Marx’s Ethical Teleology: The Role of Religion in Socialist Thought

Edmund Wilson

23 June 2025

A recent book by Vanessa Wills (Marx’s Ethical Vision) presents Marx as an ethical philosopher, contrasting with the idea of Marx as a scientist of political economy, as argued by earlier Marx scholar G. A. Cohen (Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence). Wills situates Marx against the background of both Kantian and Christian ethics, yielding an image of Marx not as Engels’ cherished materialist, but as an idealist in the utopian socialist tradition to which Marx, at least explicitly, opposed himself. 

This vision contains much merit. Other recent books by Michael Rosen (The Shadow of God) and Espen Hammer (After the Death of God) corroborate Wills’ thesis, framing Marxism as a Trojan horse for religious utopianism. Rosen paints Marxism as an eschatological project, in the lineage of Jesus’ prophecy of the end of times, while Hammer paints Marx similarly as a quasi-religious thinker. It is possible, as Matt McManus has also argued, to view Marxism in the shadow of Christianity — or even the Abrahamic tradition more broadly (given rich traditions of Hebrew and Islamic socialism, for example). 

If it is possible to view Marxism through religion, is it also possible to view religion through Marxism? For these authors’ intellectual progenitor, Alasdair MacIntyre (Marxism and Christianity), Engels’s comment is revealing: while later Christianity was indeed more idealist, focusing on the end of suffering in the afterlife, early Christianity was focused on ending slavery and poverty in this life. In other words, Christianity began not as a Hegelian tradition of transcendental liberation, but as a proto-Marxian tradition of immanent emancipation. 

MacIntyre, though, may downplay recent authors’ accounts of how idealist some of Marx’s concepts were. Marx’s prediction of a communist utopia as the inevitable product of capitalist contradictions bears an analogy to Old Testament prophecy, albeit without a singular agent of change, besides the mass individual known as the proletariat. The Messianic predictions of Marxian science go hand-in-hand with the ethical utopianism of classical socialist thought: communism, for G. A. Cohen, is the emancipation of the individual from social fetters. It is, in a way, a moment of transcendence. This lends Marxism a strongly religious valence.

By ethical teleology, I mean an account of morality that aims at a utopia, or ‘telos’. According to Hammer and Rosen, Marx is clearly a thinker with an end in mind — the end or telos of communism brought about by an intermediary period of proletarian dictatorship, or socialism. The current imagination of communism as dictatorial and socialism as potentially democratic is the exact inverse of what Marx has in mind: the proletariat would seize power of the government to liquidate bourgeois capital, before abolishing the state and all classes. Communism is when the state ‘withers away’, according to Marx. It is, to a significant extent, analogous to Jesus’ vision of the coming of the kingdom of God and ensuing divine justice — an ethical eschatology that historian Geza Vermes estimates is historically true to Jesus’ own thinking.

One potential way of viewing the dialectic between Marxism and religion, in addition to Rosen’s and Hammer’s emphases on Nietzsche, may be Freud’s concepts of repression and catharsis. The repression of religion within Marx, by labelling religion as ‘the opium of the people’, leads to its catharsis when the powerless come to power and enact a scriptural version of Marx’s views. Lenin and Stalin presented themselves as apostles of Marx and Marxism, making their political careers on the back of intellectual exegesis of the ‘true’ meaning of socialism. Today, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have led movements with quasi-religious followings, addicted to the opium of hope — a potent religious motivation for a better world after the demise of this one. Marxian writer David Harvey aspires for an eco-democratic-socialist paradise but fears for the coming of a militarised, financialised, capitalist cataclysm. It is tempting for some of these democratic-socialist thinkers to follow the serpent of the Devil towards a more power-hungry political model. And yet, they follow their God. Their repression of religion leads directly to quasi-religious catharsis.

Christianity, similarly, has historically repressed radical and socialist thought. Christian nationalism today sees communism as the enemy — Satan incarnate. Marx is seen by the Heritage Foundation, which now has a potent voice in the White House, as the origin of radical progressive liberalism — especially whenever Marx is interpreted as a cultural rather than as an economic thinker. It is ironic that the response to ‘cultural Marxism’ (an idea which originated in an antisemitic conspiracy theory) is a culture war of its own, one that does not immediately address any of the economic dilemmas that Marx identified. Historically, the far right has exacerbated these dilemmas, despite some attempt to follow a quasi-Rooseveltian model of capitalism with social-democratic characteristics. Will this time be any different? The Financial Times contains some interesting thoughts on this question — but it remains to be seen if any of these economically ‘left-wing’ dreams will come to fruition in an increasingly politically right-wing world.

Christianity contains within itself, I would suggest, a seed of Marx’s prophecies: the idea that the meek shall inherit the Earth, or the idea that a rich man does not have a poor man’s easy route to heaven, both express a regard for the poor as the vanguard of the future. Liberation theology in Latin America posed a threat to established authorities and doctrines with its own distinctive fusion of Catholic concern for the poor with Marxian class analysis. Christianity and Marxism, in the direst of economic and political circumstances, can reinforce each other — while at other times, when times are easier, they seem worlds apart.

Society seems to go in cycles between these poles — the Christian hope for transcendence in the afterlife, and the Marxian hope for freedom in this world. I would like to suggest that this polarisation is potentially illusory, given the post-Christian teleology animating Marxian ethics, and the Marxian economic principles animating Christian morality of the oppressed. For the working class as a philosophical idea, if not a practical reality, it may be better to combine Marxism and religion than to leave the professional classes to do Marxist theorising while the working class is co-opted by the right-wing branch of capital and Christianity. Ultimately, the cycle of repression and catharsis is quite possibly not sustainable, given the conceptual interpenetration of Marxism and its religious roots. We may yet see a genuinely inspiring ethical teleology, one that both Karl Marx and Jesus of Nazareth would approve of, in these dark times.

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Edmund Wilson holds an MA in Human, Social, and Political Sciences and an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from University of Cambridge. He has recently enjoyed posts in secondary education as a teaching assistant and history and philosophy teacher. He starts the MPhil/PhD programme in Political Science at University College London (UCL) in October. 

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