Karl Marxs Attack on Capitalism and Susan Mendus Attack on Individualism - Essay Example

According to Marx,  the upper classes that exploit the poor is the bourgeois and he supported the empowering of the proletariat - the working masses. In this way, social equality would be the result.

In a similar way, Susan Mendus also rejects individualism on the basis that “the language of domination and subordination is a central factor to individualism”. She also argues for equality between men and women, believing that individualism does not generate equality (Mendes 1993). She equates the individualists to the bourgeois, who elevate themselves at the expense of others.

Marx states that a person’s spirituality is the labor power he has. He argues that a case of alienation develops when a man is deprived of the opportunity to exercise this labor power. He believes that religion is the “opium of the masses” and states that religion is the response of the oppressed person, trying to find the heart in a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions (Marx 1970). He views religion as the means by which people try to deal with social inequalities. Mendus on the other hand believes that religion is brainwashing to make people believe in certain things, but merely because they espouse such beliefs, it does not necessarily indicate that they are true. She believes that applying moral rules to love and relationships is basically flawed. (Mendus 1996). While Marx believes religion is purely palliative and does not achieve anything constructive, Mendus on the other hand states that individualism cannot serve the cause of religion or the common good.

Ward Churchill launches an attack on the “pious” Christians of America who have been at the forefront of their leaders’ war initiatives, unleashing death and destruction upon the less fortunate world. (Churchill 2001). He would perhaps agree with Marx, who viewed religion as the opium that drugs the majority so that they can be led to their slaughter. Similarly, religion is also functioning as the opium that dulls the individual American’s ability to think clearly and rationally about the concepts of equality and justice among people.  Marx’s views on the power of the proletariat are relevant here because it is the collective dulling of the American proletariat that has resulted in the human rights abuses by their leaders, which in turn has widened the gap between America and the less fortunate nations – the gap between rich and poor.

Churchill would also support Mendus’ tirade against individualism because this is the vehicle that thrives on domination and subordination. Terror and retribution are the results of the widening social gap between developed and developing countries, through the oppression of the masses by those in power. According to Marx, religion is the opium which people use to cope with the social gap. Churchill would support the truth of Marx’s views because it is a religion that is being seized as opium by Islamic terrorists in order to redress the social inequalities. The inequalities that exist between men and women as a result of individualism, which Mendus condemns, are also the cause for the atrocities unleashed on the weaker sections of the population.