Marx believed that the historical import of the forces of production
(technology) and the relations of production (and especially the division
between those who own the means of production and those who must
work for them to survive) had been neglected by the Hegelian movement
with which he was closely associated in his formative intellectual years.
Hegel had focused on the many forms of religious, philosophical, artistic,
historical and political thinking – the diverse types of self-consciousness –
which the human race had passed through in its long journey of coming
to know itself. After his death, and as part of the struggle over Hegel’s
legacy, the Left Hegelians attacked religion, believing it was a form of
‘false consciousness’ which prevented human beings from acquiring a
deep understanding of what they are and what they can become. But, for
Marx, religious belief was not an intellectual error which had to be
corrected by philosophical analysis but an expression of the frustrations
and aspirations of people struggling with the material conditions of
everyday life. Religion was ‘the opium of the masses’ and the ‘sigh of an
oppressed creature’ (Marx 1977c: 64) and revolutionaries had to understand and challenge the social conditions which gave rise to the solace of
religious beliefs. ‘The critique of heaven’, as Marx put it, had to become
‘the critique of earth’ (1977c).