Marxism and Religion

The 51st issue (2009) of the American journal *New Socialist* published an article by French scholar Michel Roy entitled “Marxism and Religion – The Opium of the People?” Michel Roy is a member of the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and the author of *Wars of the Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America* and other works. For some time, the views of certain Marxists on religion have been simplistic, typically equating the Marxist perspective on religion with the assessment that “religion is the opium of the people.” In this article, Michel Roy questions this simplistic view and systematically elaborates the rich Marxist perspectives on religion. The main content of the article is as follows.

美刊《新社会主义者》第51期(2009年)刊登了法国学者米歇尔•罗伊题为《马克思主义和宗教——人民的鸦片？》的文章。米歇尔•罗伊是法国革命共产主义同盟(LCR)成员，著有《诸神的战争：拉丁美洲的宗教和政治》等书。一直以来，一些马克思主义者关于宗教的观点比较简单化，典型的做法是将马克思主义关于宗教的观点与“宗教是人民的鸦片”的评价相等同。米歇尔•罗伊在这篇文章中置疑了这种简单化的看法，并系统地阐述了马克思主义关于宗教的丰富观点。文章主要内容如下。

Is religion still, as Marx and Engels believed in the 19th century, a bastion of reaction, obscurantism, and conservatism? To a large extent, the answer is yes. Their views still apply to many Catholic organizations, to fundamentalist factions of the major religious faiths (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), to the vast majority of evangelical groups, and to most new religious sects—some of which, such as the notorious “Moon Church,” are nothing more than economic manipulation, obscurantist brainwashing, and fanatical opposition

宗教是否仍然如马克思和恩格斯在19世纪所认为的那样，是反动、蒙昧主义和保守主义的一个堡垒？在很大程度上来说，答案是肯定的。他们的观点仍然适用于许多天主教组织、适用于主要宗教信仰(基督教、犹太教、伊斯兰教)的原教旨主义派别、适用于绝大多数福音团体、适用于大多数新宗教派别——它们中的一些，如臭名昭著的“月亮教会”，除了经济操纵、蒙昧主义的洗脑和狂热地反对共产主义外，什么也不是。

Nevertheless, the emergence of revolutionary Christianity and liberation theology in Latin America (and elsewhere) has opened a new chapter in history and raised exciting new questions, questions that cannot be answered without a re-understanding of the Marxist analysis of religion, which is precisely the subject of this article.

尽管如此，革命的基督教和解放神学在拉美(以及其他地方)的出现，掀开了历史的新篇章，提出了激动人心的新问题，这些新问题，如果没有一种对马克思主义宗教分析的重新理解，是不可能得到回答的，而这正是本文的主题。

The well-known aphorism "religion is the opium of the people" is identified by the vast majority of both its supporters and opponents as the essential essence of the Marxist view of religion. But to what extent is this an accurate view? First, we must emphasize that this expression is by no means a Marxist patent. The same sentence can be found in various texts, in the works of German philosophers Kant, Herder, Feuerbach, Bauer, Hess, and Heine. For example, in an essay on Ludwig Böhme, Heine had already used this expression in an affirmative (albeit ironic) manner: "Blessed be this religion, which drips a few drops of the soporific water of sweet spiritual opium, a few drops of love, hope, and faith, into the bitter throat of suffering humanity!" Moses Hess, in his 1843 work published in Switzerland, adopted a more critical stance (though still ambiguous): "Religion can make the miserable consciousness of the slave bearable — in the same way that opium is a beneficial aid to the pain of illness."

“宗教是人民的鸦片”这一众所周知的警句，被绝大多数它的支持者和反对者认定为是马克思主义宗教观的本质精华。但它在何种程度上是一个准确的观点呢？首先，我们必须强调指出，这一表述根本就不是马克思主义者的专利。我们可以在各种不同的文本中，在德国哲学家康德、赫尔德、费尔巴哈、鲍威尔、赫斯和海涅的著作中找到同样的句子。例如，在关于路德维希•波墨的一篇文章中，海涅已经以肯定的方式(尽管是讽刺)使用过这种表述：“祝福这种宗教，它朝受苦的人类苦涩的咽喉里点下几滴甜蜜的精神鸦片的催眠水，几滴爱、希望和信仰！”摩西•赫斯在其1843年于瑞士出版的著作中，采用了一种较为批判性的立场(但仍然是模棱两可的)：“宗教能够使奴隶的苦恼意识成为可以忍受的——以一种与鸦片是疾病痛苦的有益帮助相同的方式。”

This expression, that religion is the opium of the people, soon appeared in Marx's "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction" (1844). A careful reading of the passage in which this expression appears makes it clear that it is a much more qualified and less one-sided statement than is commonly believed. Although clearly critical, Marx considers the dual character of the religious phenomenon: "Religious suffering is at the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."①

这种宗教是人民的鸦片的表述，很快出现在马克思的《黑格尔法哲学批判导言》(1844年)中。仔细阅读出现这一表述的段落就会明白，这是一个比人们通常相信的有更多限定和更少片面性的表述。尽管显然是持批判态度，但马克思考虑的是宗教现象的双重特性：“宗教里的苦难既是现实的苦难的表现，又是对这种现实的苦难的抗议。宗教是被压迫生灵的叹息，是无情世界的感情，正像它是没有精神的制度的精神一样。宗教是人民的鸦片。”①

If we read Marx's entire article, it is evident that Marx's view derives more from the Young Hegelians — the left wing of Hegelianism, which regarded religion as the alienation of human essence — than from Enlightenment philosophy, which simply dismissed religion as the machinations of ecclesiastical clergy. In fact, when Marx wrote the above passage, he was still a student of Feuerbach, a Young Hegelian. His analysis of religion is "pre-Marxist," lacking any class orientation, but rather a historical one. Yet it possesses a dialectical character, capturing the contradictory nature of religious "suffering": "at the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering."

如果我们阅读马克思的整篇文章，很显然，马克思的观点更多地来自青年黑格尔派——黑格尔主义的左派将宗教看作是人的本质的异化，而不是来自启蒙哲学——它将宗教简单地斥为教会神职人员的阴谋诡计。实际上，马克思写下上述段落时，他还是费尔巴哈的学生，一个青年黑格尔派。他对宗教的分析是“前马克思主义的”，没有任何阶级指向，而毋宁是一种历史的指向。但它具有一种辩证的性质，它抓住了宗教“苦难”的矛盾性质：“既是现实的苦难的表现，又是对现实苦难的抗议”。

Strictly Marxist religious studies came later, especially in *The German Ideology* (1846), where Marx began to study religion as a social and historical reality. The key to this new method of religious analysis is to study religion as one of the many forms of ideology, in other words, as the spiritual product of a nation, as a product of ideas, representations, and consciousness, which is necessarily conditioned by material production and corresponding social relations. Although Marx often uses the concept of "reflection" — which led generations of Marxists astray into barren territory — the core idea of *The German Ideology* is that the emergence and development of various forms of consciousness (religion, ethics, philosophy, etc.) must be explained by various social relations, "and this, of course, makes it possible to depict the whole process (and therefore also the interaction of its various aspects)."②

严格意义上的马克思主义宗教研究是后来的事情，尤其是在《德意志意识形态》中(1846年)，马克思开始把宗教作为一种社会的和历史的现实来研究。这种宗教分析的新方法的关键，是把宗教作为意识形态的诸多形式之一来研究，换言之，作为一个民族的精神产品，作为观念、表现和意识的产品来研究，它必然要受到物质生产和相应的社会关系的制约。尽管马克思时常使用“反映”这一概念——它将几代马克思主义者引向偏离轨道的不毛之地——《德意志意识形态》的核心观念是必须用各种社会关系来解释各种意识形式(宗教、伦理、哲学等等)的产生和发展，“这样做当然就能够完整地描述全部过程(因而也就能够描述这个过程的各个不同方面之间的相互作用了)”②。

After co-writing *The German Ideology* with Engels, Marx paid little attention to religion as a specific cultural/ideological system. Nevertheless, in Volume One of *Capital*, one can still find some interesting methodological comments. For example, in a well-known footnote, he responds to an argument — that the importance of politics in ancient society and religion in the Middle Ages reveals the inadequacy of the materialist interpretation of history — by stating: "The Middle Ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the economic conditions of ancient and medieval society that explain why politics and Catholicism respectively played the dominant role."③ Marx takes the trouble to provide economic reasons for the importance of medieval religion, but this passage is very important because it acknowledges that, under certain historical circumstances, religion can indeed play a decisive role in social life.

在与恩格斯共同写作《德意志意识形态》之后，马克思就很少注意作为一种特定的文化/意识形态体系的宗教了。尽管如此，在《资本论》第一卷中，人们仍然可以发现一些有趣的方法论性质的评论，例如，在一个人所熟知的注释中，他对一个论证——根据这一论证，政治在古代社会的重要性和宗教在中世纪的重要性，揭示了唯物主义对历史解释的缺陷——做出了回答：“中世纪不靠天主教生活，古代世界也不靠政治生活，事实上，古代社会和中世纪的经济条件说明了为什么政治和天主教各自扮演了支配角色。”③马克思不厌其烦地为中世纪宗教的重要性提供经济上的原因，但是，这一段文章非常重要，因为它承认，在某种历史环境下，宗教确实可以在社会生活中起决定性作用。

Although Marx generally lacked interest in religion, he did pay attention to the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism. Several passages in *Capital* mention the contribution of Protestantism to the rise of early capitalism — for example, in facilitating the expropriation of church property and common pastures. In the *Grundrisse* (1857-1858), half a century before the famous work of the eminent German sociologist Max Weber, *The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism*, Marx made the following illuminating comment on the intrinsic connection between Protestantism and capitalism: The cult of money has its own asceticism, its own self-denial, its own economics of self-sacrifice and frugality, its contempt for mundane, transient pleasures; it has an eternal pursuit of wealth. Hence there is a connection between English Puritanism or Dutch Protestantism and money-making. This passage is strikingly similar (though not identical) to Weber's theme, and all the more so because Weber could not have read it (the *Grundrisse* was first published in 1940).

尽管马克思一般对宗教缺乏兴趣，但他对新教和资本主义的关系给予了注意。《资本论》中有几段文章提到了新教对早期资本主义兴起的贡献——例如促进对教会财产和公共牧场的征收。在《1857-1858年经济学手稿》中，先于德国著名社会学家马克斯•韦伯的名著《新教伦理和资本主义精神》半个世纪，马克思对新教和资本主义的内在联系就做出了如下启发性的评论：金钱崇拜有它自己的苦行主义，有它自己的自我否定，自己的自我牺牲经济学和勤俭简朴，对平凡单调和短暂易逝的欢乐的轻蔑；有对财富的永恒追求。因此，英国清教主义或荷兰新教与挣钱之间存在联系。这段话与韦伯的主题如此相似(但不相同)，令人吃惊，因为韦伯不可能读到这段文章而显得尤其如此(《1857-1858年经济学手稿》第一次出版是在1940年)。

On the other hand, Marx often refers to capitalism as a "religion of everyday life" based on commodity fetishism. Marx describes capital as "a Semitic god who demands the whole world as a sacrifice" and the capitalist process as "a great pagan deity who feeds only on the brains of the dead." His critique of political economy frequently mentions idolatry: the cult of Baal, the cult of Semitic gods, the cult of Mammon, the cult of the Golden Calf, and of course the concept of "fetishism." However, in terms of the sociology of religion, this language is more symbolic than substantive.

另一方面，马克思经常提到作为一种建立在商品拜物教基础之上的“日常生活的宗教”的资本主义。马克思把资本描述为一个“需要整个世界作为牺牲的闪族的神”，把资本主义进程描述为一个“巨大的异教徒的神灵，它只以死者的脑浆为食”。他的政治经济学批判经常提到偶像崇拜：巴力神崇拜，闪族神崇拜，财神崇拜，金牛犊崇拜，当然还有“拜物教”的概念。不过，就宗教社会学而言，这种语言的象征意义大于实质意义。

Engels displayed a greater interest than Marx in religious phenomena and their historical role. Engels’s main contribution to the Marxist study of religion is his analysis of the interrelationship between various religious expressions and class struggle. Engels was interested in understanding and explaining the concrete social-historical forms of religion, an understanding and explanation that transcends the philosophical argumentation of “materialism and idealism.” Christianity no longer appears (as it did in Feuerbach) as a timeless “essence,” but as a cultural system that undergoes transformations in different historical periods: first as a religion of slaves, later as the state ideology of Rome, then adapting to the feudal hierarchy, and finally to capitalist society. In Engels, religion thus reveals itself as a symbolic arena where hostile forces contend—for example, in the 16th century, feudal theology, bourgeois Protestantism, and the heretical doctrines of the common people.

恩格斯对宗教现象和它们的历史角色显示出比马克思更大的兴趣。恩格斯对马克思主义宗教研究的主要贡献，是他对各种宗教表现与阶级斗争的相互关系的分析。恩格斯对理解和解释宗教的具体社会历史形式感兴趣，这种理解和解释超越于“唯物主义和唯心主义”的哲学论证之上。基督教不再(如在费尔巴哈那里)作为一种无时间性的“本质”而出现，而是作为一种在不同历史时期经历变形的文化系统而出现：首先是作为一种奴隶的宗教，后来是作为罗马的国家意识形态，然后经过调整适应封建等级制度，最后是适应资本主义社会。宗教在恩格斯那里就这样显示为各种敌对力量——例如，在16世纪，是封建神学、资产阶级的新教和平民百姓的异端邪说——相互斗争的一个象征性场所。

Occasionally, Engels’s interpretation of religious movements slides into a narrow utilitarian and pragmatic analysis: each different class makes use of the religion suited to itself—whether those gentlemen believe in their respective religions is of no consequence.

偶尔，恩格斯对宗教运动的解释会滑向一种狭隘的功利主义的实用分析：每个不同的阶级都会利用适合于它们自己的宗教——至于那些绅士们是否相信他们各自的宗教无关紧要。

Apart from discovering the “religious disguise” of class interests in different forms of belief, Engels seems to have found nothing else. Nevertheless, because of his method of class-struggle analysis, he recognized—unlike the Enlightenment philosophers—that the clergy is not a social body composed of homogeneous elements: on certain historical occasions, it divides itself into several parts according to its own class composition. Thus, during the Reformation, on the one hand, we have the high clergy, the highest stratum of the feudal hierarchy; on the other hand, the low clergy, which provided ideological followers for the Reformation and the peasant revolutionary movement.

除了在不同形式的信仰中发现阶级利益的“宗教伪装”之外，恩格斯似乎没有发现别的任何东西。尽管如此，因为他的阶级斗争分析方法，他认识到了——不像启蒙哲学家们那样——神职人员不是一个由同类事物组成的社会形体：在某种历史场合，它根据自身的阶级构成将自身划分为几个部分。因此，在宗教改革期间，一方面，我们有高级的神职人员，封建等级的最高层，另一方面，有低级的神职人员，它们为宗教改革和农民革命运动提供了意识形态的追随者。

As a materialist, an atheist, and an implacable enemy of religion, Engels, like the young Marx, still grasped the duality of religious phenomena: religion plays the role of legitimizing the existing order, but also, depending on social reality, plays the role of critique, protest, and even revolution. Moreover, the vast majority of his concrete studies focus on the rebellious forms of religion.

作为一个唯物主义者，一个无神论者，一个与宗教决不妥协的敌人，恩格斯与青年马克思一样，还是抓住了宗教现象的双重性：宗教既扮演承认现成秩序之合法性的角色，又根据社会现实情况，扮演批判、抗议甚至是革命的角色。不仅如此，他所做的绝大多数具体研究都关注宗教的反叛形式。

First, Engels was very interested in primitive Christianity, which he defined as the religion of slaves and freedmen, the poor and the powerless, those conquered or expelled by Rome. The earliest Christians came from the lowest strata of society: slaves, dispossessed freemen, small peasants crushed by debt. He even drew a striking comparison between this primitive Christianity and modern social movements: 1) neither movement was created by leaders or prophets, but was a mass movement, although prophets were never lacking in either; 2) both were movements of the oppressed and persecuted, whose members were rejected and hunted by the ruling class; 3) both proclaimed an imminent liberation from servitude and suffering. To embellish this comparison, Engels somewhat provocatively quoted the French historian Ernest Renan: “If you want to know what the earliest Christian communities looked like, just look at the local sections of the International Workingmen’s Association” (the International Workingmen’s Association was a multi-national workers’ organization founded in 1864, commonly known as the First International).

首先，恩格斯对原始基督教很感兴趣，他把原始基督教界定为奴隶和被释放的奴隶、穷人和无权者、被罗马征服或驱逐的人们的宗教。最早的基督徒来自社会的最底层：奴隶、被剥夺了权利的自由民、被债务压垮的小农。他甚至在这种原始基督教和现代社会运动之间做了令人惊讶的对比：1)这两种运动都不是领导者和先知创造的，而是一种群众运动，尽管在这两种运动中从来都不缺乏先知；2)二者都是受压迫者、受迫害者的运动，它们的成员都被统治阶级排斥和追捕；3)二者都宣扬一种即将到来的脱离奴役和苦难的解放。为了修饰这种比较，恩格斯多少有点煽动性地引用了法国历史学家勒南的一句话：“如果你想知道最初的基督教共同体是怎样的面貌，只要去看一看国际工人协会的当地支部就可以了”(国际工人协会是一个多民族的工人阶级组织，成立于1864年，即人所熟知的第一国际)。

According to Engels, the similarities between socialism and early Christianity appear in all those movements over the centuries that dreamed of restoring primitive Christianity: from John Žižka’s Taborites and Thomas Müntzer’s Anabaptists to (after 1830) the French revolutionary communists and the staunch advocate of German utopian communism, Wilhelm Weitling.

根据恩格斯的说法，社会主义和早期基督教的相似之处出现在数百年来所有那些梦想恢复原始基督教的运动中：从约翰•杰士卡的塔博尔派和托马斯•穆勒的再洗礼派到(1830年之后)法国革命的共产主义者和德国乌托邦共产主义的铁杆拥护者魏特林。

Even so, in Engels’s eyes, there remains an essential difference between the socialist movement and primitive Christianity: primitive Christians placed their hope of salvation in the afterlife, while socialists seek liberation in this world.

即便如此，在恩格斯眼中，社会主义运动和原始基督教之间还是存在着一种本质的区别：原始基督徒将拯救寄托于彼岸，而社会主义者却希望在此世实现解放。

Yet is this distinction as clear-cut as it first appears? In his study of the great German Peasants’ War, Engels’s view seems to become blurred: Thomas Müntzer, the theologian and leader of the peasant and plebeian revolutionary movement of heretics (Anabaptists) in the 16th century, wanted to establish the Kingdom of God directly on earth, the millennial kingdom of the prophets. According to Engels, for Müntzer, the Kingdom of God was a society without class distinctions, without private property, and without a state authority independent of or external to its members. Nevertheless, Engels still tries to reduce religion to a cunning trick: he speaks of Müntzer’s Christian clichés and his biblical “disguise.” The unique religious dimension of Müntzer’s millennial kingdom, its spiritual and moral force, the true depth of its mystical experience—all this seems to lie beyond Engels’s field of vision.

不过，此种区别是否像我们一眼所见的那样一清二楚呢？在对伟大的德国农民战争的研究中，恩格斯的这一观点似乎变得模糊不清了：托马斯•穆勒这个神学家，16世纪的农民和异教徒(再洗礼派)的平民革命领导者，想要在尘世直接建立上帝之国，即先知们的千年王国。根据恩格斯的说法，对穆勒来说，上帝之国是一个没有阶级差别、没有私有财产和独立于或外在于社会成员的国家政权的社会。尽管如此，恩格斯仍然试图将宗教简单化为一种阴谋诡计：他谈到穆勒的基督教套话和他的圣经“伪装”。穆勒千年王国的独特宗教向度，其精神和道德力量，其神秘体验的真正深度，好像都不在恩格斯的视野之内。

Engels did not conceal his admiration for the German millenarian prophets, describing their ideas as “quasi-communist” and “religious revolutionaries”: they were more of “a brilliant anticipation” of the future goal of proletarian liberation than a synthesis of the plebeian demands of their own time. Regarding this prospective and utopian dimension of religion—which is not explained by the “reflection theory”—Engels offered no further explanation; Ernst Bloch concentrated on this area with fruitful results (as we shall see later).

恩格斯没有掩饰他对德国千禧年先知的赞赏，他将他们的观念描述为“准共产主义”和“宗教的革命者”：他们更多的是对未来无产阶级解放目标的“一种光辉展望”，而不是他们那个时代的平民需求的一种综合。对于宗教的这种展望和乌托邦维度——它没有根据“反映理论”得到解释——恩格斯没有进一步解释，恩斯特•布洛赫在这方面进行了集中而富有成效的工作(正如我们后面将会看到的那样)。

According to Engels, the last revolutionary movement fought under the banner of religion was the 17th-century Puritan movement in England. If religion, rather than materialism, provided the ideological support for this revolution, it was because the philosophy of that time in England was politically reactionary in nature, represented by Hobbes and his supporters. Contrary to materialism and deism, Protestantism provided the religious banner and the fighters for this war against the Stuart dynasty.

根据恩格斯的说法，在宗教的旗帜下进行的最后一场革命运动，是17世纪英国的清教运动。如果说是宗教，而不是唯物主义提供了这次革命的意识形态支撑，那是因为当时英国的这种哲学在政治上的反动本质，它是由霍布斯和其他支持者来代表的。与唯物主义和自然神论相反，新教为这一反对斯图亚特王朝的战争提供了宗教旗帜和战士。

This analysis is very interesting: Engels breaks with the linear view of history inherited from the Enlightenment, acknowledging that the struggle between materialism and religion does not necessarily correspond to the struggle between revolution and counter-revolution, progress and reaction, freedom and despotism, the oppressed class and the ruling class. In this case, the opposite is true: revolutionary religion stands opposed to absolutist materialism.

这种分析非常有意思：恩格斯打破了来自启蒙运动的线性历史观，承认唯物主义和宗教之间的斗争并不必然地与革命和反革命、进步和倒退、自由和专制、被压迫阶级和统治阶级之间的斗争相对应。在这个案例中，情况恰恰相反：革命的宗教和专制主义的唯物主义相对立。

Engels was convinced that after the French Revolution, religion could no longer function as a revolutionary ideology. He was surprised when French and German communists such as Cabet and Weitling claimed that “Christianity is communism.” He could not foresee liberation theology; nevertheless, by analyzing religious phenomena from the perspective of class struggle, he articulated the potential protest of religion, opening a path to understanding the relationship between religion and society that differs both from Enlightenment philosophy (which sees religion as a cunning trick of the clergy) and from the Young Hegelians in Germany (who see religion as the alienation of the human essence).

恩格斯深信，从法国革命之后，宗教就不再能够作为一种革命的意识形态起作用了，当法国和德国的共产主义者如卡贝和魏特林声称“基督教是共产主义”时，他感到很吃惊。他不能预见到解放神学，不过，由于他从阶级斗争的角度来分析宗教现象，他说出了宗教的潜在抗议，打开了一条与启蒙哲学(认为宗教是神职人员的阴谋诡计)和德国青年黑格尔派(认为宗教是人的本质的异化)都不相同的通向宗教和社会之关系的道路。

In the European workers’ movement, many Marxists held a radically hostile attitude toward religion, yet believed that the atheist struggle against religious ideology must be subordinated to the concrete conditions of class struggle, which requires unity between believers and non-believers among the workers. Lenin himself occasionally declared religion to be a “mystical fog,” but in his article “Socialism and Religion” (1905) he insisted that atheism should not be made a component of the Party program, because “for us, the unity of the oppressed class in the revolutionary struggle to create a paradise on earth is more important than the unity of the proletarians’ views on a paradise in heaven.” [4]4 V. I. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion,” *Proletary*, no. 25, December 3 (16), 1905. The quotation is from Lenin’s text as cited by the author.

在欧洲的工人运动中，许多马克思主义者对宗教持激进的敌对态度，但却相信无神论反对宗教意识形态的斗争必须从属于阶级斗争的具体情况，这种阶级斗争需要工人中的信仰者和不信仰者之间的联合。列宁自己隔三差五地宣称宗教是一种“神秘的迷雾”，但却在他的文章《社会主义和宗教》(1905)中坚持认为，无神论不应该成为党章的组成部分，因为“在我们看来，被压迫阶级为创立人间天堂而进行的这种革命斗争的一致，要比无产者对虚幻的天堂的看法的一致更为重要”④。

Rosa Luxemburg held similar views on this strategy, but she developed a different original approach. Although she herself was a committed atheist, in her writings she rarely attacked religion in the way that the extremely conservative policies of the church attacked atheism in the name of its own tradition. In an article written in 1905 (“The Church and Socialism”), she declared that modern socialists are far more loyal to the original principles of Christianity than the current conservative clergy. Since socialists struggle for a social order of equality, freedom, and fraternity, if the clergy sincerely wished to realize the Christian principle of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” in human life, they should welcome the socialist movement. When the clergy support the rich and those who exploit and oppress the poor, they come into clear conflict with Christian doctrine: they truly serve not Christ but the golden calf. The pioneering preachers of Christianity were fervent communists, and the Church Fathers (such as Basil the Great and John Chrysostom) condemned social injustice. Now, this cause is continued by the socialist movement, which brings to the poor the gospel of fraternity and equality and calls on people to establish a kingdom of freedom and love of neighbor on earth. Rosa Luxemburg sought to salvage the social dimension within the Christian tradition for the workers’ movement, rather than waging a philosophical battle in the name of materialism.

罗莎•卢森堡对这种策略抱同样的想法，但她发展了一种不同的原创方法。尽管她自己是一个忠诚的无神论者，但她在她的著作中很少像教会极端保守的政策以它自身传统的名义攻击无神论那样攻击宗教。在写于1905年的一篇文章(《教会和社会主义》)中，她宣称，现代的社会主义者对基督教原初原则的忠诚远过于现在保守的神职人员。既然社会主义者为了平等、自由、友爱的社会秩序而斗争，牧师们如果真心想要在人类生活中实现“爱人如己”的基督教原则，就应该欢迎社会主义运动。当神职人员支持富人和那些剥削和压迫穷人的人时，他们就与基督教教义发生了明显的冲突：他们确实不是服务于基督而是服务于金牛犊。基督教的传道先驱们都是热情的共产主义者，而教父们(如大巴西流和约翰•克利索斯顿)则谴责社会的不正义。而现在，这一事业为社会主义运动所继续，社会主义运动给穷人带来了友爱和平等的福音，并且号召人们在尘世建立一个自由和爱人如己的王国。罗莎•卢森堡力图为工人运动挽救基督教传统中的社会维度，而不是以唯物主义的名义去进行一种哲学的战斗。

Ernst Bloch was the first Marxist theorist to fundamentally change the theoretical framework for analyzing religion without abandoning Marxism and revolutionary perspectives. In a manner similar to Engels, he distinguished between two opposing social currents: on the one hand, the theocratic religion of the official church, the opium of the people, a mystifying tool serving power; on the other hand, underground, subversive, and heretical religions such as those of the Albigensians, the Hussites, Joachim de Flore, Thomas Müntzer, Franz von Baader, Wilhelm Weitling, and Leo Tolstoy. Nevertheless, unlike Engels, Bloch refused to regard religion merely as a “disguise” for class interests: he explicitly criticized this notion. In its forms of protest and rebellion, religion is one of the most important forms of utopian thought, one of the richest expressions of “the Principle of Hope.”

恩斯特•布洛赫是第一个在没有放弃马克思主义和革命观点的前提下，从根本上改变宗教分析理论框架的马克思主义理论家。他以与恩格斯类似的方式区分了两种相互对立的社会潮流：一方面是官方教会的神权宗教，是人民的鸦片，是一种服务于权力的神秘化工具；另一方面，是阿比尔派、胡斯派、弗洛尔(Joachim de Flore)、穆勒、巴德尔(Franz von Baader)、魏特林和托尔斯泰这样一些地下的、颠覆性的和异端的宗教。尽管如此，和恩格斯不同，布洛赫拒绝将宗教仅仅看作阶级利益的“伪装”：他明白无误地批判了这种观念。在其抗议和反叛形式中，宗教是乌托邦思想最重要的形式之一，是“希望原则”(the Principle of Hope)最丰富的表达之一。

On the basis of his own philosophical assumptions, Bloch developed an unorthodox, iconoclastic interpretation of the Bible, thereby deriving a “Bible of the poor,” which openly condemns tyrants and calls on everyone to choose either Caesar or Christ.

布洛赫在他自己的哲学假设之上，发展出了一种非正统的、打破旧习的《圣经》解释，从而引申出了一种穷人的《圣经》，这种穷人的《圣经》公开谴责暴君，并号召每个人要么选择凯撒要么选择基督。

As a religious atheist and a revolutionary theologian—in his words, only as an atheist can one be a good Christian, and vice versa—Bloch not only provided a Marxist interpretation of the Christian millenarian ideal (following Engels) but also invented a Christian millenarian interpretation of Marxism, which was entirely new. Through this interpretation, the socialist struggle for the kingdom of freedom is seen as the direct heir of past eschatological and collectivist heresies.

作为一个宗教的无神论者和一个革命的神学家——按照他的说法，只有作为一个无神论者才能成为一个好的基督徒，反之亦然——布洛赫不仅提供了对基督教千年王国理想的马克思主义解读方式(这是随恩格斯而来的)，而且发明了对马克思主义的基督教千年王国式的解读，这是全新的。通过此种解读，社会主义者争取自由王国的斗争，被看作是过去的末世论和集体主义异端的直接继承。

Of course, Bloch, like the young Marx who wrote the famous passage of 1844, acknowledged the dual character of the religious phenomenon: its oppressive nature and its potential for rebellion. The first aspect requires the application of what he called the “cold stream of Marxism”: a ruthless, materialist critique of ideology, idols, and idolatry; the second aspect requires the “warm stream of Marxism,” seeking to salvage the cultural surplus of utopian ideals within religion, salvaging its critical and prophetic power. There is no doubt that Bloch dreamed of a genuine union between Christianity and revolution, like the union formed during the German Peasants’ War in the sixteenth century.

当然，布洛赫和写下1844年那段著名引文的青年马克思一样，承认宗教现象的双重特性：它的压迫性和它的潜在反叛性。第一个方面需要他称之为“马克思主义的寒流”的运用：对意识形态、各种偶像和偶像崇拜的冷酷无情的、唯物主义的批判，第二个方面则需要“马克思主义的暖流”，寻求挽救宗教中乌托邦理想的文化剩余，挽救其中的批判和预示力量。毫无疑问，布洛赫梦想一种基督教和革命之间的真正联合，像16世纪德国农民战争期间形成的那种联合。

Bloch’s views were largely inherited by some radical scholars of the Frankfurt School in Germany. Horkheimer believed that “religion is the record of the hopes, longings, and accusations of countless generations.” Fromm, in his book *The Dogma of Christ* (1930), used Marxist and psychoanalytic methods to elucidate the messianic, plebeian, egalitarian, and anti-authoritarian essence of primitive Christianity. The theorist Benjamin attempted a unique creative synthesis, combining theology and Marxism, the Jewish messianic ideal and historical materialism, class struggle and divine redemption.

布洛赫的观点很大程度上为德国法兰克福学派的一些激进学者所继承，霍克海默认为，“宗教是无数世代的希望、怀乡和控告的记录”。弗洛姆在其《基督的教义》(1930年)一书中，运用马克思主义和心理分析的方法，阐明了原始基督教弥赛亚的、平民的、平等的和反集权专制的本质。而理论家本雅明则试图用一种独特的创造性综合，将神学和马克思主义、犹太教的弥赛亚理想和历史唯物主义、阶级斗争和上帝救赎结合起来。

In terms of innovation in Marxist studies of religion, Lucien Goldmann’s work *The Hidden God* (1955) is another pioneering attempt. Although inspired by a very different approach from Bloch’s, Goldmann was equally interested in salvaging the moral and human values within the religious tradition. The most unexpected and original part of Goldmann’s work is his attempt to compare religious faith and Marxist faith without assimilating one into the other: both reject pure individualism (whether rationalist or empiricist) and both believe in values that transcend the individual: for religion, God; for socialism, the human community. Both religious faith and Marxist faith are based on a wager—religion wagers that God exists, Marxism wagers on human liberation—which implies risk: the danger of failure or the hope of success. Both imply some fundamental beliefs that cannot be proven solely at the level of factual judgment. What distinguishes them is, of course, the transhistorical character of religious transcendence: “Marxist faith is a faith in future history, that is, man himself wagers on the success of our actions, or rather we must wager with our actions; the transcendence of the goal of this faith is neither supernatural nor transhistorical, but transindividual, no more and no less.” Goldmann did not intend to “Christianize Marxism” in any way; he merely introduced, based on the concept of faith, a new way of looking at the contested relationship between religious faith and Marxist faith.

在马克思主义宗教研究创新方面，吕西安•戈德曼的著作《隐匿的上帝》(1955年)是另一种开拓性的尝试。尽管是一种与布洛赫非常不同的灵感，戈德曼同样对挽救宗教传统中的道德和人性价值兴致勃勃。戈德曼著作中最出人意料和最有原创性的部分，是在不用一个同化另一个的前提下，尝试对宗教信仰和马克思主义信仰作比较：二者都拒绝纯粹的个人主义(无论是理性主义的还是经验主义的)，都信仰超越个体的价值：对于宗教是上帝，对于社会主义是人类共同体。无论是宗教信仰还是马克思主义信仰都建立在一种赌博之上——宗教赌上帝存在，马克思主义赌人的解放——这意味着冒险：失败的危险或成功的希望。二者都暗含着一些在事实判断的唯一性层次上不可能得到证明的基本信念。将二者区分开来的当然是宗教超越性的超历史特征：“马克思主义信仰是一种对未来历史的信仰，即人自身赌我们的行动的成功，或者说我们必须用我们的行动去赌；这种信仰的目标的超越性，既不是超自然的也不是超历史的，而是超个人的，不多也不少。”戈德曼没有想要以任何方式“基督教化马克思主义”，只是根据信仰的概念，引进了一种看待宗教信仰和马克思主义信仰之争议关系的新方法。

Marx and Engels believed that the subversive role of religion had become a thing of the past and no longer had any significance in modern class struggle. This prediction has been more or less proven by history over the course of a century—with some important exceptions (especially in France): Christian socialism in the 1830s, the worker-priests in the 1940s, and the Christian Left alliance in the 1950s.

马克思和恩格斯认为宗教的颠覆性角色已经成了过去，在现代阶级斗争中已经没有任何意义。这一预测一个世纪以来多少得到了历史的证明——除了一些重要的例外(尤其是在法国)：19世纪30年代的基督徒社会主义，40年代的工人牧师，50年代的基督徒左翼联盟。

However, to understand what has happened in Latin America (and, to a lesser extent, on other continents) over the past thirty years surrounding the issue of liberation theology, we need to integrate into our analysis the insights of Bloch and Goldmann into the utopian potential of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Additionally, in these “classical” Marxist discussions of religion, there is a serious lack of discussion of the impact of religious doctrine and practice on women.

但是，为了理解拉丁美洲(较少程度上，还有其他大陆)最近三十年围绕着解放神学问题到底发生了什么，我们需要将布洛赫和戈德曼对犹太-基督教传统的乌托邦潜力的洞察整合进我们的分析。另外，在这些“经典的”马克思主义者关于宗教的讨论中，严重缺乏宗教教义和实践对妇女的影响的讨论。

Notes:

注释：

[5]5 This refers to the Chinese edition of the *Collected Works of Marx and Engels* (Volume 1, p. 4), likely citing a passage on religion. *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*, Volume 1, p. 4.

①《马克思恩格斯文集》第一卷第4页。

[6]6 This refers to the Chinese edition of the *Collected Works of Marx and Engels* (Volume 1, p. 544), likely citing a passage on religion. *Collected Works of Marx and Engels*, Volume 1, p. 544.

②《马克思恩格斯文集》第一卷第544页。

[7]7 This is a reference to a footnote in Marx’s *Capital* (Volume 1) discussing religion or related topics. *Capital*, Volume 1, People’s Publishing House, 2004 edition, pp. 98-100, note 31.

③《资本论》，第一卷，人民出版社2004年版，第98-100页注释31。

[8]8 This is a reference to a passage in Lenin’s *Complete Works* (Volume 12, p. 135) discussing religion. *Complete Works of Lenin*, Chinese 2nd edition, Volume 12, p. 135.

④《列宁全集》中文第2版第12卷第135页。

Responsible Editor: Wang Jiafei

责任编辑 王佳菲