Gu Jianhong: The Formation of Marx's Historical Materialist View of Religion and His Critique of Capitalist Fetishism
The deep development of capitalism has triggered a spiritual crisis in human society, and in modern society, religious issues manifest frequently. Consequently, how to correctly understand and handle religious matters has become an urgent task for contemporary society. Marx's historical materialist view of religion provides us with an ideological foundation and principled guarantee for correctly understanding and dealing with religious issues. The formation of Marx's historical materialist view of religion underwent a shift in position from theism to atheism; it was gradually established through ideological struggles against idealism and old materialism, and it was grounded in Marx's extremely rich practical activities in social life. At present, as religious issues become increasingly complex, a deep interpretation and analysis of the basic principles and positions of Marx's historical materialist view of religion can provide the ideological insurance and practical basis for us to correctly grasp and resolve religious problems.
I. The Positional Shift of Marx’s View of Religion from Theism to Atheism
Marx was born into a German Jewish family in the early nineteenth century. Deeply influenced by his family atmosphere, the young Marx possessed clear religious beliefs. However, unlike ordinary religious faith, the Jewish faith of the early Marx carried distinct rationalist characteristics, because "the dominant religion in Marx's home was an insufficiently active rational religion of the Enlightenment." Compared to typical devout religious faith, rationalist religious faith emphasizes attaining the nobility of human morality through religious belief. This is vividly reflected in Marx’s secondary school graduation essay, "Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession." In this essay, Marx profoundly expressed the importance of religious faith for an individual’s achievement of moral perfection: "History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good... Religion itself teaches us that the Ideal Being whom all shall strive to copy sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, and who would dare any such claims?" [1] At this time, what Marx diligently pursued was the unification of the realization of human happiness and his own moral perfection under the guidance of religious faith.
The influence of Enlightenment rationality extended into Marx’s youth. If the religious faith of Marx’s boyhood carried the distinct traits of Enlightenment rationality, then the youth Marx, under the guidance of Enlightenment rationality, completed his own atheistic turn in his view of religion. During his university years, Marx was deeply influenced by European Enlightenment thought and the Young Hegelians [2]; in particular, the radical humanist thought of the Young Hegelians exerted a strong impact on the young Marx’s religious beliefs. It was under the influence of figures such as Bruno Bauer [3] that the young Marx began to use Enlightenment rationality to reflect upon and examine religious issues, ultimately achieving the atheistic turn in his view of religion. This was vividly reflected in Marx's doctoral dissertation, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. The reason Marx chose Epicurus's philosophy of nature as his subject was that he considered Epicurus the greatest representative of the Enlightenment spirit in the ancient world; Epicurus not only emphasized the absolute autonomy of the human spirit but also advocated the liberation of man from the shackles of religion. This philosophical proposition of Epicurus was completely consistent with the value goals of Enlightenment rationality.
Specifically, by comparing the differences between Democritus's and Epicurus's philosophies of nature, Marx pointed out that the greatest characteristic of Epicurean natural philosophy lay in its dialectical nature. Unlike Democritus's mechanistic view of nature, Epicurus emphasized the role of contingency in the development of things. It is the swerve of atoms from a straight line that triggers collisions, making atoms the primary basis (始基, archai) that gives birth to all things. By means of this characteristic of atomic motion expounded in Epicurean natural philosophy, Marx elucidated the rationality of the freedom of the human will, which was precisely the fundamental proposition of Epicurus's philosophy. Since the realization of human freedom of will presupposes breaking free from the shackles of religion, Marx spoke directly through the mouth of Prometheus in his doctoral dissertation: "In simple words, I hate all the gods." As a cultural symbol of the awakening of human self-consciousness, Prometheus’s "hatred" for the gods expressed precisely Marx's affirmation of and commitment to the power of human reason, as well as his resistance to and critique of religion as an irrational force. It was through this esteem for the power of reason that Marx shattered the worship of gods represented by religion, highlighted the subjective power of man himself, and ultimately established the exalted status of atheistic thought; this was precisely the goal of the Enlightenment.
Since the Enlightenment, using scientific reason to critique religion has been an important ideological marker of modernity. In this process, two representative types of atheistic thought emerged: "understanding-based atheism" (知性无神论) and "rational atheism" (理性无神论). The former primarily referred to the 18th-century French materialist school of atheism, represented by Voltaire, Diderot, and Holbach; the latter referred to the school of atheistic thought that had passed through the baptism of Hegelian speculative philosophy, primarily represented by the German Young Hegelians, among whom Bauer was the most representative. As a member of the Young Hegelians and especially a follower of Bauer, Marx’s atheistic thought exhibited a clear tendency toward speculative philosophy. Unlike the superficial critique of religion by "understanding-based atheism," the Young Hegelians' critique was grounded in self-consciousness and delved into the "content" of religion. However, this critique also differed from Hegel's critique based on "Absolute Spirit"; the Young Hegelians, especially Bauer, directed their critique of religious "content" toward "allowing self-consciousness to achieve its own realization within a ‘godless’ rational state." This formed a sharp contrast with the French understanding-based atheistic critique rooted in empiricism, and also distinguished itself from Hegel’s idealistic critique of religion, which viewed religion merely as a stage in the movement of the Absolute Spirit.
Regarding the French materialist atheism of the era of the "scientization of philosophy," their cognition of religion was still confined to the empirical world. They believed only the empirical world was real and credible, while the so-called supra-empirical world did not exist; thus, the gods of religion were nothing more than lies fabricated by men. This atheistic thought, founded on the empirical world and set against the intellectual background of the scientization of philosophy, was a product of modern scientific rational thinking, characterized by high degrees of formalization and abstraction. This understanding-based atheism, which remained at the level of superficial thinking, was profoundly criticized by the rational atheism based on German Hegelian dialectical thinking. Hegel pointed out: "The habit of representative thinking (表象思维) can be called a material thinking, a contingent consciousness that is entirely immersed in the material, and thus finds it difficult to disengage itself from the material while remaining independent." Therefore, the religious critique of understanding-based atheism was only applicable to religious forms with clear representational qualities and at low stages of development, such as primitive or natural religions. For high-level religious forms with profound ideological connotations and historical roots (such as Christianity), this form of critique was far from sufficient. Having passed through the baptism of Hegelian speculative reason, the Young Hegelians represented by Bauer elevated understanding-based atheism to rational atheism. They pushed the critique of religion to the level of "content," though this "content" was also merely a disguised expression of human reason and spirit. Because both "Absolute Spirit" and "self-consciousness" were fundamentally the rational spirit of man, a religious critique conducted according to "Absolute Spirit" or "self-consciousness" could fundamentally only be an illusory spiritual critique—still a "truth" of the abstract "beyond" (Jenseits) far removed from the real world.
On the whole, "I hate all the gods" marked the completion of the turn from theism to atheism in Marx's view of religion. This turn in Marx's religious view took the rise of Enlightenment rationality as its background; the awakening of human subjectivity advocated by Enlightenment rationality drove this atheistic turn. Of course, the occurrence of this turn was inseparable from the influence of Hegel's Absolute Spirit and the radical humanist religious critiques of the Young Hegelians. Although the humanist ideas of Enlightenment rationality propelled the transformation of Marx's view, a significant intellectual journey remained to be completed for the formation of Marx's historical materialist view of religion. This would require passing through the practical turn of Marx's philosophy, which was the key to the formation of the historical materialist view of religion.
II. The Formation and Establishment of Marx’s Historical Materialist View of Religion
The formation of Marx's historical materialist view of religion began with his experiences and reflections on actual social life. After leaving the university campus, Marx began working for the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhine Gazette). This career as a newspaper reporter gave Marx a more intuitive and profound sense of real-world suffering and provided the foundation for the realist turn of his philosophy. After beginning work at the Rheinische Zeitung, through his investigation into the living conditions of peasants in the Moselle region and his research on the Prussian problem of wood theft, Marx discovered that although Prussia had made immense progress in its overall level of national economic development after completing the industrial revolution, the living standards of the broad masses of laboring people—the subjects of the state and society—had not improved as a result. On the contrary, due to the cruel exploitation of capitalists, the living conditions of the laboring masses were deteriorating daily. This was centrally expressed in Marx's writings such as "Justification of the Correspondent from the Mosel" and "Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly (Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood)." Marx's exposure of these problems caused serious dissatisfaction among the Prussian authorities, leading to Marx losing his position as editor-in-chief of the Rheinische Zeitung. However, this experience broadened Marx’s intellectual horizons, making him realize that real life is far more important than empty theoretical speculation. Based on this, Marx began a profound reflection on the Young Hegelians’ pure theoretical speculation, which was removed from the real world. On this basis, he pointed out that the key to the religious problem was not in heaven but on earth, and he vigorously promoted the realist turn of the critique of religion: "Religion itself has no content; its roots are not in heaven, but on earth..." By this point, researching and thinking about religious issues starting from the reality of life had become a vital part of Marx's religious studies, laying the ideological foundation for the formation of his historical materialist view of religion.
After leaving the Young Hegelians, Marx was attracted to Feuerbach's philosophy. The materialist orientation shown in Ludwig Feuerbach's book The Essence of Christianity [4] had a massive influence on Marx. Unlike the idealistic interpretations of religion by Hegel and the Young Hegelians, Feuerbach pointed out that religion is merely the illusory expression of the human essence in thought; compared to religion, man and nature enjoy absolute practical independence. Under the influence of Feuerbachian materialism, Marx profoundly recognized that religion is not the basic pillar of all societies, and that the roots of religion are on earth, not in heaven. Due to the deep influence of Feuerbach's materialist philosophy, the realist connotation of Marx's view of religion was further highlighted at this time. However, this "realism" was still limited to the realism of a humanist philosophical position, because Feuerbach’s materialism was a "half-way" materialism—it was inconsistent. While Feuerbach emphasized that matter determines consciousness, he only recognized the materiality of the natural world and excluded human society. The "man" of whom Feuerbach spoke was only an abstract man in the individual sense, not a sensuous, concrete, real man engaged in historical action. This meant that the so-called "social reality" built upon Feuerbach's abstract view of human nature could not be equated at all with the sensuous reality of human life in the sense of historical materialism. Therefore, the realist turn of Marx's view of religion was not yet complete at this stage.
The development of Marx’s view of religion progressed further during the period of the "Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right." At this time, having undergone the "baptism" of Feuerbach's materialist philosophy, Marx’s intellectual horizon had ascended significantly. He realized profoundly that to break the shackles of real life, one must first dismantle the spiritual shackles of humanity. Only by shattering the ideological illusions created by religion and forcing people to courageously face a painful reality could the transformation of real life become possible. Consequently, the critique of religion became the focal point of Marx’s philosophical critique at this stage. The goal it sought to achieve was to "pluck the illusory flowers on the chain, not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower." Only when people discover that the source of real suffering is not in heaven but on earth can they begin with actual social life to change this immoral condition filled with misery, rather than placing their hopes in a nebulous celestial kingdom.
Marx thus used the revelation of religion’s illusory nature as a starting point to actively emphasize that people should attend to the truth of this-worldly existence. Once the "holy form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms." Because Marx saw the essence of religion as an illusory reflection of the real world, he actively exposed and critiqued this essence. Consequently, academia generally considers that during the period of the "Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right," Marx’s historical materialist view of religion had basically formed (though some scholars argue that the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is the foundational work, while acknowledging the Introduction’s vital status in the formative history of the Marxist view of religion). By this point, Marx was already aware of the roots of religion in social existence and viewed the critique of religion as the prelude to the critique of actual society.
In "On the Jewish Question," written during the same period, Marx emphasized the need to find and explain the essence of religion within the actual lives of people: "We do not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but we look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew." In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx further developed his historical materialist view of religion by analyzing the relationship between religion and alienation. Marx argued that human alienation is closely linked to social reality; as an illusory phenomenon of alienation, religion’s roots lie in social reality. Therefore, one must search within social reality for the causes of these illusory phenomena, a point which profoundly identifies the real-world roots of religious phenomena.
The Theses on Feuerbach marks Marx’s complete transcendence of Feuerbach’s abstract humanist view of religion and further demonstrates his own historical materialist stance. In the fourth, sixth, and seventh theses, Marx expressed this stance by critiquing Feuerbach’s abstract humanism. In the fourth thesis, Marx clarified that the essence of religious alienation lies in social alienation; to solve the problem of religious alienation, one must fundamentally eliminate social alienation. Only by destroying the social-institutional roots that generate religious alienation can it be fundamentally eradicated. In the sixth and seventh theses, Marx proceeded from the reality of the human being to thoroughly settle accounts with the foundation of abstract anthropology upon which Feuerbach’s old materialist view of religion was built. Through this, he elucidated the actual essence of man: "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations." By this point, Marx had clarified the basic content of the historical materialist view of religion, emphasizing that only by proceeding from real human beings can religious problems be truly understood and resolved within concrete social practice.
Taken together, the "Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right" established the basic core of Marx’s historical materialist view of religion. "On the Jewish Question," the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and the Theses on Feuerbach further advanced its deepening. Across these four texts, Marx’s historical materialist view of religion was finally established. Its core content can be expressed as follows: religion is rooted in the actual social life of humanity and is a transcendent expression of that life; resolving religious issues requires proceeding from actual social life, and any transcendent view of religion divorced from social reality is unreliable. This is also the fundamental stance on religion that true Marxists should uphold.
III. The Critique of Fetishism from the Standpoint of the Historical Materialist View of Religion
Marx’s historical materialist view of religion is a unity of worldview and methodology. Having expressed his basic stance on the religious question, Marx utilized this position to launch a critique of religious phenomena within actual social life. Marx’s critique of capitalist "fetishism" centrally embodies this characteristic of the historical materialist view of religion.
As an expression of the typical characteristics of capitalist society, "fetishism" essentially reflects the concealment and obfuscation of human relations by "things" (物) [5] in capitalist society. In the capitalist era, technical rationality occupies a dominant position. Driven by the dual forces of capital and technology, man-made objects have replaced natural objects as the masters of human life, while humans have completely degenerated into captives of a materialist culture. Marx believed that to thoroughly reveal and change this state of human decline, one must begin with a critique of the capitalist mode of production; only by radically changing the capitalist mode of production can humanity escape this state of materialist sinkage. The critique of fetishism in capitalist society essentially reflects Marx’s critique of a society that holds "things" as its faith; it ultimately points toward the realization of the social ideal of the free and well-rounded development of the individual.
Etymologically, "fetishism" (拜物教) [6] originates from Latin, meaning "artificial" or "manufactured." In English, it is also translated as "fetishism" (in the sense of a fetish). In late medieval Europe, it referred to a religious culture of object-worship distinct from Christian idolatry. Marx’s term for "fetishism" (物神崇拜/拜物教) [7] was derived from the famous French historian and linguist Charles de Brosses. While reading de Brosses’s 1760 book Du culte des dieux fétiches, Marx borrowed the term and first used it in 1842 in "The Leading Article in No. 179 of the Kölnische Zeitung": "Fetishism is so far from raising man above his sensuous desires that, on the contrary, it is the 'religion of sensuous desire.'" Here, Marx revealed and critiqued the characteristic of fetishism as a means of satisfying human sensuous desires. Later, in the "Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood" and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx further employed the term. In the "Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood," he pointed out the idol-worship characteristic of fetishism. In the Manuscripts of 1844, he proposed the concept of the "fetishist" (拜物教徒) based on fetishism: "The nations which are still dazzled by the sensuous glitter of precious metals, and are therefore still fetish-worshippers of metal money, are not yet fully developed money nations."
In Marx’s view, whether it is fetishism or the fetishist, their common characteristic is the blind worship of the "thing" (物) or materiality itself. Because under the operation of the capitalist mode of production, things step onto the stage of history in place of people, and individuals focus only on the relations between things while ignoring the relations between people hidden behind them. Thus, the status and value of things are infinitely exaggerated, leading the phenomenon of "fetishism" to run rampant in capitalist society. Furthermore, due to the everyday nature of capitalist "things" (such as commodities, money, and capital), capitalist fetishism displays a "transcendent" [8] character distinct from ordinary religious beliefs. To go a step further, the "divine" characteristics of capitalist fetishism do not stem from transcendent imaginary objects, but rather from the illusory packaging of the "things" of capitalist daily life. Precisely because of an indulgence in the infinitely exaggerated imaginary functional characteristics of capitalist daily "things," the "thing" of capital becomes a god-like entity ruling over man from on high. Broadly speaking, at this historical stage, Marx’s understanding of fetishism was still concentrated at the level of social consciousness; he used the concept in the sense of the sanctification of things by humans.
As his cognitive grasp of capitalism deepened, Marx’s understanding of the phenomenon of capitalist fetishism also grew more profound. Understanding and critiquing fetishism in the sense of social existence gradually entered Marx’s field of vision, primarily reflected in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858 (Grundrisse), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and Capital. In the Manuscripts of 1857–1858, although Marx did not use the term "fetishism" directly, he proposed the idea of the "materialized expression of social relations of production." In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx used the term "fetish" (物神): "Since bourgeois production must crystallize wealth as a fetish in the form of a single object, gold and silver are the appropriate incarnation of this wealth." This means Marx began to analyze commodities and money in the sense of fetishism from the sphere of production. Marx pointed out that it is precisely under the operation of capitalist relations of production that gold and silver, as money, are called "fetishes" (物神); they become symbolic codes through which the bourgeoisie centrally expresses production and wealth, allowing human relations to be simplified and inverted into relations between things.
In the appendix to Theories of Surplus Value, Marx further analyzed and critiqued the theory of capitalist fetishism in the sense of social existence. He expounded on the specific manifestations of capitalist fetishism in ontologico-social terms through the forms of rent, profit, and interest. "The forms of revenue and the sources of revenue are the most fetishistic expression of the relations of capitalist production." "Land, or nature, as the source of rent, i.e., of landed property—this is fetishistic enough." "In interest-bearing capital... this automatic fetish, self-expanding value, money-making money, is exhibited in its most perfect form and in this form it no longer bears any trace of its origin. The social relation is consummated in the relation of a thing (money, commodity) to itself." This means that "the transformation and fetishism are here completed."
Marx conducted a concentrated analysis and critique of capitalist fetishism in Capital, where he clarified the fundamental expression of the fetish. In the section "The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret" (Capital, Vol. I), Marx states: "On the contrary, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising therefrom... It is the same in the religious world. There the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism." This is to say, when the products of labor are produced as commodities, they acquire a fetishistic character; thus, the emergence of fetishism is inseparable from commodity production. Here, Marx uses the form of worship of mythical objects by people in primitive societies as a vivid metaphor to describe the formation of fetishism in the world of capital. Just as primitive peoples viewed the products of their imagination as specific, mysterious entities independent of themselves, in the capitalist world, the products of a person's own labor are treated as entities that exist independently of the person and reflect the relations between people on their behalf—that is, the relations between people are concealed by the relations between things.
In Volume III of Capital, Marx's analysis of fetishism goes a step further. He points out that it is precisely the mysterious nature of capital fetishism that causes the circulation process of commodities to create an illusion: the surplus value originally generated in the production process is transmuted into a phantom product of the circulation process. In the actual production process of capitalism, the obscuring of the human by the thing, triggered by capital fetishism, is expressed through a series of transformations of concepts: surplus value is transformed into profit, profit into average profit, and value into price of production. Combined with the emergence of concepts such as interest and ground rent, the human labor that serves as the true source of value is completely obscured. Thus, in the "economic trinity" of "capital-profit, land-ground rent, labor-wages," "the mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the reification [9] of social relations, and the direct fusion of the material relations of production with their historical and social determinations are complete: it is an enchanted, perverted, upside-down world." At this point, under the operation of the capitalist mode of production, the "thing" finally replaces the person, becoming the core value-symbol of social operation. It is precisely by revealing the reified nature of capitalist relations of production that Marx thoroughly unveiled the mysterious mask of capital's "god-making movement."
Taken as a whole, in his political-economic works represented by Capital, Marx applied the worldview and methodology of historical materialism to successfully reveal the entire process of the "god-making movement" within the capitalist mode of production, achieving a thorough materialist interpretation of the phenomenon of fetishism. Unlike the worship of deities which points toward a specific supernatural object, capitalism—by means of its own mode of production—realizes the religious transformation of commodities, money, and capital, casting a mysterious veil over objects. It can be said that the "horizon of inverted appearance" is the specific characteristic of capitalist fetishism. Thus, with historical materialism as his standpoint and the phenomenon of reification in capitalist society as his object, Marx conducted a profound and thorough critique of the phenomenon of capitalist fetishism within the historical context of the critique of religion. Marx revealed and criticized the generative mechanism of capitalist fetishism, achieving a unity of form and content in the critique of religion, and providing a vivid case study for the practical expression of the historical materialist view of religion.
IV. Conclusion
The establishment of Marx's historical materialist view of religion was an arduous intellectual process, undergoing a transformation from an early religious view based on the standpoint of Enlightenment rationality to a humanist view of religion, and finally to a historical materialist view of religion. Faced with the powerful logic of reification in capital, Marx used the production and life practices of humanity as his basis to profoundly reveal the entire process of the "god-making movement" in the capitalist mode of production. While criticizing the reified nature of capital, he also pointed the way for humanity to achieve its own free and comprehensive development, which carries profound significance. In the current era, the power of capital remains very strong. How to correctly recognize and understand the phenomenon of fetishism and religious issues in real social life is one of the important contents that needs attention in the cultural construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era. Marx's historical materialist view of religion provides us with guiding principles for correctly recognizing and handling religious issues in real life. Facts have proven that only by correctly handling the relationship between religion and the economy, politics, and culture can the cultural construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics be carried out smoothly. It is precisely based on this that we need to uphold the historical materialist view of religion to provide spiritual impetus and ideological safeguards for advancing Chinese-path modernization.