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1 results

  • 5 - Reimagining God’s Kingdom: Engels and Müntzer

  • from Part II - Historical Case Studies
  • Ben Jones, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    Apocalypse without God
    Published online:
    14 April 2022
    Print publication:
    21 April 2022, pp 119-142
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  • Summary

    This chapter explores Engels’s engagement with apocalyptic thought. Some reduce Marxism to a secularized version of Christian eschatology, a claim that functions as a rhetorical weapon against Marxism’s originality. I reject this simplistic view but take seriously the textual evidence showing Engels’s interest in the apocalyptic figure Thomas Müntzer and the book of Revelation. He praises Müntzer, going so far as to argue that the coming kingdom of God preached by Müntzer was actually a Marxist ideal marked by radical equality. Though Engels rejects Christian apocalyptic doctrines, he shares with them the belief that things must worsen and reach a crisis before a utopian future is possible. Whereas Machiavelli rejects apocalyptic hope and Hobbes tempers it, Engels embraces it.