A friend asked this (see the image above) on his WhatsApp status, and I replied as follows:
Marx did not understand what true religion is. True religion is that which tries to show the path out of suffering, a permanent cure for suffering. By that definition, Marxism is also a religion in that it says that the suffering of the proletariat is because of exploitation by the bourgeois by usurping the surplus labour value, etc., and the way out is by dictatorship of the proletariat, leading to the eventual “withering” away of the state, leading to a classless communism. Whereas, Buddha pointed out that both the bourgeois and proletariat are subject to suffering because as he put it “Life is dukkha [suffering]” and he said, “The cause of suffering is desire”. By way of tying the two together, one could say with some stretch of imagination that it is the desire of the bourgeois for more and more that creates the suffering for the proletariat, though Buddha situated desire and its consequences in the individual psychological context and not at the societal aggregated level. I think it was Dalai Lama who pointed out that Buddhism has a lot of affinity with Marxism – I will try and share an interesting article on the links between Marxism and Buddhism, which I read many years back.
Marxism and Buddhism: Life is suffering, whether you sit under a Bodhi Tree or stand with the workers. But do the two schools agree on the remedy?
https://aeon.co/essays/how-marxism-and-buddhism-complement-each-other
Dalai Lama: ‘I Am A Marxist’
Know Thyself 