Karl Marx (1818-1883) was the most influential revolutionary socialist thinker of the 19th century. Marx's main interests were to create a revolutionary party for the working class and to analyze capitalist society in order to discover its strengths and weaknesses and thus plan its demise. With his friend and colleague Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), he created "The Communist Manifesto" in which they described the communist society that would be created following the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalists by the working class. This essay will discuss the views of Marx and Engels towards religion and consider this perspective in its relevance to contemporary society. Although, according to Marx and Engels, religion was "the opium of the people" (Marx and Engels 1955: 41-2), they were not only suggesting that religion was an invention of the ruling classes to keep the working classes in power . satisfied, they also looked at the deeper implications of religion and that is the theme of this essay. Marx and Engels agreed with Feuerbach's critique of Hegel and his belief that inversion and alienation were key concepts in examining religion and its power and declared "Abolish religion as illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness” (Marx, 1844). Marx disagreed with Hegel's vague, conceptual world and the power he saw as responsible for global developments. Rather, Marx believed that people created and recreated social worlds and as such were responsible for their creations. The inversion saw creative, independent humans becoming dependent on an imaginary God. People viewed God as responsible for their difficulties, refusing to recognize that as God was a synthetic entity, middle of paper......48/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm [Accessed November 11, 2011].Marx , K. and Engels, F. 1845. The German ideology. [online].Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2 [Accessed November 11, 2011].Marx, K. Capital Volume One. 1867. [online] Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm [Accessed November 10, 2011]. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848. [online] Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm [Accessed November 9, 2011]. German ideology. 1845. [online] Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2 [Accessed November 10, 2011]. Marx, K. 1867. Capital Volume One. [online] Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm [Accessed November 11 2011].