La borghese 'libertà di coscienza'

“”Freedom of conscience”! If one desided at this time of the ‘Kultur-kampf’ (1) to remind liberalism of its old catchwords, it surely could have been done only in the following form: Everyone should be able to attend to his religious as well as his bodily needs without the police sticking their noses in. But the Workers’ party ought at any rate in this connection to have expressed its awareness of the fact that bourgeois “freedom of conscience” is nothing but the toleration of all possible kinds of religious freedom of conscience, and that for its part it endeavours rather to liberate the conscience from the witchery of religion. But one chooses not to transgress the “bourgeois” level” [Karl Marx, ‘Critique of the Gotha Program – Marginal Notes to the Program of the German Workers Party’, May, 1875. For the complete text; see ‘Karl Marx on Revolution’, vol. I of The Karl Marx Library (1971), pp. 488-506] [Karl Marx, a cura di Saul K. Padover, On Religion, New York, 1974] [(1) Cultural struggle, the reference is to Bismarck’s struggle with the Catholic Church in Germany]