This book explores the various ways in which socialists have understood the relationship between their political beliefs and different religious and philosophical traditions.
Considering the rise of secularism and the view that politics and life-stances are two very different spheres, it moves to examine the thought of those who believed that faith and politics are as separate as night and day, those who, on the contrary, believed that socialism rests firmly on a religious foundation, and those who have argued that socialism’s foundations are solidly scientific and therefore atheist. An examination of a range of perspectives on socialism as a political ideology, a deep conviction and even a form of faith, Secularist, Religious, and Scientific Socialism explores the aesthetic, ethical and existential ideals that have ignited the hearts of socialists, describing in detail how these ideals have been expressed in political activism, cultural forms and ways of living.
It will therefore appeal to scholars of intellectual history, political theory, political philosophy and cultural history with interests in socialism and religion.
This book explores the various ways in which socialists have understood the relationship between their political beliefs and different religious and philosophical traditions, describing in detail how these ideals have been expressed in political activism, cultural forms and ways of living.
Introduction
1. Religious piety, political statesmanship: Secularist socialism
2. On followers of the Jewish carpenter: Christian socialism
3. Esoteric symbols and spiritual circles: Alternative religious socialism
4. Denying God, affirming knowledge: Scientistic socialism,
5. Concluding reflections
Stefan Arvidsson is a professor of the History of Religions at Linnæus University, Sweden. His research interests focus on the cultural history of modern ideologies, particularly modern mythologies, fascist and socialist cultures, and humanistic scholarship. He is the author of Religion and Politics Under Capitalism: A Humanistic Approach to the Terminology (Routledge, 2019) and The Style and Mythology of Socialism: Socialist Idealism, 18711914 (Routledge, 2017), and the co-editor of Socialist Imaginations: Utopias, Myths, and the Masses (Routledge, 2018).
The book was translated by Rikard Ehnsiö.
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