[Brother of Karl]

One of Marx's most famous quotes was that "religion is the opium of the people". Undoubtably, pacifying the workers of a nation IS one of the ways in which religion is used as a tool. It surely has other uses, but that is a popular one. For instance, in America, we have the "protestant work ethic", and in Catholicism, the word of the Church is equal to the word of God. Ruling classes have used many other tools to control people when religion alone doesn't suffice. Drugs are a big one. Alcohol was used as payment for certain workers early in the industrial revolution in America and surely elsewhere- some workers only stayed around to support their alcohol habit. Opium was used on migrant Chinese workers in the 1800s because it didn't lower the quality of their work unlike alcohol, although many of them did die of overdoses. Tobacco is still used today, and since people don't overdose on it, it's even better for the purposes of exploitation than opium was. Today, the mass media functions performs many of the functions that organized religion can't handle anymore.

I wonder if there is any way to organize a post industrial workforce without using one of these pacifying tactics. Do you think society can function when the state doesn't use an "opiate" to attempt to control people, rather than letting people create their own reward?

[ralfy]

Given a post-industrial society, these measures will hardly be in place. In which case, localization is inevitable.

[DudeWhoGetsIt]

One of Marx's most famous quotes was that "religion is the opium of the people". Undoubtably, pacifying the workers of a nation IS one of the ways in which religion is used as a tool. It surely has other uses, but that is a popular one. For instance, in America, we have the "protestant work ethic", and in Catholicism, the word of the Church is equal to the word of God. Ruling classes have used many other tools to control people when religion alone doesn't suffice. Drugs are a big one. Alcohol was used as payment for certain workers early in the industrial revolution in America and surely elsewhere- some workers only stayed around to support their alcohol habit. Opium was used on migrant Chinese workers in the 1800s because it didn't lower the quality of their work unlike alcohol, although many of them did die of overdoses. Tobacco is still used today, and since people don't overdose on it, it's even better for the purposes of exploitation than opium was. Today, the mass media functions performs many of the functions that organized religion can't handle anymore.

I wonder if there is any way to organize a post industrial workforce without using one of these pacifying tactics. Do you think society can function when the state doesn't use an "opiate" to attempt to control people, rather than letting people create their own reward?

People will not be free to create their own rewards, and elites will not feel free from the incentive to opiate the masses, until our population is reduced to less than 100million, or until we remove all dangerous technology and knowhow from the minds of all living people. Barring those two things, elites will always, and with good reason, seek to opiate the masses (and that's just because it's easier to stomach than killing us off, which some of them are more than ready willing and able to do)

[Paradigm]

I think Marx is often misunderstood on this point. It's not that religion is a tool for pacifying the masses. One has to understand that opium at the time was the primary pain reliever used in medicine. He was saying that religion provides the proletariat relief from pain of their daily struggle under capitalist oppression. The distinction may seem subtle, but it's crucial. If one thinks that religion is simply a tool used by the ruling class to manipulate the working class, then one could postulate that we could simply try to abolish religion, and then the workers would rise up against their oppressors. But this kind of thinking is precisely what Marx criticized the Left-Hegelians for. Marx was emphatic that it is not ideas such as religion, but rather material conditions that determine history. Religion, for Marx, does not facilitate the oppression of the workers so much as it is a symptom of their oppression. The idea being that once capitalism is abolished, religion will lose its appeal, and it will wither away along with the state.

[jessupjonesjnr87]

Tobacco and drug's are no more being used to control the population than chocolate bars and burger's.

[KurtFF8]

I wonder if there is any way to organize a post industrial workforce without using one of these pacifying tactics. Do you think society can function when the state doesn't use an "opiate" to attempt to control people, rather than letting people create their own reward?

First you need to clarify what you mean by "post industrial workforce" because that term is thrown around so much but it isn't really clear what a post-industrial worker is.

And society (the super structural elements of it at least) are indeed geared towards bourgeois ideology. Just look at how strong the concept of the "American Dream" still is in the United States as even articulated in class struggle (calls by workers to "return to good jobs" and pursue the dream, etc.).

I think you're thinking of this slogan a little too literally, the opiate you're talking about is itself embedded in society, not just particular instances of pacifying tactics.

And to build on Paradigm's point (which is quite interesting, I'd like to look more into that interpretation), there is indeed a difference between "false consciousness" and what you're talking about. But they both play a dialectical relationship that help form each other in a sense.

[Decky]

I think Marx is often misunderstood on this point. It's not that religion is a tool for pacifying the masses. One has to understand that opium at the time was the primary pain reliever used in medicine. He was saying that religion provides the proletariat relief from pain of their daily struggle under capitalist oppression. The distinction may seem subtle, but it's crucial.

This, Paradigm is 100% correct.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

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, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary 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.[1]

Marx was comparing religion to a painkiller, not a recreational drug. This is one of the most commonly misunderstood Marxist quotes.

[Brother of Karl]

Well, this is kind of embarrassing... Good to know though.

[Decky]

Nowt embarrassing about it. You have learned something about Marxism, you are a better man now than you were a few hours ago. Rejoice!