It's interesting that opium was viewed by the Brits as fairly benign, although I guess I have my doubts, or suspect they had theirs, considering that it was China and not England that they wanted to push their drugs in, yes I know that opium was not criminalized in England in the 1840s, but it was not highly promoted as in China after the Opium Wars. Be that as it may.
You also have to read the passage in its rhetorical logic as well as the social history. -- All of the social history, knowing who Marx was and where his sympathies lay! Not only with the Chinese and against the British colonialists, but also against religion, since passage is part of Marx's contribution to the Young Hegelian attack on the status quo (including colonialism) and its religious support. It is therefore nor credible to take Marx as saying, "religion is good, like opium." He doesn't want people to take solace in faith(even though he explains why they do), he wants them to transform society so they don't have to.
Rhetorically the passage on religion gives us a series of explanatory characterizations of religion (European Christianity), the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions, the cry of the oppressed soul -- that are clearly in part ironical insofar as they appear to be positive or endorsements of religion. We know these because they are offered in the context of a critique of religion.
After the normatively neutral (as far as an assessment of religion goes) caesura, "the cry of the oppressed," Marx concludes with the "opium of the masses" clause. It is the sting in the tail of sentence, a negative characterization that reverses the ironical, superficially positive thrust of the first two clauses, and reveals them to be ironical. And it makes to sense to read it in any other way, even just taking the passage on its own, because there would be no rhetorical point in returning to a positive characterization after the caesura. That would just be wrong footed, and Marx very rarely is wrongfooted. The passage then does not read, + + 0 +, as you seem to suggest but ( + + ) 0 -! --the parentheses indicate irony.
--- jrdavis <from_alamut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You need to read up on how opium was viewed in the
> West. That the Chinese rejected opium was seen in
> Britian as a sign of their backwardness.
>
> jim
>
> andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars#From_the_Napier_Affair_through_the_First_Opium_War_.281834.E2.80.931843.29
>
> --- jrdavis wrote:
>
> > Opium was considered a pain reliever and a
> > beneficial medicine in the West during Marx's
> early
> > life.
> >
> > jim
> >
> > Chris Doss 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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> >
> >
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> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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