As Marx certainly knew when he wrote the famous passage on religion, opium was prohibited in China, the trade being a capital crime, and it took a war to force opium down the throats of the Chinese.
--- jrdavis <from_alamut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Opium was considered a pain reliever and a
> beneficial medicine in the West during Marx's early
> life.
>
> jim
>
> Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I always thought he had in mind not the Opium Wars,
> but the use of opiates as anesthesia and as a
> high-society recreational drug (or did that not
> start
> until later?).
>
> --- James Heartfield
> wrote:
>
> > the 'opium of the people'. Marx was no 'sixties
> > druggy. He thought opium was
> > very bad indeed. The image he had in mind was not
> Wm
> > Burroughs but the opium
> > that the British Empire had used to get the
> Chinese
> > addicted, so they would
> > be forced to give up their tea.
> >
> > In today's circumstances, which is something like
> a
> > slip backwards from the
> > high point of Enlightenment rationality, I can
> > understand the point that the
> > critics of religion are sometimes worse than
> > religion itself. I mean that
> > the Nietzsche/Kojeve/Sartre humanism is a
> > disenchantment with humanity that
> > strips out exactly that which is best in Hegelian
> > Geist, the active,
> > subjective side.
> >
> > But if anyone wants to make a Marxist defence of
> > religion they should bear
> > in mind that, like a good Hegelian, Marx would
> think
> > Protestantism superior
> > to catholicism, and catholicism superior to
> Judaism,
> > and all of them
> > superior to Islam, which is plainly a descent into
> > mumbo-jumbo, and all
> > organised religions superior to new age beliefs,
> > with the worship of the
> > Earth mother Gaia at the bottom of any list he
> would
> > be likely to draw up.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> >
>
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> >
>
>
> Lyubo, bratsy, lyubo, lyubo, bratsy, zhit!
>
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>
>
>
>
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