Question

Compare and contrast Marx (in the German Ideology) and Durkheim’s (in the Elementary Forms of the Religious Life) analyses of religion. Your answer should include two sections: one that underlines the similarities between them, and a second that explores their differences.

Answer 1

Religion continues to be a debatable theory with different perspectives in order. In the beginning of the 19^th century secularisation, social theorists like Karl Marx, known for his theories on capitalism, and Emile Durkheim, a pioneer sociologist attempted to examine the relationship between a religion and a society.

Emile Durkheim is considered to be the first sociologist who initiated the analysis of religion in terms of a society and its implications. He described religion saying that it includes elements that surpasses the limits of human knowledge. Durkheim says that religion is a unifying system where practices and beliefs come and unite under a single moral community called a church. Religion is different for different people. For some it is found in a place of worship, for some religion is a belief or practice and for others religion is a guide to life, for example, Dharma.

Durkheim believes in religion is a practice of sacred things, something which is related to divinity. He argued that in a society where there is a difference between profane and sacred, religion exists. He believed that religion binds community and give them strength during life transitions and tragedies. According to his study, cohesive bonds of social order result from common values and principles of a community.

According to Karl Marx, a German philosopher and a revolutionary socialist, religion reflects a social stratification of society and maintains inequality. It perpetuates the status quo. Religion was just another tool for an extension of working class. In 1844, Karl Marx says, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed, the heart of a heartless world. Soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Both Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim believed in the centrality of religion to the society. The believed that it plays a major role in society and act as a centrifugal force.

Whereas Durkheim believed religion was a force for cohesion that stitched the members of the society and bind them in a group based on the believes and practices, Marx considered religion as an entity that is inseparable from the economy and the working class. Marx identified religion as nothing but an ideology that perpetuates and mystifies the inequalities of a capitalist society.