Tang Zixiang: Religion and Politics in the Perspective of Marx and Engels
Religion and politics, as a pair of significant poles of power, continuously and profoundly influence human civilization. The interactive relationship generated by their co-constitution often pertains to numerous aspects such as economy, culture, military affairs, ideology, and even national security. Although secularization theory once predicted the decline or even disappearance of religion in modern society, events such as the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the September 11 attacks, and the rise of Hindu nationalism all reflect the continued overlapping of religion and politics. Religious groups, activities, and alliances remain active in influencing socio-political processes and their outcomes. Various disciplinary perspectives have addressed this issue. For instance, the primordialist argument represented by Samuel Huntington directly links religion with politics, positing that religion is the primary cause of violent conflict following the Cold War. Instrumentalists, on the other hand, argue that religion itself is unrelated to politics and war, serving merely as a tool utilized by real-world forces. Primordialists and instrumentalists each hold their own views; the crux of their debate lies in what exactly causes political antagonism with a religious background: Is it spiritual or material?
Marx began to focus on issues related to religion and politics in the early stages of his theoretical development, writing famous works such as On the Jewish Question and A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction. Engels’s investigation into this issue was even more concrete. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, he pointed out: "In the Germany of that time, in the realm of theory, two things above all had practical significance: religion and politics"; "But as politics was then a territory full of thorns, the main struggle was transformed into a struggle against religion." Marx and Engels placed religious practice within a broad social, economic, political, and historical context, emphasizing the analysis of the socio-economic roots of religious problems. By reducing religious questions to social questions, they simultaneously reduced theological questions to real-world questions. At the same time, through their revolutionary practice of founding communist theory and leading the international workers' movement, they authored a series of articles and commentaries, putting forward many brilliant and profound insights. These point the way for us today to correctly understand, accurately grasp, and dialectically handle the relationship between religion and politics.
The Positive Aspect: Religion as the Sacred Robe of the Masses' Resistance Movements
In the vision of Marx and Engels, religion is regarded as a typical and specific form of ideology. Since all ideology possesses a class character, religious issues also become political issues. In societies where religion is the dominant ideology, the ruling classes—in order to better mobilize and organize the masses—often borrow religious concepts and employ religious language to clothe political movements in a "religious robe." At the same time, religious heresies acting as revolutionary socio-political theories often unite with the subaltern classes, developing into religious movements composed mainly of the lower strata of the masses resisting the oppression of the ruling class. The concept of the religious "robe" [1] appears many times in Engels’s works such as The Peasant War in Germany, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, and the "Introduction to the 1892 English Edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." The "religious robe" theory has also become an important fulcrum of the Marxist theory regarding the relationship between religion and politics.
(1) The Inevitability of Combining the Religious "Robe" with Peasant Resistance Movements
The fact that peasant resistance movements usually had to don a religious robe was determined by the functions inherent to religion itself. The objects of religious worship are the products of objective external forces being transfigured into supra-human forms. These external forces were originally those that dominated people’s daily lives—forces that were "alien" and "inexplicable." However, once people endowed them with the appearance of "supra-human forms of power" through "fantasy," the alien sense of dominance, oppression, and fear was transformed into a sense of the sacred. The explanation of life's circumstances, the common veneration of celestial deities, and the infinite possibilities promised by the world beyond [2] not only provide spiritual solace to the individual but also provide a "cement" and a "stimulant" for all the oppressed. This endows the historical movements they launch with powerful force. "Religion usually covers acts of violence with a layer of supra-political significance, and through this, the acts of violence transcend politics or even rapidly replace it." Therefore, the use of religion by rebels as a weapon of political struggle stems precisely from the efficacy brought about by religion.
The fact that peasant resistance movements usually had to don a religious robe was determined by the specific environment of the era. In the feudal society of medieval Europe, all forms of ideology—philosophy, politics, and jurisprudence—were incorporated into the subfield of theology. Consequently, Christianity became a religion adapted to this context, possessing a feudal hierarchical form. "The dogmas of the church were at the same time political axioms, and Bible quotations had the validity of law in every court. Even when a special class of jurists had been formed, jurisprudence remained for a long time under the tutelage of theology." Against such a historical background, any socio-political movement was forced to take on a theological form. For the sentiments of the masses, who were constantly steeped in religious ideas, it was only by clothing their vital interests in the magnificent robe of theological rhetoric that a collective force could be formed to stir up a great storm. Engels pointed out in The Peasant War in Germany that the anti-feudal revolutionary opposition always carried a strong religious coloring, appearing in the forms of mysticism and open heresy. The uprising of oppressed peasants and urban plebeians led by Thomas Müntzer [3] at that time took the form of a struggle to revive the increasingly degenerated primitive Christianity.
The fact that peasant resistance movements usually had to don a religious robe was determined by the similarities between mass movements and religion. Engels compared the similarities between primitive Christianity and the modern workers' movement from four aspects: class characteristics, group intentions, shared experiences of hardship, and ultimate outcomes. He pointed out that Christianity first arose among the "suffering people" of the lowest strata; it was the religion of "slaves, exiles, the marginalized, the persecuted, and the oppressed." Primitive Christianity played a role very similar to that played by the workers' movement in modern society; the primitive Christian movement, like the socialist movement, was a mass movement, and so on. Due to this similarity, it became a historical necessity for the oppressed and revolutionaries to organize themselves using religious forms to resist [X] [4] and strive for their interests. Engels also observed that the Christianity that later matured had developed a strict hierarchy and degenerated into an accomplice of the ruling class for spiritual control; at that point, the yearning and confidence for the inevitable victory of the revolutionary struggle existed only among socialists.
(2) The Religious Coloring of Revolutions Must Be Explained via the Entire Socio-Historical Process
Analyzing the social class structure of a country during a specific period and grasping the roles played by various classes and groups in the Reformation and the Peasant War is the objective basis for Marxism to judge major events and evaluate historical figures. Similarly, Marx and Engels’s analysis of religion and politics did not adopt the path of the theologian but used the "periscope" of historical materialism to examine religious issues by reducing them back into the entire socio-historical process, emphasizing the inner connection between religion and broader social history, such as the social productive forces and class struggle. They emphasized that the only scientific method for studying religion is to analyze the role played by religious theology in revolutionary movements within concrete historical conditions, deriving its "heavenly forms" from the real-life relations of that time. By comparison, Marx only hinted at the political contradictions of religion, while Engels, with his characteristically clear style, outlined historical details, thereby developing a more sufficient dialectical theory.
Engels pointed out that religious factors exist universally in general historical movements: "This coloring cannot be explained by the human heart and religious needs, as Feuerbach imagined, but by the entire history of the Middle Ages, which knew only one form of ideology: religion and theology." In European society, where the Church held total sway, every intellectual movement, political consciousness, and class consciousness took on a religious form. In his commentaries on [X] [5], Müntzer, and Hans [Behem], Engels further elucidated that in mass struggles with religious coloring, in addition to theological dogmas and creeds, religion sometimes directly provided theoretical support for revolutionary struggle in terms of political thought, philosophical theory, and social ethics. "[X], by translating the Bible, provided the plebeian movement with a powerful weapon. In his translation, he contrasted the simple Christianity of the first centuries with the feudalized Christianity of the day, providing a social picture without the layered, artificial feudal hierarchy, in sharp contrast to the collapsing feudal society. The peasants utilized this weapon against the princes, the nobility, and the clergy from all sides." [X]’s Reformation idea of "justification by faith" liberated people and society from the control of the Church, creating the preconditions for early social revolutions. However, Engels simultaneously saw that [X], as a moderate of the burgher class, failed to advance from the Reformation to a transformation of society. These discourses both objectively affirm the progressive role of religion in revolutionary resistance movements and dialectically point out its historical limitations.
(3) To Truly Carry the Revolution Through to the End, One Must Cast Aside the Religious "Robe"
From the discourses of Marx and Engels, one can roughly delineate three stages of the European bourgeois revolution, which are also three typical forms of the early bourgeois revolution. First was the German bourgeois revolution of the 16th century, which was conducted entirely under the banner of the Reformation and was quite incomplete. The second bourgeois revolution occurred in 17th-century England; limited by the development level of capitalism at the time, the English bourgeoisie sought theoretical basis in the Calvinist Church while mobilizing the people for anti-feudal struggle, characterized by an intertwining of revolution and compromise. In 18th-century France, however, the more mature French bourgeois revolution held high the banner of rationalism: "This was the first uprising that completely cast aside the religious robe and fought on an undisguised political front; it was also the first uprising to truly carry the struggle through to the end, until one of the combatants, the nobility, was completely eliminated and the other, the bourgeoisie, was fully victorious." This revolution thoroughly swept away the old order, fundamentally shook the feudal system of Western Europe, produced new ideas that exceeded the scope of the old world, and ultimately profoundly shaped the face of the modern world. During their participation in the revolutionary struggles of 1848–1849, Marx and Engels emphasized even more clearly that people’s views and concepts change with every great transformation of the social system, but the transformations happening now were already different from all previous ones: "People have finally seen through the secret of this historical process of change, so they no longer worship this actual ‘external’ process in the form of a new religion of grandiloquent transcendental forms, but rather discard all religion."
As a reflection of the real world, the social functions performed by religion also change with the times. Religion was once psychological solace for the grassroots, a bright banner for political reform, and a bugle call for anti-feudal revolutionaries. In countries where religion was the state religion, almost all revolutionary socio-political concepts were essentially theological heresies. In the process of constructing the concepts of freedom and equality, the bourgeoisie also unconsciously drew nourishment from religion, using the covenant relationship between man and God in Protestantism as a reflection of the contractual relationship in the capitalist market. However, Marx and Engels pointed out, according to the changes in temporal conditions, that "Christianity entered its final stage. Henceforth, it could no longer serve as the ideological robe for the intentions of any progressive class; it became more and more exclusively the property of the ruling class, which used it only as a means of governance to keep the lower classes in check." With the deepening of human enlightenment and proletarian consciousness, people of insight will truly arrange the world in a human way, leaving not a single foothold for a Creator, thereby truly carrying the revolution through to the end. "Christianity seeks this salvation in a life beyond death, in heaven, while socialism seeks it in this world, in the transformation of society."
The Negative Aspect: Religion Serving as a Tool for Class Oppression and Aggressive Expansion
Marx and Engels pointed out from a functionalist perspective that the state is a "necessary evil." On the one hand, the state provides security and protection for the people; on the other, it has its own special purposes and interests. Within a certain institutional framework, rulers and their agents are very likely to use the state’s advantage in violence to conduct plunder domestically and abroad. The vast majority of the endless wars, massacres, exploitation, and slavery in human history were created in this way. Since war is the continuation of politics by other means, religion—once nationalized and ideologized—often serves as a tool for internal class oppression and external aggressive expansion. History frequently sees various forms of marriage between religion and politics, with religious wars being one of the most extreme forms.
(1) Religion as the Sigh of the Oppressed Creature and the Sentiment of a Heartless World
Marx maintained a profound understanding of and sympathy for the impoverished masses living in a relentless world of ruling class oppression and exploitation. In his Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he wrote with moving prose: "Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people." People who suffer torment yet are powerless to change the status quo, failing to find a place for their bodies and minds in the real world, can only cast their gaze toward the heavens. In this world constructed of religious fantasy, people are able to catch their breath and lament, expressing their anguish and venting their emotions through praise and supplication, thereby granting their long-persecuted souls a momentary—albeit false—solace. Therefore, although religion as a form of social consciousness is illusory, this illusoriness does not mean religion itself does not exist; it performs the important function of soothing individual pain and mitigating social contradictions. This constitutes the socio-historical, class, and epistemological roots of religion’s emergence.
However, the determinate existence [6] of religion is, after all, a deficient existence—an illusory and inverted ideology; consequently, it cannot fundamentally eliminate human suffering. This emotional compensation often paralyzes the people's will to resist. Coupled with the self-sacrifice and negation inherent in asceticism, it causes individuals to acquiesce to the laws, rules, and systems of the earthly world, until even the last vestige of desire to transform social reality vanishes. As the demands for interest by religion (and the people behind it) increase, the material life of the individual in the secular world is increasingly controlled by religious "greed": "the more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself." This religious "greed" is not satisfied with controlling human life by dominating the mind; it further seeks to alienate the human physical body into a vehicle for the realization of class interests. If one traces the origins from a historical-genetic perspective, one finds that God is the result, rather than the cause, of the errors of human intellect. Marx pointed out: "In religion, the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him—that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity." Individuals shrouded in religious consciousness and atmosphere often lose the capacity for autonomous thought and action, and thus lose their revolutionary will. The thesis that "religion is the opium of the people" was precisely the critical conclusion Marx reached regarding the European social conditions of his time, and it remains an important compass for our study of the issues of religion and politics.
(2) Religion serves as an ideological tool for the oppression of the subaltern classes
All human history is a history of class struggle—that is, the history of struggle between exploiting and exploited classes, between ruling and subject classes. Because religion possesses the dimensions of paralyzing the people's will to resist and exhorting them toward "the good" and self-sacrifice, it is frequently utilized by the ruling class as a tool to consolidate class rule, becoming a theological rhetoric used to gloss over reality and disguise violence. Marx and Engels pointed out that since the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, the theologians who represent that class in religious production and theological construction are inevitably entrusted with the heavy responsibility of regulating the production and distribution of the ideas of their age. They may even deceive and falsify history, thereby greatly increasing the anthropogenic elements within religion. Once religion combines with a class that possesses power and represents backwards, reactionary forces, it plays a passive and negative social role. Marx and Engels keenly perceived this specific socio-historical phenomenon and subjected it to severe critique. In The Peasant War in Germany and Revolutionary Spain, Engels exposed the negative role of religion in maintaining the feudal system. He enumerated a series of scandals involving the clergy—who held a monopoly on intellectual education—engaging in political and religious blackmail, such as the fabrication of icons and relics, the organization of masses for the dead, and the sale of indulgences, all of which were means of extorting and oppressing the people. In the Introduction to the 1892 English Edition of "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific", Engels profoundly noted that the British bourgeoisie had once defeated the king and aristocracy under the banner of religion; later, they discovered they could use that same religion to control the souls of their subordinates, making them obey the orders and instructions of their superiors. "The British bourgeoisie now took part in the suppression of the 'lower orders,' the great producing mass of the nation, and one of the means employed for that purpose was the influence of religion."
In addition to reducing religion to the socio-economic base of specific historical periods for analysis, Marx also examined religion from the perspective of the state and violence. He argued that when the state cannot complete its rule independently through its own power, it resorts to religious force to achieve a "state" form of rule: "The uncompleted state... because of the deficiency which is part of its nature as a deficient state, must look to religion for its basis." This "politicization of religion" or "religionization of politics" is particularly evident in states practicing the union of church and state [7]. Rulers often use religion as a pretext to launch wars or use force to resolve intensified religious contradictions, and the marriage between the two often leads to further escalation of conflict. In this process, religion becomes a form of "soft violence" that drives the state apparatus in its class rule. It is precisely in this functional dimension that religion is rejected by Marx and Engels. They clearly pointed out that whether in the case of conservative religion or radical religious movements (Anabaptists, Cargo Cults), religion is a tool of the ruling class and an excellent cloak for concealing political demands.
(3) Religion provides a front for aggressive wars to conceal real interests
Religion is not only used by the ruling class to oppress and deceive domestic populations; the crude, naive, and unrealistic fantasies in its doctrines—as well as the moral high ground, the justification for killing, and the imagination of "wars of divine providence"—are often used by rulers to incite foreign wars of aggression. Consequently, religion frequently becomes an incentive for upheaval and conflict. As the gambit among Western powers in the Ottoman Empire intensified, Marx published an article titled "The War Question.——The Doings of the Cabinet.——The Eastern Question," pointing out that the roots of the Oriental disputes might appear at first glance to be religious disputes—conflicts between different religions or sects over "the possession of the Star of Bethlehem and of a certain strip of tapestry, of the keys of a Sanctuary, of an altar, of a shrine, of a throne, of a holy pillow"—but in reality, "these holy quarrels... cover the most unholy wars, not only of several nations, but of several races," and were wars for the competition of private interests among the great powers. In analyzing Russia's intervention in the Turkish question, Engels also revealed the coupling of religion and politics. He noted that the Russian government had long developed hundreds of agents to preach to Christians in Turkey that "the Orthodox Emperor is the head, the natural protector and the savior of the oppressed Orthodox Church, and that he has the mission of its final liberation." They had long devised grand conspiracies to spread such ideas to prepare for the seizure of territory. Thus, in the long river of history, religion has often become a front for rulers to carry out oppression, plunder land, and launch wars, providing a basis of legitimization for the state's violent actions.
It should be noted that the relationship between systems of ideas and the holistic revolutionary or counter-revolutionary violence of a specific era is not a simple one of cause and effect. The roots behind the marriage of religion with politics and war are not in heaven, but on earth. Real forces outside the mind—including economic interests, political structures, power distribution, and social order—determine the occurrence of violence, while religious ideas are the resources selected, reinforced, and distorted by the perpetrators. Engels pointed out that the political and religious theories during the German Peasant War "were not the cause, but the result of the stage of development that agriculture, industry, land and water transport, trade and the money market had then reached in Germany." That is to say, the religious theories utilized during wartime did not operate independently; they were constrained by a certain level of development of productive forces and economic relations, and they underwent mutation or adaptation under the drive of interests. "Behind each religious frenzy, there was always hidden a real, secular interest." Interest alienates religion into a phenomenon of violence; conversely, violence and war involving religious factors will also distort, desecrate, and coerce the original religion, even acting in opposition to it, causing it to lose its legitimacy and authority. In The Peasant War in Germany, Engels further articulated the essence of religious wars: "The so-called religious wars of the sixteenth century were likewise above all matters of very positive material class interests; those wars were class struggles, precisely like the later internal collisions in England and France." Therefore, although war has many incentives—ethnic, religious, geographic, and historical—the most fundamental cause remains class contradictions and class conflict.
The Final Way Out: The Triple Path of Religious Critique, Political Emancipation, and Human Emancipation
Unlike the methods of religious theology, idealism, and metaphysical materialism, the Marxist study of religion and politics is fully grounded in the foundation of socio-historical development and change. In texts such as On the Jewish Question, the Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, and The Holy Family, Marx critiqued Bruno Bauer’s speculative idealistic theory and mapped out the fundamental solution to religious and political problems in real society along the triple path of "religious critique — political emancipation — human emancipation." This solution lies neither in heavenly religious emancipation nor in restricted political emancipation, but in turning the inverted world right-side up, subverting the alienation of an alienated world, and realizing the return of human subjectivity. To achieve human emancipation, one must first critique religion, plucking the imaginary flowers from the chain that enslaves humanity, then proceed to political critique on the basis of religious critique, and finally "overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being" to move toward an association of free individuals.
(1) The critique of religion is the prerequisite of all other critique
In the Prussian society where Marx lived, church and state were not yet thoroughly separated. The vast majority of people were still holders of Christian faith, and the intellectual culture remained saturated with conservatism, insularity, and ignorance. The rulers also attempted to unify political principles with the religious principles of Christianity, making religious faith—rather than free reason—the pillar of the state. Against such a background, Marx resolutely embarked on the path of religious critique. Marx and Engels pointed out: "Nature confronts man as a completely alien, all-powerful and unassailable force, with which men's relations are purely animal and by which they are overawed like beasts"; under such socio-historical conditions, the earliest religious concepts and activities of faith emerged. Therefore, the dependence of man on God actually reflects the dependence of man on natural forces; it is the personification of natural forces.
With the expansion of the social division of labor, the emergence of private property, and the appearance of classes, humanity entered the stage of alienated labor. Religion became artificial, dominated and utilized by the class interests of real society, becoming a reflection of the alienated state of social relations—especially economic relations. In the process of further socialization and complexification, religion has always responded actively to the changes and deep-seated demands of the era, moving toward a stage of honoring the sacred through collective power. Its doctrines, rituals, organizations, and followers all developed inextricable links with the socio-economic conditions of a specific time and place. Using specific socio-historical and ethnographic cross-sections, Marx and Engels analyzed the different forms in which artificial religion serves politics. For example, in refuting the view that "the social principles of Christianity can solve social problems," Marx summarized the functions and characteristics of Christianity: its social principles once justified ancient slavery, extolled medieval serfdom, preached the necessity of the existence of classes (ruling and oppressed), rationalized the despicable behavior of oppressors, and praised [8]. Engels also noted that Christianity, as a world religion, profoundly adapted to the economic, political, and mental state of the Roman Empire, illustrating that religion is fundamentally a specific form of consciousness generated by humans under corresponding conditions of productive forces. It is precisely by reducing religious issues to their secular basis that Marx and Engels linked religious critique with political emancipation and human emancipation. Through the basic prerequisites established by religious critique, they launched a profound and comprehensive critique of the old world and the old system; simultaneously, they completed the critique of religion in its ultimate sense within the critique of secular society.
(2) Political emancipation does not exclude religious belief
Facing the religious and political issues regarding Jews in Prussian Germany, Bruno Bauer, a representative of the Young Hegelians, argued that the various contradictions arising for Jews in political life and social identity were rooted in religious antagonism, particularly between Christianity and Judaism. Therefore, the solution to the problem lay in the abolition of religion: on the one hand, Jews must renounce their personal religious beliefs; on the other, the state must be liberated from Judaism, Christianity, and religion in general. This was precisely determined by "the question of the relation of religion to the state, the contradiction between religious constraint and political liberation." In response, Marx affirmed Bauer’s approach of linking the Jewish question to political liberation, but simultaneously offered sharp criticism. He argued that Bauer ignored the specificities of the state and the political environment, observing the entire Jewish question solely from a theological standpoint and through religious concepts, thereby lapsing into one-sidedness and abstraction. Marx contended that the Jewish question was not a religious issue but a political, secular, and historical one. A complete solution to this problem must be sought in the social reality in which Jews lived and within the internal defects of the modern state.
Political liberation does not take religious liberation as a necessary prerequisite, nor does political liberation have the capacity to eliminate religion. Regarding the relationship between the political state and religion, Marx pointed out: "The limits of political liberation are manifested at the very outset in the fact that the state can liberate itself from a restriction without man being really free from this restriction, that the state can be a free state without man being a free man." That is to say, when a state rids itself of a state religion and allows religion to exist within the sphere of civil society [9], the state has liberated itself from religion. This does not necessarily require individual persons to renounce their religious beliefs; religion has merely moved from the realm of public law to that of private law, becoming a private matter. Marx noted by way of example that in the states of North America where political liberation has been completed and a republican system implemented, religion not only exists but is a robust and vital presence. Under the conditions of bourgeois democratic politics, religion may even flourish more vigorously because, on the surface, "it has no political significance, no secular purpose, but is a matter of a spirit that is weary of the world, an expression of the limitation of reason, a product of caprice and fantasy—because it is a truly otherworldly life." Marx further cited legal provisions such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the Constitution of Pennsylvania, and the Constitution of New Hampshire, arguing that "the right to profess a religion, to profess it in any manner one chooses, and to practice the cult of one’s particular religion, is explicitly included among the rights of man. The privilege of faith is a universal right of man." It is evident that the existence of religion is not only non-contradictory to the establishment of the modern state, but the modern state will actually affirm the right to religious belief by including it within the scope of political liberty. This also demonstrates that political liberation merely transfers the mediation of religion to the political state; "religion remains the ideal, non-secular consciousness of the members of such a state."
(III) Religious Liberation and Political Liberation Are Ultimately Unified in Human Liberation
Marx acknowledged that political liberation was indeed a significant achievement of human civilization, not only due to the separation of state politics from religious belief but also because it eliminated the political character of the old civil society and abolished hierarchical privileges related to private interests. However, he simultaneously pointed out that under capitalist social conditions, religion will continue to transfer human potential—which remains unactualized—into a fictional realm, thereby legitimizing the existing (alienated) social order. The modern political state will also deepen the misery of man’s secular life through the protection of private property and the acceleration of capital appreciation. This situation arises because the modern state is a religion-like abstraction; it connects people in an indirect manner: "Just as Christ is the mediator to whom man transfers all his divinity, all his religious constraint, so the state is the mediator to whom man transfers all his non-divinity and all his human freedom." Therefore, political liberation is a limited, abstract, and partial liberation; people remain restricted by religion, property, and the egoism of trade. Marx further pointed out that the modern state, having achieved political liberation, should continue to advance toward human liberation, thoroughly eliminating religious narrowness and human self-alienation, returning the human world and human relationships to man himself, and ultimately realizing the free and well-rounded development of man.
The hope for human liberation lies in the proletariat armed with theory. In Marx's view, to achieve universal human liberation, it is necessary for "a particular class, from its particular situation, to undertake the universal liberation of society. Only on the premise that the whole of society is in the situation of this class" can this occur—and that class is the proletariat. The reason Marx placed such importance on the proletariat was, on the one hand, based on his humanistic sympathy for the tragic plight of the proletariat as "a class with radical chains." More importantly, however, he saw that the proletariat represents not only itself but the universal interests of society as a whole; it can only restore itself through the complete restoration of man, and it can only finally liberate itself by liberating all of humanity. Marx also specifically emphasized that materialist philosophy is the worldview of the proletariat and the working class, and the proletariat must take the path of combining with philosophy to carry out the cause of liberation. "As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy." "The head of this liberation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat." Once philosophical theory is mastered by the advanced proletariat, it can become a powerful weapon for transforming reality. Accompanied by the high-level development of productive forces and the disappearance of class distinctions, the state, religion, and all restrictions external to the individual will exit the stage of history. The human world and human relationships will return to man himself, and only then will religious liberation and political liberation be finally realized.
Online Editor: Tong Xin Source: Science and Atheism, Issue 1, 2023