One of the greatest tactical mistakes of Karl Marx and Marxists generally was the failure to join forces with potential religious allies.  Imagine if the Democratic Party in the United States said that if you're religious, you're not allowed to be a democrat.  They'd be finished in a week.  Likewise, imagine if the Republicans said the same thing.  It would be automatic death for any political movement, but especially for a movement like Marxism, which claimed that "The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves," and thus sought to build a mass movement of the industrial proletariat.  Perhaps the prohibition of religion might be a more achievable tactic in a movement composed of highly educated elites - either professionals, aristocrats, or the bourgeoisie themselves.  But a purely secular workers' movement is doomed from the start.

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