Karl Marx and Marxism in the Religious “Dimension”
Georgy AntipovThe placement of Marx, together with Marxism, in a religious context may seem strange, at least to those people who still remember “opium for the people” and “a sigh of the oppressed creature”. There is a habit of associating the author and his teachings exclusively with the forms of scientific knowledge. However, it turns out that a more careful and consistent examination shows that despite the prevailing stereotype of the exclusively scientific identification of the Marxist doctrine, referring Marxism precisely to the religious context allows to understand its true place in history and culture. As the Russian philosopher of the Silver Age, S. N. Bulgakov, said, religion carries “the highest and last values that a person recognizes above himself and higher than himself, and that practical attitude, a human being is put in, in relation to these values”. But what are values? Values are the ultimate basis of choice and goal setting. Religion is the social form of the hierarchy of values existence. The article substantiates the thesis that the genesis of Marxism was the product of a complex collision in a general cultural process that embraced philosophy, science, and religion in their interrelation. The features of the interaction of these cultural phenomena in a certain social context explain the culturological features of religion, which are inherent in Marxism.