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Secularisations and Their Debates pp 61–73Cite as

Marx and the Christian Logic of the Secular State

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Abstract

In light of the renewed debate over religion and politics (as a subset of the question of secularism), I seek some insights from Marx and Engels as a way of exploring the tensions within secularism. I am interested two of Marx’s texts: Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction and On the Jewish Question. In the former, he argues the rather commonplace position that religion is a particular concern and that it really should have no part in the general matters of the state. However, in the latter he offers a far more dialectical argument, namely, that the secular state emerges from the impossible contradictions within the Christian state. In Frederick William IV, King of Prussia Engels elaborates on this contradiction, exploring the problems with the Prussian king’s efforts to preserve a Christian state. The reason for returning to these texts is quite simple, for it avoids the need to reinvent the wheel concerning a debate with a long history.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Where Marx and Engels wrote the original text in German, I cite the English source first and then the German source.

  2. 2.

    ‘This rationalist point of view … is so inconsistent as to adopt the irreligious point of view while its aim is to protect religion’ (Marx 1975a: 103–104, 1975b: 116).

  3. 3.

    This deep tension shows up in various observations and passing comments concerning German politics and society in Marx’s endless journalistic pieces (See, e.g., Marx 1980a: 127, 1980d: 57, 1980e: 96, 99).

  4. 4.

    Another example of Marx’s awareness of the contradictions inherent in the Christian state appears in his long discussion of thefts of fallen wood (his third piece of commentary on the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly). He points out the paradox of the Reformation’s abolition of monasteries and secularisation of their property. Although it was a necessary step to get rid of an abusive institution, it also had its downside, for nothing replaced the meagre support the poor had received from the monasteries (Marx 1975f: 232, 1975g: 207).

  5. 5.

    Or as he puts it in his debate with Bruno Bauer, the ‘modern state that knows no religious privileges is also the fully developed Christian state’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 117–118, 1975: 111).

  6. 6.

    See Breckman (1999: 295–296), who argues that when Marx came to the conclusion that the secular state actually has a dialectical basis in theology, that he saw the inadequacies of liberal, republican arguments for such a state.

  7. 7.

    See also Engels’s comments in the late letters on Paul Lafargue’s efforts to bring about the separation of church and state in the French assembly (Engels 1968b: 248, 1968c: 239, 2001a: 330, 2001b: 320).

  8. 8.

    For example: ‘The Prussian King, who calls himself emphatically “the Christian King”, and has made his court a most ludicrous assemblage of whining saints and piety-feigning courtiers’ (Engels 1975c: 530, 1975d: 515).

  9. 9.

    He makes a similar point in his discussion of the Established Church of England and the English constitution in relation to ‘Dissenters’ and the Roman Catholics (See, Engels 1974: 580–581, 1975a: 501).

  10. 10.

    The separation of church and state would become standard socialist policy (See, Marx and Engels 1973c: 4, 1977a: 4; Engels 1972: 237, 1990: 229).

  11. 11.

    For Talal Asad (2003), secularism is another way for the state, especially in Muslim-majority countries, to control religion.

  12. 12.

    Out of a very long list of such references, in this and following notes I provide a few samples (See, Marx 1986b: 86–87, 1986c: 178, 1991: 120).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Roland Boer

  2. University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia

    Roland Boer

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  1. Philosophy, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Victoria, Australia

    Matthew Sharpe

  2. Philosophy, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Victoria, Australia

    Dylan Nickelson

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Boer, R. (2014). Marx and the Christian Logic of the Secular State. In: Sharpe, M., Nickelson, D. (eds) Secularisations and Their Debates. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7116-1_4

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