Rethinking ‘Ideology’ and ‘Escape’ in Marx’s Critique of Religion

Contemporary Political Theories March 2012

Draft only - Please do not cite or circulate without the author’s permission

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What is the Way Out? Rethinking ‘Ideology’ and

‘Escape’ in Marx’s Critique of Religion

Marvin Torres Lagonera Ateneo de Manila University

Escape is not only a matter of getting out, but of going somewhere.

Emmanuel Lévinas, On Escape Del’ evasion

Introduction

Marx’s critique of religion is complete only insomuch as religion is characterized as an

ideology - as false consciousness. Marx arrays religion along modern establishments -

social institutions such as family, community and law - as ideas not only determined

by material conditions but also as a cycle that reproduces the very illusions that

perpetuate this reality. Religion is a form of self-alienation - a symptom of a failed

system - for what man cannot achieve in the concrete world, he does so through

religion. By conjuring a power beyond, religion functions as an escape; taking man to

a paradise of fantastic and illusory happiness. For religion exists through layers of

illusions and disillusions, it is tantamount to the idolatry of the very fetishes and

inversions created by the system. Given these general premises, Marx posits that only

by escaping the present state of affairs by totally abolishing it - through a revolution

towards a communist state - can a pure religion be achieved. While Marx provides a

compromise by asserting that a pure religion can be found only within a communist

state, this notion still undermines the very existence of religion, primarily Christianity,

for Marx still dismisses it as illegitimate, ideological and even fictitious under the

present system.

There is a great need, however, to reexamine Marx’s categorization of religion as

ideology. When is an idea non-ideological? This equally is a crucial meta-question that

Marxism in itself faces. Through a thorough reading of four commentaries on Marx’s

four most important works - namely, Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology, On the

Jewish Question and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts - this paper ultimately argues



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that ideological fallibility can only be transcended through one prerequisite: a

revolutionary thinking - a theoretical framework that is self-conscious of the material

reality that it is subjected to, and so, seeks to change this. With this

(re)characterization of ideology, this paper aims to relocate Christianity today - albeit

still within the locus of Marxist thinking - by positing Christianity as God’s revolution

with Jesus Christ as the transpolitical salvation continually transforming and

revolutionizing individuals, society and the world. The aim of this paper is not so

much to provide parallelisms between Marxism and religion - as dominant narratives

incessantly insist upon - and more so, not to examine Marx’s pure religion in the new

state of affairs for this concept is recognized for its ambiguity. Instead, the heart of

this paper shall focus on (re)examining religion in a renewed sense of ideology by

looking at its revolutionary dimension. That, ultimately, religion escapes not to escape

but only to be able to return and redeem.

Ideology: What is what?

One of the fundamental assumptions of Marxism lies in its epistemological claim of

what constitutes reality. Kain (1981), in his article Marx’s Theory of Ideas, expounds on

Marx’s The German Ideology by interpreting ideas as based on materialist conception of

history. “Ideas are the efflux of the material”, Kain (1981, p. 361) writes, reading Marx.

All ideas - real or illusory - are mere expressions of socio-economic relations and

activities (Kain 1981). What it means to be human is determined by material

conditions, by the “definite relations predominant at a certain stage of production and

by the way of satisfying needs determined by them”1. Ideas might seem independent

because they are contradictory to the ideas of the status quo, but they are still

ultimately shaped by the relations of the forces and relations of production. As such,

class divisions, is the locus where the different ‘ideas and forms of consciousness’

must be analyzed. Ideas do not explain material condition; rather they are determined

and altered as material production and actual world are altered. Whereas the ability of

humans to make their life activity the object of their will and consciousness

supposedly lies in the core of their species essence, the contradiction occurs: “life is

not determined by consciousness, but life by consciousness”, Marx writes.



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Kain, in the same article, argues that Marx contradicted himself when he said that

ideas can come into contradiction with existing relations when existing social relations

have come into contradiction with existing productive forces. The ideas of the ruling

class, as the foundation of ideas2, can be contradicted only when social relations do

not match up with existing productive forces anymore. And so, ideas are not directly

influenced by material conditions; they are also conditioned in an ongoing process of

thought (Kain 1981). The problem with Kain’s exposition, however, is that he simply

describes Marx’s ideas in what essentially makes up ideas but not on how ideas have

come to be. When his aim in the paper was to present the relationship of ideas with

material conditions, he did so only by examining the absolute givenness of ideas, as

though all ideas are linear and consistent. If ideas are determined by the material

reality, how does the material exactly arrive at and become these ideas? For example,

ideas could consist not only of what you are but also that you are actually saying something

else that is contradictory to what you are but are nonetheless constrained by the strategies

this system allows. It could be possible that ideas result from a cycle of ideological

contradictions - meaningful and meaningless elements, perception and praxis, even

structure and agency. And so, this begs equally crucial sub-questions: is morality is

impossible? Are ideas inescapable?

The One That Got Away: Religion as Escape

Parsons (1964), in his article The Prophetic Mission of Marx, further explicates on ideas

by looking at Marx’s concept of alienation in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.

Within the present state of affairs, “man is broken, divided against himself, alienated”

(Parsons 1964, p. 52) but he does not realize this for the very system forges illusions

that prevent man from realizing his true self. Man is detached from his natural unity -

as in the unfolding of history - with the means of production such as tools and

machines. His life activity is turned into a means-for-existing instead of having

inherent value, an in-itself. Binaries - which Marx calls contradictions, antimonies,

inversions - present themselves as coexistent with each other when they actually

spring out of the divisions and alienations in society3.



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Parsons (1964) explicates on how religion, for Marx, is a form of alienation. It is one

of the illusions created by the system. It becomes a leeway - an escape - for his

repressed alienation; and thus, is like opium which soothes yet addictively4. “Religion

is thus a symptom of man's struggle against his self-alienation while at the same time it

expresses inescapably the wounds and the scars of his own suffering”, Parsons (1964,

p. 86) explains. What man cannot escape from this concrete world, he compensates

through religion. It deflects man to think that there is hope in this world, a “fantastic

and illusory happiness (Parsons 1964, p. 57)”. It escapes the concrete - that which

Marx calls real. Because of this ideological inevitability, religion becomes a form of

idolatry to particular economic forms and commodities. These only perpetuate the

very ideas that guide these ‘idols’. Escape then becomes synonymous with ideology.

Parsons explains with poignancy:

“Religious feeling, thought, and aspiration are partial and abstract in a world in

which man's concrete being is shattered and twisted by property relations. This,

in fact, is the great defect of religion: it misplaces what is really concrete,

placing an illusion at the center of an already alienated existence. . . Religion is

man's egoism and loneliness lifted to a cosmic scale.” (Parsons 1964, p. 57)

Parsons, reading Marx, argues that the only way to escape this form of alienation and

grasp man’s natural unity is to “penetrate beneath the forms of social institutions and

ruling ideologies (Parsons 1964, p. 55)”5. Modern establishments - such as religion,

family, the community, law and other institutions of society - are harmful, and so

must be superseded. These establishments, as instruments of social reproduction, reify

the ideologies that prevent social change such that since the world cannot be altered,

man continually adapts and evolves by creating layers of illusions and disillusions.

Marx rejects all religions and gods because they are paradoxically deceptive and

antihuman, only to make man suffer once more instead of freeing him.

Escaping Escape: Abolishing the Present State of Affairs



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Mostov (1989), in her article Marx as Democratic Theorist, explicates on On the Jewish

Question, by arguing that it is an integral part of Marx when he attacks the dualism of

state and civil society. Marx, in his critique of Bruno Bauer, argues that it is wrong to

focus on subjugating religion into the private sphere from the secular state. Nothing

will change for the people will still be dependent on religion in their private lives.

Religion, because it promotes individualism in the private aspect, takes away the social

element of public life. In the state, the individual is compartmentalized into an

abstract public person in the political community and a private person in civil society.

Instead, there should be no division between man as member of the political

community and of civil society. “In the political community he regards himself as a

communal being, but in civil society he is active as a private individual, treats other

men as means, reduces himself to a means, and becomes the plaything of alien

powers”, Mostov argues, quoting Marx in On The Jewish Question. The liberal project,

for instance, further promotes this dichotomy by drawing borders between private

human motivations and civic life. As a result, the individual is reduced from being

purposive social actors into isolated decision-makers.

Mostov, reading Marx, refers to democracy as the constitution that overcomes this

dualism. Democracy is the “self-determination of the people” and the “free product

of men” (Mostov 1989, p. 200). There are arguably various political forms available,

but democracy is that form which truly corresponds to "human existence", for it is

based on laws created by social individuals for their own common good. Political

emancipation provides for the abstract community equal citizenship and democratic

decision-making but only as an idea. Rather, society should push for the realization of

a universal human emancipation that makes real the “common good” and “social

cooperation”. Marx’s notion of democracy is commonly construed as an outcome-

based democracy6. Democracy is viewed as the necessary condition for the eventual

fulfillment of the common good, not that democracy in itself already represents the

common good. However, Mostov, reading Marx, presents an unusual reading of Marx

by highlighting the process-oriented view of democracy anchored on a notion of

democracy wherein individuals cooperate freely and equally in the activity of

governing.



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Although Mostov’s definition of democracy is highly contestable - for democracy

cannot merely be popular rule nor is it the state of perpetual harmony - what seems

clear in her reading is the exposition of the conditions of the ideal communal state of

affairs. Nonetheless, we find value in the entirety of her critique which claims to the

common good as the heart of communism. We have to abolish state of affairs, not

just adjust to it. Marx claims to communism as the real movement in history, not just

as a “search for essence” but as an ideal - a state of affairs - that we have to abolish.

Mostov (1989), reading Marx in the Communist Manifesto, argues that the proletarian

movement would overcome this dualism. The first step is to utilize democracy to

provide institutional conditions toward the abolition of private property. For instance,

Marx praised the Commune for being truly democratic, inclusive and expansive,

making public decision a social activity open to all and institutionalizing common

affairs in different levels of government7. But this is just one step. The proletariat shall

use its political supremacy to consolidate capital from the bourgeoisie, redirecting all

instruments of production in the hands of the state. Every form of class claims that

they represent the whole of society, but this is impossible because each class

represents an interest of its own based on property, birth, education, religion or

position. However, the proletariat, having no private property, represents no

particular interest that is not the general social interest. Having the most general of

interests, the proletariat is fit to make social choices that are agreeable to everyone. As

such, Mostov argues that the struggle of the proletariat becomes a “movement of and

for the majority of the people (Mostov 1989, p 203)”. With private property away, the

proletariat could govern democratically not so much as a ruling class but through the

continued support of the people.

The rest of the commentaries equally looked at how religion can only be possible in

the state of affairs because man returns to their most natural state. Religion, being an

escape, can only be escaped by changing the state of affairs. True religion is

legitimized only by a total abolishment of the present state of things, and only in this

condition is real happiness possible. Parsons, reading Marx, argues that religion might

now be abolished, because it can only be creatively transformed into a critical and



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progressive function albeit altered such that it cannot be recognized anymore. “[M]an

must see a great light, he must be born again, he must be transformed, he cannot yet

know what he shall be”, Parsons (1964, p. 69) writes. In the communist state of affairs,

man is able to discover a God beyond all Gods. The purity of the communist state is a

necessary condition for the creation of a pure religion. However, this truth can be

achieved only in the “perfect state of non-alienation in which man infallibly possesses

the truth and requires no criticism (Parsons 1964, p. 68)”. Nonetheless, Mostov

argues that Marx’s critique of religion is a critique only insomuch as it is an established

religion that is alienating. Marx was opposing only the evil gods. Religion is in itself

not the disease but only a symptom of a failed system. It should be established that by

idols, Marx does not refer to God and faithful religion, but to the ideological

embedment in religion as a social institution.

The overarching case by all the commentators, however, is premised upon seeing the

possibility of religion only in the futuristic sense - along with the formation of the new

state of affairs. This still dismisses religion today in all that it is. Is religion merely an

escape that has to be escaped? Is religion not possible under the present system?

Thinking Meta: Is Marxism (Not) Ideological?

Ashcraft (1894), in Marx and Political Theory, articulates the contradiction between

Marxism as in itself an ‘idea’, and so, that it can likewise be subject to its own critique.

Kain explicates on the methodological meta-question: how is it possible to develop a

theoretical framework in which contradictions arising from class conflict are fundamental aspect of the

social reality to be interpreted, and in which the conflict between theoretical explanations of that social

reality also constitute part of the given conditions of theorizing about that society?

Ashcraft claims to Marx’s political theory as ideological and class-determined but only

whilst this debate is viewed as a debate between the scientific and ideological (Ashcraft

1984). Scientific analysis of the political economy, which aims to account to content

and meaning, is already in itself an affirmation of the dominant ideologies of the



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modern bourgeois society. Since bourgeois political economy has acquired the

stability of natural forms of social life, the very attempt to explain this through

scientific analysis in itself formulates forms of thoughts that validate the dominance of

bourgeois political economy. Therefore, scientific analysis - contrary to its

hypothetical goal - would only run counter to real development. On the other hand,

political theory and criticism must be practical and revolutionary. The only condition

for political theory for it to transcend ideological thinking is that it must do more than

accurately describe but rather to serve as an instrument of social change. When force

decides, one transcends the realm of the scientific. Challenging the "fixed" make-up of

the bourgeois production is tantamount to challenging the "fixed" quality of an

ideologist's theoretical framework. When one goes through violent political struggle to

assert what should be instead of simply explaining what is, one escapes the

inevitability of ideology. This is exactly why political theory is different from scientific

theory; scientific theory only reveals while political theory challenges and changes.

“[E]mpirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically . . . the

connection of the social and political structure with production”, Marx writes. (p 33)

This is also why, Ashcraft asserts, Marx’s critique of other social theories are not

necessarily framed within Marxist thinking, but whether or not these theories sharpen

class conflict.

Ashcraft concludes that Marx actually thinks that revolution does not need political

theory (Ashcraft 1984). For Marx, the only condition to escape ideology is to be

revolutionary. Marx was always for practical action because it is only through this and

not theories that revolutions occur. Ashcraft argues, as Marx would see it, that

political theories are not even exportable from one country to another. Ultimately,

Marx’s empirical approach to politics highlights not the promise of certainty but rests

on the “contingency and indeterminacy of political action (Ashcraft 1984, p. 668).

Parsons (1964), in The Prophetic Mission of Marx, also explicates on the revolutionary

aspect of Marx by describing him as a prophet. Marx is a revolutionary prophet in five

conditions: first, as a radical realist; second, as one who perceives an ultimate order of

goodness; third, for he criticizes and judges the existing social order; fourth, being



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committed to action and demands that others commit themselves to action; and fifth,

for he warns men of destruction and promises fulfillment8. For Marx envisioned of

liberating man by purging that which makes impossible the fulfillment of man’s true

self, and that he dedicated his life to this mission, Marx is a prophet whose message

will come across generations. Parsons romanticizes Marx further by interpreting this

mission as potentially ours as well, and that we have to reinterpret history while we

can still grasp it:

“The great moving matrix of man's natural, historical, productive life,

preceding (in part) and sustaining all individuals and cultures, makes the human

species, cultures, and individuals. Consciousness does not primarily determine

this, though it can and will increasingly. So while history is our history and we

make it, we interpret it, we change it - still it makes us, it changes us. The

promise of our fulfillment is tempered by the knowledge of our individual

relatedness to other individuals, past history, and nature.” (Parsons 1964, p. 67)

God’s Revolution: In Escape, Return and Redemption

What today’s discourse on Marxism and religion often miss is the possibility of

rediscovering the revolutionary character of Christianity, to which it has always been.

Christianity is God’s revolution, and that His intervention in history through Jesus

Christ is in itself a revolution that seeks for the transformation of hearts and the

transformation of the world. The Gospel challenges our humanness and existence -

our acquiescence to status quo, our surrendering to our sinfulness and injustice, our

self-centeredness - to ultimately attain to the perpetual coexistence among different

forms in life and with God. In God, we are healed, transformed, and renewed. For at

that moment when He sent Jesus, God revealed to man not to give comfortable

assurance but to reassure man that his longing, suffering and waiting becomes hoping

and seeking as well. We are convinced of God’s salvation but we still long for this

salvation. Ours is an endless revolution, albeit a non-violent one, as it continually

hopes and seeks. St. John the Baptist, who signaled the last of Old Testament

prophets, tells humanity of the fulfillment of God’s promise through Jesus:



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"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe.

You generation of vipers, fly now from the wrath to come. Every tree that

brings forth evil fruit will be hewn down and cast into the fires of history.

Repent, and do only those deeds meet for repentance. And, you who are

appointed to be the saving remnant of mankind, unite, rise up, and take

possession of the kingdom destined for you from the creation of the world."9

(Mt 3: 2-15)

To believe and repent is a phrase that requires absolute response and responsibility, for

this requires a faith that brings us to think differently afterwards by being moved by a

feeling of compunction. We are called to rise up and take possession of the kingdom - to be

revolutionary - but through continual renewal. Jesus Christ, unlike Marx, lies on the

transpolitical dimension of salvation. It gives a vision that allows for the

reinterpretation of human reality. God’s revolution is not a political revolution but a

revolutionary re-envisioning that goes beyond political means. Certainly, Marx and

Jesus Christ differ in worldview; for the former seeks real concrete, humanist

revolution while the latter seeks faithful redemption. Christianity touches individuals

to the deepest parts of themselves. No order of life can ever satisfy them for they can

only long and seek the Kingdom of God and his truth. It is the true realization - even

transcends - Marx’s universal human emancipation of all humanity. They do not settle

for what is for they always seeks to change the world, continually transforming and

revolutionizing individuals, society and the world.

The substance of Christianity paradoxically lies in the substance of its substance. It

substance does not lie in the concrete but that which it transcends. It almost loses

itself, but accepts this (un)finding as fulfillment. What makes the Catholic Church a

unique religion though is that its pursuit of finding God is in itself longing. Its core

message lies not in achieving salvation but in the continual hope and embodiment of

longing for God, and of deliberately finding emptiness through Him. This experience

makes Catholic Church a unique religion: that we are convinced that there is a salvific



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God but we still long for this salvation. This real meaning of faith, Pope Benedict

XVI (2009) argues, in Caritas in Veritate, that Truth lies “only on Christ” who “bore

witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection”. Christian faith

is not an instant acknowledgment of God but a process of longing for that

acknowledgment. Pope set this promise and longing clearly, “[l]ove is God's greatest

gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope (2009, section 2).” In fact, the Pope

describes Christianity to not have “technical solutions” – a shortcut to faith – but a

“mission of truth to accomplish”. He did not vindicate the Catholic Church to have

an automatic solution to humankind, but rather, an on-going mission to accomplish. It

is out there to preach the promise of Christ who is the Truth. The Pope sees this faith

not just as an instantaneous moment but a pursuit to search for God in the world.

There is a sense of faith that binds us to Christian faith. It does not require us to be

convinced for the very moment of faith carries with it an inherent conviction. We are

certain that faith has already revealed itself in the very moment of recognizing that we

are moving and are being moved, and so we move with it acknowledging that faith is

not merely about encountering this reality half-way but consistently experiencing and

understanding it in its fullness every day. Along the way, we continually discover and

rediscover ourselves and humanness. Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical, explains

that "[c]harity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness" is "the principal driving

force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity".

Describing charity and truth as central to Christian faith in his encyclical, Pope

Benedict XVI asserts than “[o]nly in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can

charity be authentically lived” but moreover, that this Truth “needs to be sought,

found and expressed within the ―economy of charity, but charity in its turn needs to

be understood, confirmed and practiced in the light of truth.” The Catholic Church

recognizes the Truth, but despite this, Truth should still be sought for and longed for.

At one point, the Pope says, the Lord Jesus Christ reminds us of our dependence on

him – that “[a]part from me you can do nothing‖ (Jn 15:5)” – and on the other hand,

reminds us of his promise of redemption – that “I am with you always, to the close of

the age.”



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Nothing Escapes

Lévinas, in On Escape, argues that escape does not lose the self, but actually grasps it10.

In escape the I flees itself, not in opposition to the infinity of what it is not or of what it will become,

but rather due to the fact that it is or that it becomes. Nothing is lost, for escape in itself finds.

Dominant narratives of today equally posit to the complex and paradoxical relations

and structures of our time, and the need to escape it. We present grand histories and

with these, alternative histories. We anticipate - somewhere ahead of us - a change in

the course in which history is run. Ultimately, we do these not to escape the present,

but to find it - to find man and his true relationship with himself, his humanness and

nature. But almost all the time, we neglect the possibilities of finding solace amidst all

these: in the Truth of Christianity.

Although lying on an entirely different discussion, Lévinas’ philosophical reflection on

escape rings a bell to my discussion of religion as escape, perhaps even the last piece

to tie everything up. After having sufficiently explored some facets of escape, I go

back to the main question in this paper: what is the way out for religion?

As argued in my paper, nothing escapes, for religion is an escape that cannot be

escaped. If it escapes, it is only to find and redeem. Christianity’s faithful longing,

despite recognizing that the Truth will reveal itself in time, is the most revolutionary

approach to seeing light in religion and modernity today. Jesus Christ, as the

transpolitical salvation of mankind, gives true matter to Christianity, escaping today’s

ideology despite being subdued to it. It receives the Truth, rather than imposes,

“grasping its meaning as gift, as acceptance, as communion.”11

1 By relations and forces at certain stages of production, Kain refers to Marx’s

Materialist Conception of History in The German Ideology wherein man’s real existence in

particular epochs in history is determined by dominant material-life processes.



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2 Ideas are the crystallization of the ideas of the ruling class. Quoting Marx’s The

Materialist Conception of History in The German Ideology, “[t]he ruling ideas are nothing

more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant

material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one

class the ruling one, therefore, ideas of dominance.”

3 Marx refers to binaries not just as forms of division but more precisely as

contradictions. Hegel would call the former ‘hierarchies’, where the world of thought

dominates over the world of nature, drawing a rift in the supposed coexistence of

things. As Parsons enumerates, these pairs of categories include subject versus object,

self-affirmation versus objectification, man versus other men, man versus nature,

physical needs versus spiritual needs, physical labor versus mental labor," theory

versus practice, sense versus spirit, activity versus passivity, existence versus essence,

individual versus species, freedom versus necessity, production versus consumption,

labour versus enjoyment, and town versus country (Parsons 1946, p. 53). Marx,

however, calls these as contradictions because man does not become in the process - he

does not control but becomes controlled. For example, the more wealth man gives,

the poorer and the more enslaved he becomes; the more he produces, the less

valuable he becomes; and when money was supposed to only means for subsistence,

man becomes the means for the very life of capital.

4 Religion as opium of the people is misleading. It is often misinterpreted, becoming

the basis of the claim that Marx is atheistic. As discussed earlier, religion is not the

disease but merely a symptom of a disease; it is not the cause but a manifestation of

the cause. The complete passage, as in Marx’s Hegel’s Critique of the Philosophy of Right, is

explained as: “Religious distress was at the same time the expression of real distress

and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the

heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium

of the people.”



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5 Parsons, like the rest of the commentators, reads ideas in Communism as the

abolishment of ideology through a revolution. Like the rest, Parsons sees the

possibility of religion in the futuristic sense through a revolution. Their revolution is

concrete, but the conditions are abstract and philosophical. The Communist state of

affairs is a “state of being” or “an order of things” and not simply a form of

government. It is mostly in this aspect that my analysis of religion takes place.

6 Mostov refers to outcome-based democracy as the dominant interpretation of Marx

vis-à-vis his democratic theory where democracy is viewed as the “necessary

resistance” and “road to socialism”. At first, it seems that this more precisely

encapsulates the essence of democracy as continual struggle for the common good.

However, reading Marx, democracy might only more precisely be process-oriented for

the moment of practical action representing the common good is in itself the struggle

that is the heart of democracy.

7 Note that Mostov’s discussion on the Paris Commune can be found - albeit in a

work beyond the scope of this paper - in Karl Marx and Lenin’s The Civil War in

France: The Paris Commune and Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx’s Writing on the Paris

Commune. The Commune, although Marx claims to it as a concrete example for

socialist democratic institutions, has neglected the necessary conditions for a wider

proletarian revolution in Europe.

8 For an in-depth description of each condition of a prophet, refer to section IV,

pages 60-67, in Parsons’ The Prophetic Mission of Karl Marx. Parsons’ discussion of these

five conditions is premised upon dominant narratives of a prophet particularly that of

the Christian experience.



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9 This chapter in the Gospel of Matthew narrates John the Baptist’s ministry, whose

mission and message was to baptize all of Jerusalem, and ultimately, Jesus Christ. The

gesture of baptism, as a sacrament, signals the sanctification of the spirit and the

newness and transformation of life.

10 “I” as self-sufficient and accumulative is a very bourgeois conception and

philosophy, Lévinas argues, for the bourgeoisie is scared of the unforeseeable. On the

contrary, peace is not being closed in on oneself but rather fleeing from oneself. Even

Lévinas echoes the need to escape from the “somnolence of our bourgeois existence”.

We also anticipate later on that nothing is wasted is also a very Foucauldian, such that

even that which escapes is used.

11 Can be found in section III of Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate, where the

Pope describes Christ’s Truth as the real light that gives meaning and value to charity,

and all other virtues for that matter.

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Kain, Philip J. “Marx's Theory of Ideas”. History and Theory, Vol. 20, No. 4, Beiheft 20:

Studies in Marxist Historical Theory. (Dec. 1981), pp. 357-378.

Lévinas, Emmanuel. On Escape Del’ evasion. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982.

Marx, Karl. On the Jewish Question. Paris: Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, 1843.

_________. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Ed. Dirk J. Struik. New

York : International Publications , 1990, c1964.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch%E2%80%93Franz%C3%B6sische_Jahrb%C3%BCcher



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_________ and Fredrick Engels. The Communist Manifesto, introd by Eric Hobsbawm.

London: Verso, 2001,c1998, orig 1849.

_________. The German Ideology. David Riazanov. 1932, orig May 1486.

Mostov, Julie. “Karl Marx as Democratic Theorist” Polity, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Winter,

1989), pp. 195-212.

Parsons, Howard L. “The Prophetic Mission of Karl Marx". The Journal of Religion, Vol.

44, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 52-72.

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charity and truth. Vatican Website. June 29, 2009. Retrieved from

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-

xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

Rethinking ‘Ideology’ and ‘Escape’ in Marx’s Critique of Religion

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