extends over an ever diminishing area of social life (Durkheim 2-3).
Durkheim more than Marx believes that "gradually political, economic, and scientific functions broke free from the religious function, becoming separate entities and taking on more and more a markedly temporal character" (Durkheim 119). For Marx, all social factors come back to the economic, and therefore religion is seen as a factor which advances capitalism rather than saves souls. Whereas Durkheim believes that religion in past had a more stabilizing impact than it does today, he does not see it as a force for change today, but merely diminished in its capacity for stabilizing society.
Marx, as Anthony Giddens writes, presents only a "fragmentary" (Giddens 206) picture of his ideas on religion, although what he does give the reader is "unequivocally hostile" (Giddens 206). Nevertheless, he does hold th
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