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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.[1][2][3][4]
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 full sentence 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."[5]
The quotation originates from the introduction of Marx's work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which he started in 1843 but which was not published until after his death. The introduction to this work was published separately in 1844, in Marx's own journal Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, a collaboration with Arnold Ruge. Often quoted only in part, the interpretation of the metaphor in its context has received much less attention.[6]
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was invoked but never defined (see the help page).