Marxism as Alternative Project within Secularized Protestantism

Abstract

The article views the problem of Marxist heritage from the standpoint of social Christianity. The authors urge to overcome the stereotype of considering Marxism as a conceptual and ideological antithesis to liberalism. The authors consider it practicable and imperative that Marxism should be viewed as a socio-philosoph­ical trend that had arisen within the framework of secularised Protestantism or cultural Protestantism. It can be considered more moderate than secular Protestant fundamentalism, whose political and economic ideology is based on liberalism. Having emerged in the cultural and intellectual field of the European Reformation and as its partial negation, Marxism can be described as a critical commentary on it. The goal of Marxism is to combine biblical (Abrahamic) values with the prot­estant values of Progress understood in a utilitarian way, thereby rejecting histor­ical religions. According to the authors, the Marxism program was afflicted by in­ternal contradictions and was therefore doomed to failure. The authors go on to declare the historical inevitability of the collapse of liberal capitalism and to jus­tify his position from the standpoint of social Christianity.