Karl Marx Was a Capitalist

The founder of Communism wasn’t as down on religion and money as historians have led us to believe.

Karl Heinrich Marx (Born May 5, 1818, in Prussia — Died March 14, 1883, in London)

Karl Marx lived a life of contradictions and complexities, a man whose ideas were often distorted and misrepresented by those who sought to simplify his theories for their purposes.

Despite his reputation as a bitter critic of wealth and religion, Marx was not as dismissive of these institutions as he is portrayed. When he wrote “religion is the opiate of the masses,” he was comparing religion to opium (morphine and heroin are derivatives) which in the 1840s was like aspirin to Victorians. Physicians prescribed the drug for routine pain relief such as menstrual cramps, uterine complications, and other common ailments.

To Marx, religion was likewise a comfort, a solace in the face of suffering, not a tool to deaden the mind into a trance as we think of opioids. While today any time a new habit emerges that someone wants to condemn (television, social media, etc.), we are likely to call it the opiate of the masses. But in the 1840s, that would be vastly overstated.

And while Marx is often seen as an enemy of wealth, he was not above trading stock tips with his sugar daddy and co-author of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels, as he wrote: “The minor panic in the money market appears to be over, and railway shares are again rising merrily, money is easier.”

The key to understanding the past is to examine ideas in their proper context. For it is only by doing so that we can truly grasp the nuances that help us discover the truth beneath the legend.