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About this quote

What does it mean?
Marx views law, morality, and religion as bourgeois prejudices that mask underlying class interests.
In plain terms
These institutions hide the interests of the ruling class.
What can you take from it?
Question whether moral or legal norms serve class interests.

Where it applies

  • critical legal studies
  • philosophical debates

Putting it to work

  • reexamining legal frameworks
  • promoting secular ethics

Questions to consider

  • How do institutions reflect class power?
  • Can they be reformed for broader equity?

Another view

Not all moral or religious beliefs are merely class tools.

More from Karl Marx

  1. But every class struggle is a political struggle.

    Permalink to quote #38
  2. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and allowed to li…

    Permalink to quote #40
  3. Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means o…

    Permalink to quote #37

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