Comparing Marx's Views On Alienation And Religion

Marx sees the laboring classes or workers as alienated under the system of “political economy,” more commonly known as capitalism. Marx believes the very nature of a capitalist system which divides the population into owners and workers causes alienation because the worker is not in control of what they can create, but rather are essentially pawns in the capitalists game. He explains “In the conditions dealt with by political economy [capitalism] this realization of labor appears as a loss of reality for the workers… as estrangement, [and] as alienation”(Marx 71-72). Marx further goes on to categorize the ways people are alienated.

He speaks about four main forms of alienation. First is alienation of of the product of labor, which essentially means that workers do not get the benefits of the things they create, and is therefore disconnected from the material world around themselves (Marx 72).

Like Marx he views religion as wholly unnecessary, and in fact detrimental. Nietzsche says, “the main concern of all great religions has been to fight a certain weariness and heaviness grown to epidemic proportions” (Nietzsche 130). He goes on to say “[religion causes] a feeling of physiological inhibition … on large masses of people” (Nietzsche 130). That sounds very similar Marx’s idea that religion is the “The opium of the people” (Marx 54). The idea of religion being a force that both separates people from what is actually going on and causes people to feel alienated is something prevalent in both Marx and Nietzsche. Religion to Nietzsche, just like Marx, creates a sense of isolation. It separates people from others and sets up a false sense of reality. While he acknowledges that the goal of religion is to combat some of the problems facing society in reality it fails to do so (Nietzsche 130). In actuality it causes an increased amount of separation between people and an overall sense of