases his atheism is
the third one. Marx is an atheist because of his passion for man. What
he wishes to safeguard with atheism is the greatness of man. With
atheism he intends to exclude that there is any superior being, greater
than man. It is in view of man's greatness that he considers it
necessary to destroy religion, because in his judgment the latter is the
opium, the drug, the substitute which prevents man from becoming aware
of his dignity.
I will bring forward some quotations in support of this thesis.
In The Jewish Question we read: "For us religion does not
constitute the foundation, but only the phenomenon of
worldly limitation. For this reason, we explain the religious subjection
of free citizens with their earthly subjection. We affirm that they will
suppress their religious limitation as soon as they have suppressed
their earthly limits. We do not transform earthly questions into
theological questions. We transform theological questions into earthly
ones" (K. Marx, La questione ebraica, Rome 1966, pp.
81-82).
The initial sentence of this passage is very expressive. It says that
religion is a phenomenon (in the Kantian sense of the term) and
not a reality. Therefore religion does not justify, does not found, a
real limitation, man's actual status as a creature, but merely manifests
a contingent historical condition, unjust and transitory. It expresses
man's failure to reach his own greatness. When he achieves it, the
religious phenomenon will disappear.
In the famous Introduction to the Critique of the Hegelian
philosophy of public law, Marx gives an even more explicit
and elaborate formulation of this outlook. "Religious misery",
he writes, "is at once the expression of real misery and a protest
against it. Religion is the groan of the oppressed, the sentiment of a
heartless world, and at the same time the spirit of a condition deprived
of spirituality. It is the opium of the people. The suppression of
religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the premise of its
real happiness. It is first and foremost the task of philosophy,
operating in the service of history, to unmask self-alienation in its
profane forms, after the sacred form of human self alienation has been
discovered. Thus criticism of heaven is transformed into criticism of
the earth, criticism of religion into criticism of law, criticism of
theology into criticism of politics". And just before:
"Religion is the consciousness and awareness of man who has not yet
acquired or who has again lost himself. But man is not an abstract
being, isolated from the world. Man is the world of man, the State,
society. This State and this society produce religion, an upside-down
consciousness of the world, just because they are an upside-down world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic epitome,
its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic point d'honneur,
its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its
fundamental reason of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic
realization of human essence, since human essence does not possess a
true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the
struggle against that world of which religion is the spiritual
aroma" (K. Marx, Per la critica della filosofia del
diritto di Hegel, Introduzione, Rome 1966, pp. 57-58).
Again in the same Introduction we read: "The
criticism of religion leads to the doctrine according to which man is,
for man, the supreme being; therefore it reaches the categorical
imperative of overthrowing all relationships in which man is a degraded,
enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being.
There are also many passages in Marx's works in which lie denounces
the churches and their representatives as allies of governments, of the
privileged classes, of the masters, and in which he reveals their faults
and their abjection, invoking their suppression. But his works as a
whole show that for Marx man's enemies are not priests and churches, but
religion as such. It. is just religion in its purest essence, and not in
the deviations of its representatives, that is the main obstacle to
human advancement, to the liberation of man, to his conquest of
maturity.
Christians who wish to dialogue with Marx and with his disciples must
keep in mind this point of fundamental importance. And therefore they
must not base the dialogue on metaphysical (dialectical) materialism or
on historical materialism, or on the history of the Church (temporal
power, crusades, inquisition, case of Galileo, etc.) but on humanism and
religion, and on the humanistic value of religion and Christianity.
The Catholics who are not ignorant of the reasons of their faith will
not have any difficulty in finding valid arguments to show Marx and his
disciples that religion and Christianity in particular, far from being
enemies of man, are on the contrary the instruments (the sacraments)
that confer on him the possibility of fulfilling himself completely, far
beyond the highest levels of greatness which reason alone permits him to
represent.
In Christianity, man, raised to the dignity of God's son, becomes
greater and not smaller, freer and not more enslaved, nobler and not
more petty, more serene and not more tormented. The Christian, in fact,
is a man who, knowing that he is infinitely loved by God, knows that he
has become infinitely great. And that causes his heart to burst into the
Franciscan song of perfect joy.
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