With the receding flow of religion Marx’s ‘opium’ is now social media and celebrity culture.

If we are serious about reflecting on our global, social position it may be best to consider this instead of correlating it with religion.

Marx’s premise still stands but the content has changed.

Religion was about fairness but it dealt with it over the span of two worlds, this one and the next. That's not much use to an atheist. The socialist/communist approach was a total perversion of fairness. Social democracy seems good to me in theory but it isn't working so well in a neoliberal economy.

"Opiate", NOT "opium", for starters
. It means religion is a way to keep them from rising up against injustice & crapola....because "turn the other cheek" and "heavenly rewards" so it doesn't matter what is done to you(us) here now.

You have explained it very well already..

I agree with this interpretation. It is the medicine for emotional and psychic suffering that the masses use.

Precisely...this quote of his has been widely taken out of context. In the times in which he wrote it, the working poor, and the destitute, had no other means of comfort in their miserable lives, it would indeed have been cruel to try to take the solace of their religion away from them. The rich have always had an interest in keeping the religious institutions strong because they realise that it’s a means of keeping the masses docile and compliant. Marx understood this better than most and it was the aristocrats and the whole structure of that hierarchical society, which included religion, that he wanted to change.