[lbo-talk] Marxism and religion

[John Thornton]

sharif islam wrote:
> Vol. 31 Issue 1/2), sheds some light on the quote.
>
> Reading 'Opium of the People': Expression, Protest and the Dialectics
> of Religion.
> Andrew McKinnon
>
> The author  brings opium into the historical context of medicine. He elaborates:
>
> "In Europe, at the beginning of the nineteenth century opium was
> largely an <i>unquestioned good</i>. Such was its importance as a
> medicine that in the first years of the nineteenth century, people
> would have understood "opium of the people" as something we could
> translate into twentieth century idiom as "penicillin of the people",
> By the end of the nineteenth century, however, its medical uses had
> largely been supplanted by other medicines, and medical and moral
> puritans effectively demonized opium.
> It is between these two periods that Marx penned opium as his metaphor
> for religion.  In 1843, it is an ambiguous, multidimensional and
> contradictory metaphor, express both the earlier and later
> understanding of the fruit of the poppy".
>
> The article was republished under a different heading in  _Marx,
> critical theory, and religion : a critique of rational choice_ /
> edited by Warren S. Goldstein, which has few other interesting
> articles as well.
>
> --sharif
Is this article on-line anywhere that you know of? I'd like to read it 
if it is.
While I mainly agree with what is claimed above I feel opium was 
considered more a positive than negative in Marx time except for those 
who opposed it on puritanical moral grounds. Certainly contradictory but 
much like we would view anti-depressants today. Unquestioningly good but 
with negative aspects due mainly to misuse, misunderstanding, and 
unreasonable expectations. The contradictions to opiums perceived good 
in Marx day would have been understood as being contradictions with 
important qualifiers attached.

John Thornton