Talk:Marxism and religion

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Possible changes to last section
One links to a blog, and the other clicks to a broken link. If selected and followed, the link works. The blog links no sources, and in one case states that V.I. Lenin quoted a Chinese Communist in 1955, long after Lenin's demise. On the second link, religion is reduced to 'a strong belief in something' with no other qualifiers. Criticism is fine, but some better sources would certainly be appreciated. I'm gonna comment it out in the meantime, but will delete/edit in a couple of weeks if there's no objections/improvement in the quality. AlphaEnder (talk) 05:14, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Full disclosure
I'm an atheist (see my userbox!). If anybody feels this article is biased, please make any necessary edits. Secondly, I copied a lot of the information for this article from separate articles. Bsimmons 666  (talk) Friend? 20:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

More Structure and Content
This article should be expanded greatly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.34.145 (talk) 20:54, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, I think there's lots of room for expansion. Gatoclass (talk) 03:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Nietzsche
I'm pretty sure Nietzsche said socialism or communism are slave moral ideologies and therefore just a developed form of christian morality. Maybe someone could find something about that.

Destruction of Churches, sending to Gulag, etc. plus
There should be something in here about the organized campaign, over several decades, to forcibly remove religion, religious buildings and religious people from the Soviet Union.

That said, what really interests me about this topic is that Communism became a religion in itself. e.g. look at the religious atmosphere enforced in Lenin's tomb. There were many things under Communism that could only be called "sacred." Perhaps anything along these lines would be OR, but to anyone who saw the SU up close, it should be obvious. Smallbones (talk) 22:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Feel free to expand the Religion in the Soviet Union section! Bsimmons 666  (talk) Friend? 22:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting topic when I have time. 5000 google hits for the exact phrase "communism is a religion" 581 hits in google books including Doris Lessing:"Arthur Koestler and others wrote a book called The God That Failed, and now it is a commonplace to say that communism is a religion."  If anybody wants to go ahead first, please do. Smallbones (talk) 03:58, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Possible source
This may be a useful source for this article:


 * Arthur McGovern, "Is Atheism Essential to Marxism?", a chapter (pp. 456–464) in The Sheed & Ward Anthology of Catholic Philosophy edited by James C. Swindal and Harry J. Gensler, S.J. ISBN 0742531988

McGovern has also written a variety of other things on the relationship of Marxism to religion. I haven't got time to incorporate it into the article at the moment so am putting the reference here for future use by me or any other interested editor. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:36, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Alleged ambiguity of Marx's view on religion
The section "Marx on religion" closes with the claim that there is noteworthy disagreement amongst historians about Marx's attitude toward religion based off of this quote. I shuffled the citation for the quote so that it no longer appears to support this claim and tagged it with. The quote appears to clearly show Marx viewed religion as a pacifier for the suffering masses, the disposal of which was a crucial step in improving the the circumstances that required a pacifier to begin with. As I have only just started editing I do not wish to outright delete this claim without providing an opportunity for a legitimate source to be brought forward. If no such source is brought forward in a timely manner then I will edit the content of the section, or request a more experienced editor do so given the high profile nature of the topic. --Shinra42 (talk) 22:51, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

No sources have been provided so I have deleted the section reading:

"The esoteric nature of the quote has led to some confusion among historians, who are divided as to whether Marx was speaking in favor of or against organized religion. Though Marx does state that religion is "the heart of a heartless world," and that "the demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions" (which could be taken to mean that religion is a necessary component of society, true or false).[citation needed]"

I will try to provide a sourced common interpretation soon unless somebody else beats me to it. --Shinra42 (talk) 03:10, 5 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The presentation in this article as Marx being ambiguous on religion seems to be a distinct minority view. It is not really the view of the source quoted, who says approx "in the end, Marx rejected religion." (I've put this in the 1st paragraph, together with a linking ref).  Frankly much of the article appears to be misleading.  Marxism, as the term is commonly understood, was not at all ambiguous about religion.  Smallbones (talk) 12:28, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The "opium" quote given is from a very old translation that has allowed this to become one of the most misused phrases in history- this is a better translation:

" " Religion is the sigh of the oppressed human animal, the heart of a heartless situation, the soul of a soulless condition. It is an opiate for the masses. " — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robin J Thomson (talk • contribs) 19:30, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

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ISBN
Comrades (if), the article contains two references to books whose ISBN is written incorrectly and a red message appears in the references section. I don't know how to fix it. Do you? Χρυσάνθη Λυκούση (talk) 08:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Marx rejects religion ... Is that really a strong enough truth as to mention at almost the very beginning of the article?
At the very beginning of this article on Marxism and Religion, I found the following statement: The founder and primary theorist of Marxism, the nineteenth-century German thinker Karl Marx, had a negative attitude to religion, viewing it primarily as "the opium of the people" that had been used by the ruling classes to give the working classes false hope for millennia, while at the same time recognizing it as a form of protest by the working classes against their poor economic conditions.[1] In the end, Marx rejects religion.[2] The sentences I mention above end at a conclusion. The conclusion is that Marx rejects religion. However, there are almost no direct quotes from any scholar discernible in these sentences. Only five words have been directly quoted: "the opium of the people". Which Wikipedia policy exactly states that an editor can draw a speedy conclusion with so much little amount of direct quote?? Is the directly quoted material enough to show that Marx conclusively rejected religion? If so, according to which Wikipedia policy? Arghyan Opinions (talk) 06:59, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I wish to quote from Lobkowicz
In the Wikipedia article on Marxism and Religion, I wish to quote certain sentences from Lobkowicz to show the general complexity of Marx's perception on religion. Now how to proceed? Where should I include the quotations? Arghyan Opinions (talk) 09:06, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Did you end up getting it figured out? I don't recall seeing quotes from Lobkowicz on it, but then again I was looking more in the Lenin section at the time. AlphaEnder (talk) 05:14, 12 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Dear AlphaEnder, there are quotes like that in Lobkowicz, which shows Marx's greater interest in class struggle than atheist propaganda. Arghyan Opinions (talk) 18:14, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

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Pol Pot and Marxism
With regards to the Khmer Rouge being an oppressive right wing party installed by the CIA and their focuses on anti-intellectuals and their wars on the peasants, I don't think they're worth bringing up in a discussion on Marxism and it's relevance to anything. I understand that they make a claim to Marxism, but their wars on the people and their oppressive ideology, I don't think their claim is very legitimate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:983:300:3B40:EC5A:4F3F:B827:32D1 (talk) 20:16, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Addition of poorly sourced content on Hinduism
Concerning edits to instate this content, there are two sources provided. The second source, as a medium blog post, is totally unusable. The other source, is Swarajaya, a political magazine. Now, there's a few problems with how the source is being used. Even the very best political magazines are not good sources for history: academic articles and books by established historians are the standard good source in this field. From reading our article for Swarajaya, it seems that they have at times spread misinformation, which is not a plus for their reliability. They're also politically opposed to Marxism, making them a less than neutral source. But the bigger issue here is that the Swarajaya piece doesn't support any of the claims except that the two massacres occurred, and the article doesn't really make the case that they were targeted because they were Hindu (it does say that the CPI spread rumors that they were fundamentalists as a pretext, which is worth mentioning if we can find a more reliable source for it). signed,Rosguill talk 03:57, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

State examples
There's a fair amount of content that I wrote for Freedom of religion in Somalia, Freedom of religion in Tanzania, and similar articles for post-Yugoslav states that could probably be added to this article, but these countries do not fit cleanly in the Marxist-Leninist mold. Does anyone have thoughts on how to reorganize the section? We could rename the section "Socialist states", but then I'm not sure if we'd want to subdivide based on specific ideologies or if that's getting too in the weeds. signed,Rosguill talk 16:35, 1 October 2020 (UTC)