- Title
- Utopia, religion and the God-builders: from Anatoly Lunacharsky to Ernst Bloch
- Creator
- Boer, Roland
- Relation
- From Francis Bacon to William Golding: Utopias and Dystopias of Today and of Yore p. 2-18
- Relation
- http://www.cambridgescholars.com/from-francis-bacon-to-william-golding-16
- Publisher
- Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- Ernst Bloch is usually credited with rediscovering the utopian tendencies of religion – especially the Bible and theology – and then introducing them into his somewhat heretical Marxism. However, despite the appearance of Bloch’s breath-taking originality, he is actually heir to an older and now largely forgotten movement: the God-Builders. Thus, I undertake an exercise in rediscovery of a badly neglected, if not lost, dimension of utopian thought. That that will entail some detailed reconstruction of the God-builders goes without question. Who are the God-builders? They were perhaps one of the most intriguing components of the social-democratic movement in Russia in the first years of the twentieth century – although they were resolutely opposed by Lenin at the time (which makes them far more interesting). Among others, they included Anatoly Lunacharsky and Maxim Gorky. Rather than pursuing links between Orthodoxy and Marxism (“Godseekers”), God-builders were atheists who sought to increase the emotional power of Marxism by drawing upon positive elements from religion, especially Christianity. That is, they sought to provide a dimension to Marxism that went beyond the focus on cold theory, a source of enthusiasm, an emotional and ethical appeal – what Ernst Bloch would later call a “warm stream” of Marxism. That warm stream included the emphasis on collective living, the utopian features of religion and the elevation of human beings as the central concern, all of which would come to a crescendo with the revolution, along with a strong sense of the political ambivalence of religion itself.
- Subject
- Ernst Bloch; Anatoly Lunacharsky; Utopia; Marxism; religion
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1053470
- Identifier
- uon:15597
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781443839136
- Language
- eng
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