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It is clear at first glance that Marx's famous statement is outdated. Religion no longer has even remotely similar significance in Western society as it did still in the 19th century. The once mighty state-churches have mostly diminished into mere baptizing-, wedding-, and funeral-organizers, whose congregations rarely even believe in God. Religious faith is mostly found only in rogue fundamentalist groups, who do not submit to worldly authorities anyway. Should the old greybeard be alive today, however, one has to doubt if he would be very delighted with the state of affairs, for it appears that the place religion once occupied in people's hearts has just been replaced by another opiate: the television. But assuming that this is true, a need arises to examine the obvious differences between religion and television, and to ask how the differences influence the conclusions to be drawn .
First of all, TV makes the masses passive, while religion can be said to activate them. Marx's use of the word "opium" is slightly biased in this respect, as religion only causes passivity in revolutionary activity. The men-in-power have always known how to use religion as fuel of war; there is hardly a single war fought in the history of Europe that did not have some religious motivation - even this very day, people are killing each other in Bosnia and Northern Ireland in the name of religion. But the average TV-spectator, lying in the couch by the telly with a bottle of beer in one hand and a bowl of chips in another, would seem like an unlikely candidate for a war of any sort. Both television and religion, however, provided the masses "harmless" way to occupy their thoughts with; one that usually distances them from the way the country is being run. It has been said that the former Soviet Union - a gigantic military superpower and an Orwellian control-state - was brought to its knees by people who were sick and tired of Bulgarian shoes and Soviet TV-documentaries. Perhaps, had the Politburo used soap operas instead of tanks, we would still be living in the shadow of the Bear .
As an instrument of government propaganda, television seems to clearly outweigh religion. Propagandistic sermons could only cover a relatively limited range of topics - to assume any religious authority, they would have had to be somehow inside the context of the religion, which often included such annoying banalities as "love your neighbour" - but in the TV, political propaganda is in an element of its own. Moreover, it is possible to apply TV as an instrument of brainwashing so subtly that few people will ever realize that their thoughts are being guided from above. American movies and TV-series from the late days of the Cold War, such as Rocky I-IV, proved to be extremely succesful in arousing nationalism and anti-Soviet feelings. Whether there was any direct contact with the movie producers and the US government or not is irrelevant; in any case, they served political and military interests, and did so with frightening effeciency .
Fortunately, however, television has one aspect that clearly sets it apart from religion as a social narcotic: one of it's most important functions is, after all, to distribute information. Readily available information on all topics, even if it is biased or propagandized, is a risk factor to any king or general, and few can afford to ignore their public image any more. In Southeast Asia, for example, yesterday's dictators are having a hard time trying to cope with today's reality: massacring a group of peaceful demonstrators has become increasingly difficult when CNN is always there to broadcast it live (via satellites) to every household in the country. As our world moves towards a society based on information, limiting its availability is likely to become more or less impossible. The only option the power-holders are going to have, in order to control the masses, is to guide the ever-increasing flow of information to suitable tracks or else be knocked over by it. Whether future dictators will be cunning enough to succeed in leashing television and other electronic media for their purposes remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: television is not a mere tranquillizer of the masses - it also presents a serious challenge to the men-in-power .
