For every italicized word I instructed them to poke or pound on the table or point decisively in the air. It was a hoot! (You should try it too; you might also want to lower your voice to a dramatic hush at the sentence beginning "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature..." before the dramatic crescendo of the next sentence.)The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. 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. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
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.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. 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 criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. [Whole text]
I think it got to them - it certainly got to me. Strangely, there's nobody I get as evangelical about in my teaching as Marx. (Well, maybe some Buddhist thinkers. And Barth.) Perhaps that's because I find in Marx - especially the young Marx - a pure desire to overcome the structures and institutions which divide people, lead us to lose sight of our "species being." Of course, he thinks that if we could overcome these structures and institutions, we'd have no need for religion, among other things. Were it not for the track record of Marxist movements I'd say: let's try it and see.