“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. 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.”[1]

Here, in one of his better known quotations, Marx delivers a scathing analysis of religion and the purpose that it serves in class society. In class society religion has a very specific origin and function. It arises as a result of the exploitation, suffering and alienation workers feel as the surplus valued is brutally torn from them. In this manner it has a similar origin to class consciousness. However, unlike class consciousness religion is thoroughly conservative. Religion acts to diffuse the energies released in the process of class formation by positing a better life is possible, but only if the rules of the system are followed thoroughly and after one’s cheeks have been slapped red raw from being consistently “turned to the other”. Thus, in the final analysis, religion has always been reactionary; telling the oppressed to work for their masters now and patiently await paradise, whilst their masters engage in their own, separate “religion”.

            In the past, religion has been a powerful influence on entire populations; helping to maintain the hegemonic power of capitalism, feudalism and any other social system one wishes to name. Yet in the advanced, industrial west it seems a spent force. Although many people continue their perfunctory Sunday appearances in church or maintain a belief in “something spiritual”, when it comes to the crunch of committed worship, “God is dead”. But how can this have happened? Religion’s material foundations still exist and there has been no outpouring of revolutionary fervour. Thus in the west these energies, this force must be damned by something. But what? As with a lot of good ideas, the answer was plastered across a wall in Paris :

“Commodities are the opium of the people.”

            This incisive piece of social commentary may well seem axiomatic, but it still deserves an explanation, as this simple sentence represents a myriad of social relations essential to understanding the modern form of religion. So is it that simple? The new religion is commodities? Well no, it is much more complex than that.

 Firstly, underpinning the idea of commodities qua religion is that of commodity fetishism; a phenomenon hugely important to western society. As Marx puts it:

“A commodity appears at first sight a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality a very queer thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties”[2]

            And from whence does this theological character hail?

“A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour”[3]

            But this is not enough. Religion is not just an act with a “theological character”. It is rather a process of transcendental worship, actualised through rituals and social gatherings. Furthermore, the mere character of commodities does not yet satisfy the two major functions of religion – rituals of worship and the promise of eternal life, both of which serve the essential function of diverting class consciousness. Therefore, we need to delve further into the murky world of commodity fetishism.

            Religion, in its western incarnation, has never been about worshiping mere ideas in abstractia, it has usually been accompanied by a thoroughly personified (and in many cases reified) God, often with angelic or heavenly subjects, whom the masses aspire to join. Today this role has been taken by the celebrity. It cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that the cult of the celebrity has spread like a particularly virulent plague amongst the affluent western European nations. Even minor “celebrities” (using this term in its narrowest sense) are accorded disproportionate amounts of media attention. And here we find our Mount Olympus .

            For what is a celebrity but the personification of the commodity form? Just as Jesus personified the values of Christianity, the celebrity is the living embodiment of the commodity form[4]. A commodity is nothing more than the abstract bearer of exchange value, thus the repository of crystallised human labour. The celebrity is essentially the same thing, no celebrity becomes a celebrity through their own labour; they are a mixture of the labour of stylists, vocal coaches, publicists and cynical media managers, their value is derived from crystallised human labour.

But there is more to it than that. A celebrity’s sole value is fame; fame is only valuable in comparison to the fame of others, as an exchange value. As a use-value, a thing-in-itself, fame is worthless, it serves no one.  Yet in the celebrity it becomes the most important value one can possess. Thus, just as in the commodity the social labour of human beings is crystallised as value so in the celebrity the social labour of others is transformed into fame.  So like the exchange value that commodities are solely produced for, celebrities are “produced” to create fame, which is valued in comparison to every other celebrity and may be exchanged for other commodities. That something useless can acquire value; this is the truest expression of commodity production. The celebrity is fetish made flesh.

So in place of God representing the values of “love”, “peace” and “harmony” we have the celebrity; representing the value of the commodity form, that of production for exchange, not for use, the production of the useless. This fulfils the first criterion of religion; we have our gods and the values they actualise.

            In this “godless age” we still long for immortality, from that life after death that once only religion could bring us. And with fame we can have it. Long after a celebrity is dead they will live on, in the newspapers, on the televisions, in the hearts of their worshippers. And anyone can be a celebrity, especially today, in the age of “reality television”, thus immortality can be achieved, if only we follow the commandments.

            And here the line between worship and command blurs. Our Moses returns from Mount Sinai with a fashion magazine, inscribed with the One Commandment:

“THOU SHALT CONSUME”

            This first and only commandment serves a dual purpose. We all wish to emulate our immortal lords, but how do we do this? Consumption. We dress like them, eat like them, style ourselves to look exactly like them. Through the mechanism of fashion, we are informed exactly what each celebrity wears, what brand of hair gel they use, what underwear they wear, in short what we need to become them. With this knowledge we increase our consumption, hoping against hope to achieve the immortality of the commodity and its standard bearer. And it is possible. Through the acquisition of commodities; or more often the universal exchange commodity, one may well acquire this immortality. This promise of immortality, the dream of a “better life” and the knowledge that it’s possible encourages everyone to “grin and bear it” because “everything will be alright”.

It is in this act of worship that one also finds the distracting element of the new opium of the people. Popular culture has glorified the “shopping spree”, the new Holy Communion. Here the consumers sacrifice the fruits of their labour to the great gods, in an attempt to become them, they purchase the commodities that create the celebrities; just as Christian’s partake in the blood of Christ[5]. Our relationship to those we most wish to be is mediated through the purchase and consumption of commodities. But the process has real results, every day people purchase these useless commodities and they feel good about it. The “experience” of mindless consumption gratifies the pseudo need engendered by the mode of production – “as long as I can shop everything will be fine”.

This constant consumption and emulation of “the gods” distracts the masses from their everyday struggle, from the futility of life – “If I buy this commodity I will become like X, I will ascend and then, only then, will I be truly immortal”. Truly we can make it heaven but only if we keep on consuming.

            This is the beauty of this new system of sublimation. It does not just serve in the same capacity as the old religion, viz. solely as a damming mechanism for class consciousness. It also helps perpetuate the system by creating an army of consumers who negate their revolutionary consciousness through the acquisition of commodities; the void of religion is filled by the pseudo-need of commodity fetishism, thus creating the mass consumption of useless goods necessary to keep our “affluent society” functioning.