Incidentally - and perhaps slightly off topic - for more information on some of these general themes, I cannot recommend Regis Debray's book "Media Manifestos" highly enough. Debray has in particular some brilliant pages on Marxism, and on the problem of transmission that it occludes. He says:
"It comes down to the fact that this giant of human thought who thought about neither mediation (the Party), nor mediators (party cadres) nor milieus (like that of the intelligentsia), nor the means (of distribution), was the least political of theoreticians. The author of Capital would not have been able, I think, to adequately explain to himself the poewr that this mobilizing -ism would one day exert over hundreds of millions of men, nor the formidable dynamism that it was to install at its peak in underdeveloped and pre-capitalist countries. The hybrid of idea and motor [l'ideomoteur] becomes an enigma from the moment ideology is made into a shadow game."
He then adds, in a characteristically wry aside:
"Does not a slogan such as "religion is the opiate of the people" reveal two regrettable instances of ignorance - of opiate addicts first, of soldier-monks beyond that? Had Marx traveled a bit further, he would have known that the person who gives himself or herself to opium lays down the weapons or tools and stretched out, and tone and energy levels drop. The person given over, by contrast, body and soul to God intends tall too well to make others profit from Him too. As a general rule, religious faith is tonic; the opium poppy a sedative. The Knights Templar of long ago, and today the hezbollahs or Muslim brethren, do not bear a very close resemblance to emaciated hookah-addicts in Chinese drug dens."
MM, p.94
I think Marx knew exactly what he was saying when he called religion the opiate of
the masses.
What do you mean by "tonic"?
Opiates are opiates, and can have sedative properties, but they are not sedatives in real pharmaceutical terms. I can assure you that over time, any "sedative" effects of opiates lessen, while the physical dependence remains. I think Marx's is a very apt metaphor...at the time Marx was writing, people went to get their dose of token Christianity a few times per week, got their "worship" fix, and the "us and them" belief system espoused by church goers effectively elided the political significance of ethical acts in favor of ethical acts performed for the reward of an afterlife. For the religious believer of the time, and in particular Christians, the ills of the world are ineluctible. The belief that the world is evil, is basically a domain where the devil runs rampant, and that the faithful will be rewarded later more or less lets th believer off the hook in terms of political responsibility and motivation. The only thing a Christian of the time needs to do is go to church, believe in as orthodox a manner as possible, and their reward will be eternal in heaven. Jesus was very clear on this--the poor are always with us, and Cesar is always going to be Cesar.
Religious belief at the time did not much resemble the mysticism or radical imperialist sort of the Roman conquerors or the Crusades, nor did it resemble contemporary fundamentalism where believers are politically mobilized. Sure, there was a strong religious establishment, but it didn't amount to much more than a residual cultural tradition in terms of praxis. As the political foundations of Christianity slowly corroded and mutated after its empire fell, Christianity became both a bourgeois convention and the ideological means by which the underclass was kept under wraps (the poor would be rich in the afterlife, if they believed hard enough)...
The primary characteristic of a heroin addict (that is relevant here) is that they reach a point where they can no longer get high anymore but are still entirely unable to function without the drug--the addict no longer feels the pleasureable effects of heroin but nevertheless is compelled to continue using it based on both the need to avoid the hideous withdrawal syndrome/symptoms that comprise physical dependence AND, perhaps even more importantly, because the ritual aspects of the use, the obsessive-compulsive behavioral elements of drug abuse that comprise psychological dependence, the incidental behaviors (e.g. needle use--I know people who will inject hot water simply because the compulsion to continue the injection ritual, even in the absense of heroin, is so psychologically compelling) the user has habituated are the mechanism by which the physical addiction is reinforced. It's often said, by a heroin addict in recovery, that withdrawal was hard but learning how to live without the drug after withdrawal is even harder. (Kind of like when a smoker says "what am I going to do with my hands if I quit smoking?" for the opiate addict the question is "what am I going to do with all those hours I was devoting to morbid seek orientation and acquiring and using drugs?")
The parallel Marx is making is between these characteristics of opiate addiction and the sort of cultural compulsion people felt to continue praticing Christianity after it was well past its due date in terms of worldwide dominance and political influence. Christianity, which once was a very powerful and effective belief system, became an empty ritual performed because, well, people have been doing it for so long. Christians of the time were like heroin addicts--in the absence of any real pleasure (any spiritual committment to Christianity), Christians were compelled to "inject hot water", to continue going to church because that's what their parents did, that's what they'd done their entire lives, that's what they did on Sunday.
Looks like Mr. Tea said the same thing more concisely. x-post.
