political and social implications of particular interpretations of German idealist traditions. Taking their lead from the German philosopher G. W. Hegel (1770–1831), proponents of idealism regarded ideas as the driving force of historical change. In so doing, idealists believed that socio-cultural and economic-political change could be explained and thereby managed through philosophical understanding of both the dominant ideas of an age and the manner in which these ideas express themselves relative to the epoch in question. As they regarded religion (here, Christianity) as a dominant idea which manifests itself through prevailing societal structures – not least those of the state apparatus – idealists believed that the correct understanding of religion would yield an insightful critique of the socio-cultural processes and economic-political structures through which it is expressed. Social critique, then, is founded on philosophical understanding of otherwise abstract ideas, the essence of which can be captured independently of the concrete historical forms these ideas assume in any given time or place.
It was during his engagement with and eventual break from German idealism that Marx wrote most of his sporadic and otherwise unsystematic comments upon religion. Consequently, the majority of Marx’s remarks upon religion are found in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), German Ideology (1845/6) and the co-authored Communist Manifesto (1848). After this time Marx turned his attention to understanding the overarching structural conditions and concrete productive processes allied with the industrial revolution and the age of capitalism (for example privately owned business, wage–labour dynamics and the class structure). Exemplified by the multivolume Capital (1867–), this period has very little by way of explicit religious critique.1
Historical materialism
Once having broken with the German idealists, Marx believed that it was not ideas that drove history forward but rather the relationship (‘dialectic’) between humankind and its material environment. Driven by the instinct to survive and flourish, humankind reproduces itself – physically, socially, intellectually etc. – by appropriating whatever means its material environment provides. Marx calls this mode of appropriation the ‘means of production’. Down the ages, various ‘means of production’ have been employed (e.g. nomadic herding, hunter-gathering, sedentary agriculturalism), the most recent of which is the industrial-capitalism of modern society. Such is the importance attributed by Marx to the means of production that he held all other forms of societal organization (such as macro-structural, mid-range and micro-social) to originate from it. Marx defined these derivative forms of social organization as ‘relations of production’. The means of production of any given society is thereby understood as a foundational base upon which the social superstructure rests and from which it gets its particular historical form. For Marx, then, all social change is driven by transformations in the underlying means of production – the most notable example of which is the agricultural base of medieval feudalism giving way to the industrial base of modern capitalism. The sharp contrasts between medieval rural society and modern urban society are ultimately grounded in the sharp contrasts between their respective means of production.
Situated knowledge
Although most sociologists do not agree with a number of key features of Marx’s account of historical development, two of his most important assertions have nevertheless come to form central components of a good many sociological approaches. The first of these is Marx’s insistence that all forms of human knowledge be understood in relation to the material contexts within and through which they are produced. Echoing his ongoing battle with idealism, Marx argues that:
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men . . . In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven . . . Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. (McLellan, 1977, p. 164)
Most commonly termed ‘constructionism’ or ‘constructivism’, Marx’s view that knowledge should be viewed as something produced within and thereby – to a greater or lesser extent – relative to a given social context is for many sociologists a foundational theoretical assumption which applies just as much to religious knowledge as it does to other forms of mental activity (Beckford, 2003; Burr, 2003).
Conflictual society
The second of Marx’s formative insights concerns his conflictual view of society. As seen above, Marx believes human history to comprise the successive appearance of different kinds of society whose structures and processes are informed by the particular means of production from which they spring. Marx complements this portrayal of historical development by arguing that the different groups populating society do not enjoy equal access to the dominant means of production upon which their particular society is founded. The three most important things which flow from this assertion are: first, all societies in history have hitherto been unequal; second, society is characterized by different groups vying for access to and control over the prevailing means of production; and third, those groups in control of the means of production wield power and influence in ways which – as unintended consequences – result in society working to their benefit and to the detriment of others. Just as feudal society was characterized by a landed aristocracy whose control of the agricultural means production was transposed into political, social and cultural dominance over other groups (such as serfs and artisans), so capitalist society is characterized by a business- owning (bourgeois) elite whose control of the industrial means of production is transposed into dominance over other classes such as the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie.
Although not all sociologists accept Marx’s assertion that the ‘history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ (McLellan, 1977, p. 222), many accept the basic contention that society is an unequal arena whose structures and processes serve the interests of some groups and work to the detriment of others. As will be seen in Chapter 6, Marx employs the notion of ‘ideology’ to explain how dominant groups not only wield and justify their influence but also manage to persuade dominated groups both to accept this influence and to act in ways which are not in their own best interests. Albeit by virtue of being subject to ideological domination, the oppressed are nevertheless complicit in their own subjugation. While Marx identifies a broad range of ideological currents, he regards religion as both a form of ideology par excellence and an ideal medium for the ideological machinations of the dominant elite. Believing religious ideas to originate in the material conditions of existence, Marx views the ideological unmasking of religion as a form of social critique. ‘The criticism of heaven is thus transformed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics’ (McLellan, 1977, p. 64).
Religious critique
In respect of religion’s origins, Marx adopts a theory which had been around for some time and to which a number of his German idealist contemporaries (for example Ludwig Feuerbach) subscribed. Here, religion is held to originate through primitive humanity’s projection of personal characteristics onto otherwise impersonal natural forces which come eventually to be regarded as divine (that is, ‘God’) (Feuerbach, 1957). Understood as an attempt to render nature amenable to human persuasion (for example through prayer, sacrifice and thanksgiving), this act of projection is said to result in the eventual denigration of humankind. This is the case, it is argued, because all that is good about humanity is projected onto nature – now divinized and understood as infinite, omnipotent, omnibenevolent etc. – while humankind, in comparison, regards itself as corrupt and sinful. Humanity has thereby purchased leverage upon nature with its own self-abasement; the consequences being ‘the more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself’ (McLellan, 1977, p. 79). In effect, religion
