Communist East Germany and alcoholism

Under atheistic communism, East Germans spent more on alcohol than any other Europeans.[1]

Communism is a left-wing materialistic and often violently atheistic ideology created to justify the overthrow of Capitalism, replacing free market economics and democracy with a "dictatorship of the proletariat". See also: Militant atheism and State atheism

## Contents

* 1 Founders of 20th century communism and atheism
* 2 Communist East Germany and alcoholism
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## Founders of 20th century communism and atheism[edit]

Karl Marx believed atheism to be a key part of communism. He is often very famously quoted as saying, "Religion ... is the opium of the masses."[2] His full quote was: "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."[3] He believed it was part of the "superstructure," a false culture built to maintain the status quo. Thus he denigrated Christianity as a fictional religion. Instead, Marx was an avowed atheist, as he wrote, "Communism begins from the outset with atheism; but atheism is at first far from being communism; indeed, that atheism is still mostly an abstraction."[4]

Vladimir Lenin similarly wrote: "A Marxist must be a materialist, i. e., an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i. e., one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle which is going on in practice and is educating the masses more and better than anything else could."[5]

In 1955, Chinese communist leader Chou En-lai declared, "We Communists are atheists".[6]

## Communist East Germany and alcoholism[edit]

According to the German news website Deutsche Welle:

“  |  Alcohol was the drug of choice in East Germany, where it was consumed at the workbench, in the office and at party headquarters, according to a new book. East Germans spent more on alcohol than any other Europeans.

Whatever the occasion - a holiday, a company party, International Women's Day or the Day of the Republic on October 7 - drinking alcohol to excess was the norm in the GDR. Historian Thomas Kochan gets to the bottom of East Germans' relationship with alcohol in his new book, "The Blue Strangler - Drinking habits in the GDR."[7]

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## See also[edit]

* Atheism and alcoholism

* Atheism and health

## References[edit]

1. ↑ Research reveals widespread alcoholism in communist East Germany
2. ↑ Marx, K. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Classic Quotations) (Standard translation from the original German).
3. ↑ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm#05
4. ↑ Marx, Karl, Private Property and Communism, 1944.
5. ↑ Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909, translated by Andrew Rothstein and Bernard Issacs, quote from [1].
6. ↑ Noebel, David, The Battle for Truth, Harvest House, 2001.
7. ↑ Research reveals widespread alcoholism in communist East Germany