83 - Marxism and Religion: A Description and Assessment of the Marxist Critique of Christianity

Marxism and Religion: A Description and Assessment of the Marxist Critique of Christianity
By David McLellan
New York, Harper & Row, 1987. 209 pp. $18.95.

David McLellan is the dean of historians of Marx and of the intellectual context of early Marxism. In this book, he performs a service for which he is eminently qualified. It is a survey of the critique of religion provided by Marx and his followers to the present day. The ambiguity of the work is reflected in the relation of its title and subtitle. The Marxist critique of religion is largely, if not exclusively, a critique of Western Christianity. Working within this limitation, McLellan intends to summarize and to clarify Marxist statements on religion as a necessary background for any Christian who wishes to engage in a serious dialogue with Marxism.

84 - Marxism and Religion: A Description and Assessment of the Marxist Critique of Christianity

The main thrust of the Marxist critique is evident to anyone who has read Marx's famous statement in one of his early writings: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people." Put bluntly, religion expresses alienation, futilely protests it, and, as narcotic, reinforces the alienation endemic to the economic realm. Tied to Marx's theory of the relation of economic base to cultural superstructure, this critique sees religion as a dependent variable and as a symptom of illness that will disappear when the underlying malaise is cured.

For a theory that prides itself on its historical realism, Marxism has been remarkably, perhaps even scandalously, ignorant of the actual history of religions-so McLellan argues with suitable qualifications here and there. It has been equally reductive of the variety of roles that religions have played and continue to play in society. Indeed, McLellan's analysis of Marxist commentaries on religion from Engels, through German social democracy, to Soviet Marxism, with the exception of the more sophisticated theories of Karl Kautsky, makes for dismal reading. We should never underestimate the power of a preconceived conclusion to induce a singular blindness in any system of thought.

As heretical Marxists in the twentieth century have moved away from the simplistic base/superstructure theory of society, they have also been compelled to reconsider the role of religion. The recovery of a permanently utopian role of religion and the positive evaluation of that function have figured prominently in the works of Ernst Bloch and the Frankfurt school. But McLellan acknowledges that these thinkers have had more impact upon Christians than upon orthodox Marxists. This is unfortunate, because only here did I sense a radical challenge to the simplistic notion of religious projection Marx inherited from Feuerbach and Bauer, as well as to traditional Christian concepts of God. Consider, for example, McLellan's following quotation from Bloch:

The place held in religions by the concept of God, the place filled … by the thing hypostatized by God, … has not vanished with the disappearance of what seemed to fill it. For it always remains the place of projection at the focal point of radical utopian intentionality.

In a final chapter, McLellan provides an all too brief assessment of the Marxist critique of religion, prefaced by a meandering discussion as to whether Marxism itself should be considered a religion. It should not, concludes McLellan. His discussion of whether religion is essentially a dependent variable ends by affirming the enduring value of the Marxist stress "on the strong support religion receives from social and economic interests." While it is easy to grant McLellan's conclusion, it is equally clear that he has skirted the issue. McLellan is at his best, however, in his final assessment when he details the imprisonment of Marxist theory in its Enlightenment presuppositions, especially the discredited belief in an inevitable process of secularization.

Reading McLellan is a sobering experience for anyone predisposed to

86 - Marxism and Religion: A Description and Assessment of the Marxist Critique of Christianity

an uncritical and superficial synthesis of Christianity and Marxism. And yet, Bloch's appeal to the "radical utopian intentionality" present in both makes the effort at critical dialogue necessary for anyone concerned with the transformation of either or both.

Charles R. Strain

DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois