Socialist Outlook

Socialist Viewpoint, International, Socialist Outlook and their supplements, 1984–2002

Trotsky on the "opium of the people"

Socialist Outlook no. 30, Winter 1999 · 215 words

Trotsky

Burnham, an American academic breaking from Marxism, Marxist method of dalcctical materialism Trotsky summed up key points succinctly:

"Religion is the opium of the people. religion? enc of religion not only ourselves but the masses. caucale num in the spirit or maleralism and albeism. Lcon Trotsky, too polemicised against the notion that there could be any room for religious superstition within the revolutionary movement. Arguing against James who had dismissed the Whoever fails to struggle against religion is tify your refusal to fight against the dialectic if you deem it one of the varictics of "you stopped botheringyourself long ago, as you say, about the question of religion. But you stopped it only for yourself. In addition to you, there exist all the others oute alow othemwe revolutionists neverson bolace ourselves abou religious questions, inasmuch as our task consists in cmancipating from the influNaturals we maintain the most considcrate attitude towards ine clous prejud dices of a backward worker. Should he desire to fight for our programme, we would accept him as a party member; but at the same tame our party would persistenti (From An Open Letter to Comrade Barikam, January 1940) or Protestants. 10155s to keee End of Classical German Philosophy).

Outlook eature citizens to death in order to confiscate their

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