Since the criticism of religion becomes, to Marxism, the criticism of the concrete social relations which produced it, the struggle against its errors and distortions can never be a struggle against religion as such — a kind of armchair atheism — because such a struggle is not a real one — it is ideal truth fighting ideal religion and both, when abstracted from action, are unreal. The very criticism of religion, as soon as it becomes criticism of concrete religion, becomes criticism of the social relations that engendered it, and when this criticism emerges creatively as a struggle, it will not be an ideal struggle against religious ideas but a concrete struggle against real social relations. There is no absolute truth to set against fantastic lies, but fantastic reality whose fantastic content is exposed in real living. (19)
Christopher Caudwell | Further Studies in a Dying Culture