ABSTRACT
The three great modernist political movements—Marxism, democratic socialism, and democratic welfare statism—have some similar and some different ideals and means. Even more importantly, they appeal to somewhat different emotions to inspire mythical conviction. But all of them, though in varying combinations and to different degrees, synthesize the utopian myth of secular millennialism with the myths of modernism and rationalism-scientism, especially of social scientism. This chapter explains the great myth of secular millennialism and its importance in modernist welfare statism. Christian millennialism has provided a general sense of expectancy, of fatedness, of doom-and-gloom and hope which has partially inspired secular millennialism. The two have interacted with each other very closely since the great stirrings of naturalism and secular millennialism during the medieval economic boom. Like Christianity, the secular millennialism of modernism waxes and wanes, going through many bursts of enthusiasm and many lulls. Anthropologists have studied a form of millennialism around the world which they call cargo cultism.
