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.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification.
In the process, religion helps to foster a kind of false consciousness that emboldens cultural values and beliefs that support and validate the continued dominance of the ruling class.
[4] In Marx's view, once workers finally overthrow capitalism, unequal social relations will no longer need legitimating and people's alienation will dissolve, along with any need for religion.
But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven.
Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image [obraz], their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.North Korean leader Kim Il Sung's writings addressed the "opium" metaphor twice, both in the context of responding to comrades who object to working with religious groups (Chonbulygo and Chondoism).
[12] In other academic work, Robin Dunbar has used the idea of religion being "the opium of the people" to suggest that group religious practice may lead to the body's natural release of endogenous opioids, known as endorphins.
In 1798, Novalis wrote in Blüthenstaub ('Pollen'):[15] Ihre sogenannte Religion wirkt bloß wie ein Opiat reizend, betäubend, Schmerzen aus Schwäche stillend.
[19]Miguel de Unamuno, the famed Spanish author of the Generation of '98, focused his nivola San Manuel Bueno, mártir around the theme of religion's opiatic effect on the people of rural Spain.
In the book, the protagonist Don Manuel is a priest who does not believe in God, but continues preaching because he sees the positive impact he can make in the lives of his parishioners.
Unamuno makes direct reference to Marx when Don Manuel explains: Yes, I know that one of the leaders of what they call the social revolution has said that religion is the opium of the people.
[20]Some writers make a modern comparison of the phrase "opium of the people" to that akin to sports fandom, celebrities, the distractions of television, the internet, and other entertainment, etc.