Opium of the people

The opium of the people or opium of the masses (German: Opium des Volkes) is a dictum used in reference to religion, derived from a frequently paraphrased partial statement of German revolutionary and critic of political economy Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people." In context, the statement is part of Marx's analysis that religion's role is as a metaphysical balm for the real suffering in the universe and in society.

This statement was translated from the German original, "Die Religion [...] ist das Opium des Volkes" and is often rendered as "religion [...] is the opiate of the masses." The passage from Marx translates (including italics) as: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

The passage occurs in an article published in February 1844, in Marx's own journal Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, a collaboration with Arnold Ruge. The article was the introduction to a book-length work, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, begun in 1843 (the year following the conclusion of the first imperialist Opium War in south China) but not published until after Marx's death. While the sentence (really bits of two sentences, mushed together) is often quoted, its context has received much less attention.