Worldview category: atheistic (non-theistic)

Symbol:

The hammer and sickle are commonly used to symbolize the proletariat (working) class in Marxism or Communism. The hammer and sickle represent the workers and farmers, respectively, of the proletariat.

Hammer and Sickle, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Description:

Marxism is not a religion. It is a worldview that focuses primarily on an economic, political and social ideology. However, as a worldview, it also addresses other areas, including religion and morality.

Marxism is “The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society’s allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

The Marxist ideology was espoused in The Communist Manifesto, which was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The first edition was published in 1848.

The first sentence of The Communist Manifesto is “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The combatants in the class struggle are the bourgeois (the oppressors), who own property and control the means of production, and the proletariat (the oppressed), which is composed of the working class.

View of reality: Marxism is materialistic (non-theistic) and, therefore, denies the existence of a supernatural realm. Matter is all that exists.

View of economics: Marxism opposes capitalism, because it views the ruling class as being oppressive of the working class.

View of God and religion: Marxism is atheistic.

“…we have once and for all declared war on religion and religious ideas and care little whether we are called atheists or anything else.” Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 3:463.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." Karl Marx, Marx, Karl. [1843] 1970. "Introduction." A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, translated by A. Jolin and J. O’Malley, edited by J. O’Malley. Cambridge University Press. – via Marxists.org.

“Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze.” V.I. Lenin

“Our Program is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Program, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily include the propaganda of atheism; the publication of appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of the fields of our Party work.” V.I. Lenin, Socialism and Religion

Major Proponents:

It is important to note that the proponents listed below interpreted and applied Marxist ideology in various ways.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

V.I. Lenin

Leon Trotsky

Joseph Stalin

Che Guevara

Insights and Commentary:

“The capitalist class was the ruling class, according to the Marxian view, in that its imperatives were also the imperatives of those with political power. In much the same way, Marx and Engels envisioned a workers’ state as responsive to the general necessities of maintaining socialism or communism, and so constituting a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ Yet the sense in which they applied the term did not preclude democracy or freedom, nor did their projected dictatorship resemble twentieth-century dictatorships.” 1

“…no matter how realistic Marxism might be about the limitations and trade-offs of the capitalist and pre-capitalist past, for the communist future it opened the prospect of constructing a society without regard to inherent constraints…The fact that Marx and Engels refused to draw up details of such a society in advance constituted virtually a blank check for their successors. The starvation and other basic deprivations that struck millions of people in Russia, China, and elsewhere were part of the price of this Marxian self-assured optimism.” 2

“With the rise of Communist nations in the twentieth century, the divisions and proliferations of varied versions of Marxism have become even greater. Leninism, Trotskyism, and Maoism are only some of the major divisions among Communists who claim to be lineal descendants of Marx…Other socialists have also incorporated Marx’s doctrines in their goals and policies, often in forms openly revised in the light of modern conditions.” 3

“Marx’s own justifications of the terrorism of the Paris Commune were only a faint foretaste of the butchery under Lenin and Stalin in Russia, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and other Communist despots elsewhere.” 4

“The Marxian vision took the overwhelming complexity of the real world and made the parts fall into place, in a way that was intellectually exhilarating and conferred such sense of moral superiority that opponents could be simply labelled and dismissed as moral lepers or blind reactionaries. Marxism was - and remains - a mighty instrument for the acquisition and maintenance of political power.” 5

Key Terms:

Bourgeois - The wealthy elite who own and control the means of production and oppress the working class.

Dialectical materialism - A method of looking at society in which change takes place on the basis of internal forces, such as the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It was envisioned that the deficiencies of capitalism, would eventually evolve into a classless, collectivist society. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” was seen as the culmination of capitalism, which, in turn, would lead to a revolution by the working class to dismantle the power and control of the ruling capitalists.

Proletariat - The working class (the laborers, such as industrial workers and farmers) who are oppressed by the bourgeois.

Sources:

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friederich. The Communist Manifesto. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975.

Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions. New York: Harper One, 1991.

Sowell, Thomas. Marxism - Philosophy and Economics, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1985.

1 Sowell, Thomas. Marxism - Philosophy and Economics, William Morrow and Company, New York, p. 162.

2 Ibid, p. 206.

3 Ibid, p. 189.

4 Ibid, p. 207.

5 Ibid, p. 218.