Fake News (Lies) is....

[ish mailian]

"[fill in the blank] is the opiate of the people."

It's worth re-reading Marx to see what he meant when he famously said,
"It is the opium of the people."

Quoted like this, or, as is most often the case, with the antecedent
noun, Religion, in place of the pronoun, most readers assume that the
statement is fairly straightforward and simple.

Religion is the opium of the people.

Substituting other words or phrases has given the weight of Marx's
statement  to whatever a writer elects to compare with religion.

A close look at the original text reveals that the pronoun "it" as
used by Marx carries far more than its immediate antecedent or
religion.

In fact, as Marx says from the beginning of his essay, the critique of
religion, while essential, a prerequisite to all criticism,  is
complete.

So is the famous sentence synoptic, a repetition for emphasis, or what?


First, Marx restates the critique of religion with confidence and finality.

The opium sentence that follows the summary of the critique is not
synoptic and it does not merely add a flair of emphasis, an emphatic
metaphor.

The sentence is about suffering, the real suffering of the oppressed
and the protest against suffering.

Here is what Marx wrote:

"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."

When read with its preceding sentences the statement is not only more
profound, it is more germane to us, to our suffering, how we express
it and how we protest against it.

When we read the famous statement with words substituted  for the word
religion we do well to recall the original context and what it is Marx
identifies. The opium or opiate epidemic plaguing the American white
working classes is an expression of suffering, of despair, and a
protest against the suffering, the losses of white privilege.

Marx writes:
"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."




On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 10:39 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...the opiate of the people.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l