Talk:Opium of the people

message: This is a possible interpretation of the phrase, however at the moment it is my own. If you can find someone with a similar theory and give a citation, please do. I believe that Marx is referring to opium as what is essentially an empty, false sense of happiness or pleasure, and the following reference to happiness makes it rather obvious to me. The other cases pale in comparison. - Cyborg Ninja (talk) 02:04, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: While this is completely out of the scope of the talk page, I would like to dismiss that theory as logically, there is no 'false' happiness or pleasure. Happiness is happiness, pleasure is pleasure. The issue I suppose is about how one gets there, but don't consider that just because gathering it one form (religion) isn't a (from my view) desireable way to attain happiness, it's still the same chemicals being released into the receptors in your brain, all the same. No more, no less. People are simple creatures, remember. Anyhow, enough of my bable. 99.173.63.46 (talk) 19:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: But Marx explicitly contrasts "illusory happiness" with "real happiness". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:19, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternate interpretation

message: I thought the quote referred to 'opium of the people' or 'opium of the masses' not 'opiate' I can't see how they got this from this quote; "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes".  Fiendishfish (talk) 20:53, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen the English translation "opiate" be used before, although I agree that "opium" is more in-line with the original German and, to the best of my knowledge, all English translations of Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. However, as with the famous phrase Proletarier aller Länder vereinigt Euch!, ("Proletarians of all countries, unite!", "Working men of all countries, unite!", "Workers of the world, unite!", etc.) there may be several English translations.– Zumoarirodoka (talk) 11:24, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Misinterpretation

message: I heard that version several times but never properly checked that though. I mean I don't know when and where it happened (if it did)
but some people ascribe a phrase 'Your so-called religion is like opium: it transforms and deadens the pain, instead of giving the strength' to that author.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.218.188.179 (talk) 14:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  A guy from German Wikipedia found this http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=4815&kapitel=1#gb_found the exact source of the quotation there 'Ihre sogenannte Religion wirkt bloß wie ein Opiat: reizend, betäubend, Schmerzen aus Schwäche stillend. I think someone should add that to the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.46.186.196 (talk) 13:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Dead link above; try: this one from books.google.de for Novalis quote. Mathglot (talk) 01:44, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

text: Added a Novalis section. Mathglot (talk) 18:49, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original idea by german author Novalis? 

message: This important distinction between the views of Marx (religion is created by the believers to be able to endure bad living conditions) vs. those of Lenin (religion is created by ruling class to enable them to suppress the ruled) should be mentioned and explained. -- 20:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marx's "opium ''of'' the people" vs Lenin's "opium ''for'' the people" 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people#Ambiguity_of_.22opium.22
Should this section be removed entirely or properly cited? The link is dead, so there is, in effect, no citation for this section.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by KronosEnFire (talk • contribs) 15:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguity of Opium Link/reference dead 

message: I read somewhere that the context of opium & religion had to do with it's effect of stupefication. [See this quote,] and Google, "Opiate of the masses" + stupify or stupefy. I'd edit the article but am not good at it, thx!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.0.135.137 (talk) 19:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religion as a Stupefier 

message: Not every quote about religion or opium in the last century-plus since Marx penned his comment, is relevant to this article.
Notable quotes by famous people will inevitably have thousands and thousands of later authors, great and small, who make comments about the original.  They don't all have to be included here.
Here are two that aren't relevant:
* Guy Debord's marketing quote from 1967
* Czesław Miłosz's 1998 book 
This 1967 quote from Guy Debord, which doesn't even have the word religion in it, is completely irrelevant to this article.
Guy Debord
In The Society of the Spectacle, published in 1967, Guy Debord parallels the Marxist conception of religion as opiate with that of marketing:
The spectacle is a permanent opium war which aims to make people identify goods with commodities and satisfaction with survival that increases according to its own laws. But if consumable survival is something which must always increase, this is because it continues to contain privation. If there is nothing beyond increasing survival, if there is no point where it might stop growing, this is not because it is beyond privation, but because it is enriched privation.Guy Debord. "The Society of the Spectacle"
Those authors such as Novalis and deSade who had similar quotations prior to the one we're most familiar with, i.e. Marx's, are certainly worth inclusion here. Whether Lenin's quote is worth including is debatable, clearly he's in a direct line from Marx with respect to his political philosophy, so perhaps his later quote should remain.
Mathglot (talk) 20:32, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant quotations removed 

message: Currently, most of the page is devoted to a laundry-list of every place the phrase (or one similar to it) was used.  Although tracing its origins is probably important, it should be done using secondary sources analyzing these (and especially commenting on whether Marx was drawing on or referencing any of them in particular, or some such thing.)  There's probably a bit more that can be said about the quote than just its history, too. --Aquillion (talk) 17:05, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Some major re-writing of this article is needed. – Zumoarirodoka (talk) 15:31, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page seems a bit sparse. 

message: I have added the quotefarm template as per WP:QUOTEFARM – the quotations seem to dominate the article, as it is. – Zumoarirodoka (talk) 15:31, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed the tag as nothing has been done for nearly two years. Any editor interested in improving the article can take note of what is mentioned here on the talk page. 82.4.168.57 (talk) 09:02, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote farming 

message: In the meaning it read "Christians disagree with Marx's belief that religion is opposed to or distracts religious adherents from promoting social justice.[5]"
The source then provides a Mark Woods article in Christian Today. 
So I changed it to "Mark Woods disagree with Marx's belief that religion is opposed to or distracts religious adherents from promoting social justice.[5]" until someone can provide a source for which Mark Woods speak on behalf of the entirety of the Christian religion. 
I hope that's cool.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.227.83.117 (talk) 22:04, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed the meaning section. 

message: Where is the full text of this quote, it should be prominently as #1 in the search results Onlyforwikiapps (talk) 07:32, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Where is the full text of this quote?

message: All the sources cited under this claim are far too general, none of them directly address this claim. 5.56.148.195 (talk) 13:45, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marxism is not structural functionalism,