Not a Marxist myself, but admiring a lot of what Marx wrote, whether he meant "opium of the people" in a good way, neutral, or bad way is mainly irrelevant to me. There are plenty of other socialist thinkers from his period who saw the influence of religion as being very, very lamentable. I'm sure Marx was aware of their thoughts; for him to chime in dissonance with them -- "No, it's actually neutral!" or "It's good like the medicine opium is good!" or whatever -- would be odd. But I guess it's not impossible. Wasn't Engels a fan of "scientific socialism" and put Marx up there with Darwin, especially accentuating the irrationality of religion?
And again, whether it's an opiate or not, I myself don't like religion because it just isn't true. Lots of untrue things can be "helpful," i.e. "If you don't behave nicely, Johnny, Santa won't bring you toys this year."
Like I said, I'm more of the "No gods, no masters" school than "let's figure out what Marx REALLY meant" bent.
But then again I have my nerdy fascinations, too. I can only complain about debates over holy scripture as a hypocrite myself, because I like to examine a lot of things this way, too. But my own "common sense" has always told me Marx essentially meant religion = mostly a bad thing.
-B.
Charles Brown wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen
>
> 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.
>
> ^^^
> CB: Nice metaphor you use. Actually, Marx's last
image is the halo 'round
> the vale of woe (tears), which fits your analogy ,
though this tail is
> ironically gentle, not a sting. Nice metaphor Marx
uses !
>
> ^^^^^^
>
> 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.