Compare and contrast the two theories Durkheim and Marx
The traditional interpretation of Marxist conceptualization of religion to start with is seems to be economistic as well as simplistic in its form. His famous quote on the role of religion in hypnotizing the mass is more often spoken by many academicians and few scholars are not only forget these famous lines about ‘religion is the opiate of the mass’.( Lough, 2006 )
The interpretation of Marx on religion, however the ground critic of the capitalist world and indispensable to understand and observes the substitution of material commodities and values relations of the economic activity into the place of spiritual or mystical character.
AS Lough (2006) put Marx assertions in this regard the intention of the substitution is transgressed from no significance to the sage of worshipping economic goods not for their use and importance but for the perceived sensitivity image of the goods:
Through this substitution, the products of labor become commodities, sensuous things which are at the same time supra-sensible [übersinnliche] or social. . . . [T]he commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labor within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves, which assumes here, for them, the fantastic [phantasmagorische] form of a relation between things.(p.3)
The above analogy is the most important concept of Marx’s perception on how capitalism turns things into the level of the consciousness of the mass with its power to change and rediscovered what was there as a new and mind seized phenomenon. As Marx asserted:
‘In religion the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race’.(cited in Lough, 2006:3)
In its process the thoughts of Marx on religion are not solely provided rather they manifested the whole and complete assumptions of him on the social world and specifically in relation to economic life. At this point the following commentary is helpful:
‘More plausibly, Marx is engaged on the ambitious business of `expounding the real process of production’ in order to explain ‘the basis of all history’, `its action as State’ (forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, morality etc. etc.), so that the whole thing . . . can be depicted in its totality’. (McLennan , 2001:44)
In this regard the thoughts of Max Weber were also getting along with conforming and accepting the explanation of Marx on religion in its pertinent contribution to economic activates and human history of the then western societies. To look briefly at the patterns of such claims:
Weber defined his field by asking a new question -what is the influence of religion on everyday economic life? This was his value relation to history and to judge by the work’s success, it was a cultural question that found a large audience. Weber acknowledged that his viewpoint was by no means the only one and that materialist conceptions of history (for example, Marx’s theory of class conflict) were equally pertinent (Sayer,1991: 92-133, cited in Whimster ,2001 :57)
However, in such circumstances the stand of Weber was not necessarily accept the deterministic role of religion in class ideology rather he did indicated the influenced attribution of religion by material life. As Whimster (2001) paraphrasing it:
‘Weber recognized the reverse causal sequence: how religions are influenced by material factors. By this he did not mean that religion is the ideology of social class, as argued by Marxists.’(p.58)
Moreover, Weber was critically justified the relationship between religion and economic life as complementary and mutually dependent. For this side, he did say the following:
‘Economic behavior is influenced by religious ethics; likewise religions influenced by the factors of social stratification and of political rulership. The chain of interactions has the potential to extend endlessly’.(cited in Whiemster, 2001)
Marx conception of religion is fundamentally related to the development of class and its effect in proletariats’ as a divisive tool to the historical transitions of human history. As he strictly shows:
In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.(Marx and Engels ,1884:5)
The role of religion in his sense is destructive and the capitalists are not obviously committed to see labor without exploitations and the class difference is staying so long as religion and other old ideological positions that create false consciousness and restricted him from class struggle. The persistence of religion and other philosophical thoughts are not easily eliminated as Marx observes, and this is the difficult part of human life. In their communist manifesto Marx and Engels fully address this fact and its place in history:
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”(p. 8)
There for the Final alternative for Marxist perspectives in accordance with religion and related factors is to dismantle the core elements of such immaterial components of human life and establishing an egalitarian communist society. So what will be then?