It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors,' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous 'cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.”

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.Ĭriticism 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. 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 abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Man is the world of man – state, society.

But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. 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. “The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx