Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Novaya Zhizn, No. 28, December 3, 1905.
Present-day society
is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working
class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the
landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since
the “free” workers, who all their life work for the capitalists,
are “entitled” only to such means of subsistence as are essential
for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the
safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.
The economic
oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every
kind of political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening
and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The
workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to
fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will
rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of
capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of spiritual
oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of
the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want
and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle
against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in
a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle
with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the
like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by
religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to
take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by
the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while
on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their
entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price
tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people.
Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the
slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life
more or less worthy of man.
