Religion and the social movement in Marx and Engels

Abstract

The article investigates the religion theme in Marx and Engels based on the hypothesis that religion contains a multiplicity of social and ideological perspectives. The novelty brought by Marx and Engels transcends the traditional debate between secularism versus religion, indicating that all this can only be thought of by a critique of bourgeois civil society and its institutions, as well as of the capitalist way of producing material life. Traditionally, the secularization phenomenon is understood as one that reduces or restricts religious discourse to the private sphere, in which religion no longer has the power to politically mobilize with the advancement of modernity and democracy. The survival of religion in modernity does not, however, mean a deviation from secularization in modern history, a betrayal of the Enlightenment or even an antagonism towards political emancipation in Marx and Engels. On the contrary, it is the consequence of a secularization that did not face the contradictions of a capitalist society. Religion in Marx and Engels present sa greater complex dynamic than traditionally thought, constituted from different contexts, sometimes comprising a conservative sphere and sometimes progressive or revolutionary. If Marx first stated that religion is be the opium of the people, it is, at the same time, according to Marx himself, the revolt against the real misery of the world. Furthermore, as Engels demonstrates, the peasants and Anabaptists led by Thomas Münzer intended to establish a Christian paradise on earth through a critique of bourgeois and capitalist society from the theological teachings of the Christian Bible, going against Luther's Protestantism and the dominant Catholicism. In this context, religion for Marx and Engels encompassed a complexity, a social dynamic, broad and open to the possibilities of history.