>x is the opium of the masses So, are the masses even capable

I doubt any one enlightened or even under the illusion of being so would be content to work the fields or a 9-5 job

>>1199204
"opium of the masses" doesn't mean it's like a drug clouding their mind, it means it's like a painkiller assuging their suffering.

Is this an inherently bad thing that must be removed? No.

the masses must be harnessed, like a brute beneath the yoke

George Bernard Shaw has a quote that goes something like "you cannot bring Christianity to the barbarians without making Christianity barbarian".

>>1199212
This, Karl Marx mean that also.

>Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Though he argued that it is a bad thing and should be removed.

>The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.[

>>1199204
>So, are the masses even capable of enlightenment?
Yes, but only so much as society deems it favourable to invest in such an endeavour and opposes any movement to detract from that.

Take for example literacy. Even though there are many disadvantaged retards out there, at the very least most of them would be able to read at some degree of proficiency, which gives them vastly more agency than their historical counterparts would've enjoyed.

>>1199657
Well capitalist society has to invest in actually living labour to achieve the particular forms of labour power that it desires, and has also found this an adjunct to ideological control. The labour process itself educates actual living labour as it expends labour power. For the former argument see the situationalists and the frankfurt school, for the later argument see actual marxism.