47 ms·

I always thought it was "opiate of the masses."

• kazinator 7y ago
  Marx had it as "das Opium des Volkes"; so the "opium" translation is justifiable.
• foobarbecue 7y ago
  Me too. I suppose this formulation is easier for people to understand if they're seeing it for the first time.
• onion2k 7y ago
  It was 'opium' in the original German, but that means both opium and opiate when it's translated in to English. If you read the full quote[1] it's fairly obvious Marx meant opium in the sense of the drug derived from poppies that was commonly used in his era rather than the whole class of drugs in the more modern sense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people