"This is not about waiting for a better life in the hereafter!"

this is what pissed marx off about christianity. he wasn't nietzsche or anything close to it. he wasn't even bakunin. the truth is he actually liked christianity, he spoke positively of "utopian socialism", but he was just really adamant that it was never going to be possible to build meaningful institutions that cater to real, existing human beings if they're ideologically driven entirely by fantasies of the afterlife. he thought it was an impossible strategy that had no outcome but co-option.

i think it's important to be cautious about taking strategic insight from the guy that thought the way to build communism was to start off with a state where one class dominates all the others. the cited engels text actually seems to want to present marxism as a tool that elites can use to replace christianity with. yes, engels actually explicitly makes the argument that marxism is a system that could be used to control the proletariat for the aims of the ruling elite by comparing it to christianity, which was previously successfully used for that purpose. marxists are generally kind of mum on that whole thing. and i realize this is where a lot of people put marx down and go their own way. but, personally, i think his deconstruction of christianity (less so than his ideas about how to replace christianity with marxism) is just about the only thing that's really worth taking from him intact without incredible modification, "de-hegelianizing", "sciencification", etc. specifically, it is the insight that workers are more likely to be revolutionary when they discard a belief in the afterlife (and that that belief in an afterlife is an impossible wall for revolutionaries to break through) that is a deep insight.

the soviets had people worshipping icons of stalin. no, for real. stalin was worshipped as a demigod. when this is spoken of at all, it's written off as a sort of megalomania. a cult of leadership. but it does come out of a certain reading of marx that implies that the proletariat needs to be controlled with a "secular religion" that denies an afterlife.

also, merry christmas.

http://redflag.org.au/article/contradictions-christianity#sthash.Qjw2Gup1.dpuf