Marx the prophet

Schumpeter was not the first to classify Marx as a (false) prophet of a new world and the founder of a new religion. The Russian religious philosopher (to use a common Russian term) Sergei Bulgakov published an article titled Karl Marx as a Religious Type as early as 1907. Bulgakov recognized in him a chiliast — a prophet of the Thousand-year Kingdom, i.e. Communism, originally conceived as Heaven on Earth. The author, better known as Father Sergei, or Sergius, Bulgakov — he was ordained an Orthodox priest in 1918 — evolved from a moderate Marxist economist in the 1900s into a prominent Christian theologian. The Bolshevik followers of the Marxist cult had him exiled from Soviet Russia on the famous “philosophical steamboat” in 1922.