Socialism Is the Opium of the People
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” -Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936.
One of the phrases best associated with Karl Marx is, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Socialism is a religion and the application of it as policy violates the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. Socialism is an involuntary church with a holy book, numerous denominations, political messiahs, televangelists, tithing your fair share because no religion would take care of people otherwise, vows of poverty for mother earth, mask burkas, and eucharistic vaccines that cause people to go to heaven. We should separate church and state. Combining charity with extortion doesn't get more charity. It gets more extortion (taxes).
The phrase was from a work by Marx, entitled, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, published in Paris in February 1844, during the Hungry 40’s. The 1840’s were a time of famine and revolutions in Europe, notably the Irish Potato Famine and the Revolutions of 1848.[1]
He wrote,[2]
“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.”
Opium was commonly used for pain management in the 19th century, as today. Marx was not necessarily saying that religion was bad, but that it was what people used as medicine against the realities and shortcomings of a harsh life.
Socialism is an involuntary church with a holy book, the Communist Manifesto. It was published in the same year as the 1848 Revolutions in Europe. Just as the Bible has 10 Commandments, the Communist Manifesto has 10 planks:[3]
“1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.”
Socialism is an involuntary church with numerous denominations, like Christianity. Just as there are Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Baptists, AnaBaptists, Calvanists (Presbyterians), Congregationalists, Anglicans, Methodists, et cetera, there are Socialists, Communists, Marxists, Democratic-Socialists (like the Communist Manifesto suggests), Social Democrats, Democrats, Progressives, et cetera. For the sake of simplicity, the enforcement of their moral system through the police will continue to be referenced as Socialism.
However, there is a technical difference between Communism and Socialism, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Communism is a stateless society whereby everyone produces according to their ability and consumes according to need. Socialism aims to create this stateless community by increasing the power of the state. People who want the moral and legal power to punish other people for their own benefit are usually just in it for the power. They don’t tend to give up the power and mind their own business. Benevolent dictators are not common. This is the heart of why Marxism has always failed.[4]
Indeed, a fellow Communist and contemporary of Marx, Michail Bakunin, wrote on page 10 in Statism and Anarchy (1873),[5]
“No state, however democratic- not even the reddest republic-can ever give the people what they really want, i.e., the free self organization and administration of their own affairs from the bottom upward, without any interference or violence from above, because every state, even, the pseudo-People’s State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine ruling the masses from above, through a privileged minority of conceited intellectuals, who imagine that they know what the people need and want better than do the people themselves.”
Socialism is an involuntary church because they worship political messiahs. In the USA, they always talk about voting for the good person vs the evil person. The election of president has an almost religious fervor to it, as if he were the Pope, god-Emperor, or Pontifex Maximus of the Roman Empire.
Socialism is an involuntary church because it has televangelists. Just as there are preachers on television (televangelists), socialism has its own version of televangelists: Mainstream TV news and legacy news papers.
Socialism is an involuntary church because they believe that you have to tithe your fair share because no religion would take care of poor people otherwise.
Indeed, Frederic Bastiat, the French economist and politician, publishing 2 years after the Revolutions of 1848 and the publication of the Communist Manifesto, wrote,
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850), Page 29.
Socialism is an involuntary church because they take vows of poverty for mother earth. Just as Christian monks would take vows of poverty for religious purity, socialists also want people to abandon fossil fuels and lower their “carbon footprint.” It is putting window dressing on progressive impoverishment.
Socialism is an involuntary church that enforces mask burkas. Just as some sects of Islam force women to wear masks in public, the socialists make all sinners (non-vaccinated or just the poors) wear masks in public.
Socialism is an involuntary church with eucharistic vaccines that cause people to go to heaven. Just like Catholicism and Orthodoxy teach that salvation comes from partaking in the eucharist, Socialists want to force people to take their vaccine eucharist to be considered religiously clean. Not taking the eucharist results in excommunication from society.
Socialism is a religion and the application of it as policy violates the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads,
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Giving one group of people the moral power to control others like little children leads to religious conflict with adults and other denominations who think that they could do it better. Hence, the common claim that, “It’s not real socialism.” 200 years of religious wars over control of the governments of Europe taught the Founding Fathers to separate the church from the state. Hence, the US Congress was particularly prohibited from forcing people to partake in one religion or from being prohibited in participating in their own religion. The separation of church and state took generations to accomplish in the Western world.
Religion/charity should be voluntary or ‘charity’ will become the way for politicians to live by extortion (wolves in sheep’s clothing). "It is my moral duty to control your life. Now give me your money or you are evil and I can hurt you."
“The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” -Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850), Page 63.
One of the phrases best associated with Karl Marx is, “Religion is the opium of the people.” Socialism is a religion and the application of it as policy violates the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. Socialism is an involuntary church with a holy book, numerous denominations, political messiahs, televangelists, tithing your fair share because no religion would take care of people otherwise, vows of poverty for mother earth, mask burkas, and eucharistic vaccines that cause people to go to heaven. We should separate church and state. Combining charity with extortion doesn't get more charity. It gets more extortion (taxes).
[1]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/1848
[2]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
[3]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
[4]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/marxism
[5]http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michail-bakunin-statism-and-anarchy.pdf
