Eleventh International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Generally, a simplistic view is adopted regarding Marxist idea of Religion based on a very few common quotes by Karl Marx considering the least regarding their contexts. Actually a thorough understanding of the works of Marx and Engels reveals different layers. Here we shall try to excavate the unnoticed points they made regarding their critique on religion during the final years of their academic endeavours. We will try to analyse how post-Marxist theorists gradually connects his complex ideas of economic determinism, abolition of alienation with the general idea of religion. We will try to deal with this complicated topic with thorough linguistic and deconstructionist re-reading of the texts of Marxist and post-Marxist critics to understand the subject better. Marx strived a lot and tried to find out a materialistic account of human alienation in his “Economic and Political Manuscripts” published later in 1944. Marx found out a link between the politics behind religion and economic exploitation in the capitalist mode of production. Marx actually makes his comments based on Christian theology and similar religious ideas that emphasize on the belief of God and afterlife. Most of the streams of Hindu doctrine persuade man to evade the thinking of the material world. The Marxist explanation on the politics of religion can also significantly be applied on Buddhist theology which suggest to enjoy the world forgetting the miseries of the present life. I recommend here several connotations that would have been pertinent in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century.