Marx and Durkheim on Religion Karl Marx

Marx and Durkheim on Religion

Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, two of the most important social critics of the modern world, agree on very little about the functions and goals of religion and its place in modern societies. The one clear overlap in their assessments of religion is that it is immensely important and that no important critique of society can be complete without an examination of religion. This paper explores the approach that each of these theoreticians took in regards to an understanding of how religion functions.

Durkheim and Marx were historical contemporaries, and so it is in no way surprising that they should be interested in many of the same social issues. However, their personal circumstances and personal philosophies were sufficiently different that there is no possible way in which one could ever confuse the two. Durkheim (1858-1917) was in many ways the scion of the Encyclopedists and other French philosophers of the Enlightenment. Although he clearly had certain ideas about how society should work (that is, he was to some extent a prescriptive scholar), he was mostly concerned with how society does work. This latter approach is a descriptive one.

One of Durkheim's major concerns was that sociology be recognized as a legitimate science, something that could be applied with the same rigor as chemistry or biology. This is still a concern in the discipline, although there are differences of opinion today on whether this should remain a serious question. This emphasis on sociology as science pushed Durkheim toward the practice of sociology as descriptive.

Durkheim wanted sociologists to observe society accurately and carefully in the same way that a biologist did (Poggi, 2000, p. 3). Because of this, he tended to be less critical and more accepting of religion than did Marx, who was far more concerned with the ways in which society could be changed. One of Durkheim's fundamental concerns was how societies stick together. That is, given the number of forces pull and push society apart (everything from class conflict to high levels of immigration to the urbanization and industrialization of society), how is it that societies do not simply fall apart?

For him, one of the chief forces for cohesion was established religion. Religion helped people feel that they belonged to a community, and this sense of community helped them act in a range of ways that encouraged them to protect and support each other and to act in altruistic ways (Poggi, 2000, p. 5). This emphasis on aspects of society that pulls people together rather than pushing them apart is reflected in the following passage from 1893, from The Division of Labour in Society.

Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.

Although he is explicitly referring to morality here rather than religion he is describing the same social force. His identification of religion and morality as fulfilling the same function can be seen in his definition of religion (from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life):

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- " beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Durkheim and Marx agree on the fact that religion tends to keep society together. Another way in which this can be expressed is the fact that both of these writers believe that religion tends to retard (or even prevent) social change. The key difference here is that Durkheim believes that overall such cohesion and continuity is good for society while Marx most definitely does not.

Marx is far more concerned with conflict and change than is Durkheim, and so he is far more critical of religion than is Durkheim. This can be seen in the following passage. This quote, from 1843, is Marx's most famous commentary on the nature of the relationship between society and religion:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the 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.

It is the opium of the people.

The above quote has no doubt become the most famous quote on the nature of religion because it offended so many people. But the following passage is a more important one because it elaborates the reasons why Marx felt the way that he did about religion (Raines, 2002, Introduction).

It stems from the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yardstick -- ethics one and political economy another; for each is a specific estrangement of man and focuses attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity, and each stands in an estranged relation to the other.

Marx argued that this is an inherent and constant tension between economic activity and other aspects of social behavior and that -- and this is the key core concept of his philosophy -- the latter forms of social activity disguise the ways in which workers are being oppressed. It is in this way that religion serves as an opiate: It serves as a sort of drug that prevents individuals from recognizing the true condition of their lives (Raines, 2002, Introduction).