Fake News (Lies) is....

Sat Aug 19 08:49:11 CDT 2017

Think also of *reception* context. When Marx wrote, opiates (primarily
laudanum) were at every apothecary shop, in every home medicine chest,
routinely used for severe pain by everyone from the scullery maid to Lady
Brambleby-Montague. Addiction was recognized, of course, but if we read
those words in 1844 and were asked to paraphrase, we'd likely say "religion
is the painkiller of the masses" -- with the implications that (1) it dealt
with symptoms rather than causes, but also (2) of course we all turn to it
at need.

A century later, when opium, morphine and heroin had been thoroughly
criminalized, the paraphrase would be "religion is the addictive drug of
the masses" -- with the implications that it was (1) purveyed by evil,
greedy criminals to (2) the dregs of society and the weak-willed. Marx's
phrase almost always came up in 20th-century rants about "godless
communism": what kind of perverted ideology would compare our highest
spiritual activity to the squalor of DRUG FIENDS!?!

One might pursue this into Pynchon's "mindless pleasures" -- the working
title of, and recurrent phrase in, GR. One might ask why both his preterite
in general and many of his actual or potential "revolutionaries" spend so
much of time with both pharmacological drugs from Mt. Vernon hemp onward,
and with habitual/addictive analogs (the lighting-gas underground in AtD,
Thanatoids and Tubefreex, assorted pre- and post-"Me Decade" lifestyle
cults in IV and Vineland, absorbing virtual reality in BE, etc. etc.).

But that would be to drag this forum into my own preoccupation with just
one notoriously non-political, non-ideological cult writer, which is far
from my intention.

On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 1:32 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I don't know, if you are all aware that the text ish provided was
> originally written in German by a young man of 25 years. In German it's a
> bit different. You can find the whole introduction in English here:
> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
>
> Obviously it isn't clear who made the translation. The German, published
> in February 1844, went like that:
>
> Das *religiöse* Elend ist in einem der *Ausdruck* des wirklichen Elendes
> und in einem die *Protestation* gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion
> ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt,
> wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das *Opium* des Volks.
> (emphasis by Marx)
>
> (You can find the whole German version here:
> http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me01/me01_378.htm)
>
> Two differences you can see easily: Marx did write "das Gemüth einer
> herzlosen Welt" and "der Geist geistloser Zustände".
>
> Perhaps, for the latter, "mind of mindless conditions" would be better?
> Andrew McKinnon (http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2164/3074/
> marx_religion_and_opium_final_author_version.pdf;jsessionid=
> 4C9E3A2EEC9C2502023269AC3DBC1712?sequence=1)
> translates: "spirit of a spiritless situation".
>
> In Geman the whole Introduction is one of the finest pieces of scientific
> (philosophical) prose of the 19th century, in my eyes, although deeply
> rhetorical. In English it's still very good, don't you think?
>
> 2017-08-19 5:24 GMT+02:00 Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:
>
>> Really good contextualization. This decontextualization has been a
>> frequent tactic of the right in recent decades and is a specialty of
>> ideologues of many persuasions. The idea is always to put words in the
>> mouths of those you disagree with tater than try to understand waht they
>> are sayin. Where there is profudity in Marx, and I think he has some
>> wrong-headed projections of how change might come, but where there is a
>> deep truth was in his understanding and empathy with those suffering most
>> under industrial capitalism. I’m going to save this for my little book of
>> quotes.
>>
>>
>> > On Aug 18, 2017, at 11:03 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > "[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
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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