Marxism as Eschatology

IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, I would like to outline the basic features of Marxist historical mythology, linking it with the Western religious and philosophical concern with human salvation. My core argument is that the attempt to provide scientific principles of historical analysis and to break away from the messianic interpretation of history sponsored by the Church was in fact in many ways unsuccessful: underneath the seemingly new Marxist methodology were concealed older concerns with historical time and redemption. Marxists would doubtless have renounced notions such as good, evil, messiah, and salvation as baseless religious superstitions that had nothing to do