At the beginning of the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” Marx discusses how the philosophical critique of religion sheds light on the failure of economic theory to adequately explain economic phenomena such as how it is that workers become more impoverished despite having become more productive under condition of industrial capitalism. (For this seems paradoxical: If they are more productive, why are they not earning more in wages?) Describe how Marx sees the critique of religion as a model for the philosophical critique of political economy and how he tries in the manuscripts to provide what he might call a “non-theological,” scientific theory of economic production.
