ABSTRACT
Marxism is neither a social nor economic science, but rather a religious and moral world view. Beyond this, and here is where the author stakes his claim for uniqueness, Marxism is essentially mythos. The book attempts to trace the origins, genesis, and consequences of this mythic core in Marx's writings. By placing Marx in a Christian existentialist tradition and by cavalierly disregarding such intellectual sources of Marxism as English classical economy and French Encyclopaedism, Tucker finds Marx the theologian and Marxism the religion. The "religious essence of Marxism" is the transvaluation of original sin into the labor theory of value, Christian good works into revolutionary practice, and so on. The author commits another not-so-original sin: While he promises to treat Marx's intellectual development as a continuum, from the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts to Capital a quarter century later, he really treats Marx as a uni-linear purveyor of mysticism in the name of science.
