My question: to what extent does Schumpeter understand Marxism as a "religion", and use religious allusions or metaphors to describe it?
To any mind not warped by the habit of fingering the Marxist rosary it should be obvious that their [social classes] relation is, in normal times, primarily one of cooperation and that any theory to the contrary must draw largely on pathological cases for verification." 19
"It was not by a slip that an analogy form the world of religion was permitted to intrude into the title of this chapter ["Marx the Prophet"]. In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. We may specify still further: Marxist socialism also belongs to that subgroup which promises paradise on this side of the grave. I believe that a formulation of these characteristics by an hierologist would give opportunities for classification and comment which might possibly lead much deeper into the sociological essence of Marxism than anything a mere economist can say...The least important point about this is that it explains the success of Marxism." 5
But he was a prophet, and in order to understand the nature of this achievement we must visualize it in the setting of his own time. It was the zenith of bourgeois realization and the nadir of bourgeois civilization, the time of mechanistic materialism, of a cultural milieu which had as yet betrayed no sign that a new art and a new mode of life were in its womb, and which rioted in most repulsive banality. Faith in an real sense was rapidly..."
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