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“Lenin's analysis in The Development of Capitalism in Russia is a kind of profession de foi in a new and powerful idiom. To appeal to the intelligentsia, modern doctrines must combine faith and realism, or science, and Lenin's faith in the correctness of his "science" sustained him through lean years. The notion of faith raises the vexing issue of resemblances between Marxism and earlier Judeo-Christian traditions. A rough human sense that there will be justice, that wrongs will be righted, that sufferings and humiliations will be revenged, that the rich will not enter either a heavenly kingdom or earthly socialist paradise, underlies a great many religious and secular doctrines, expressed in a variety of "sacred" and "scientific" idioms. Another common denominator of such doctrines is their identification of victims who are chosen to be saved and oppressors who are doomed, whether by God's love and justice or history's dialectic. Needless to say, this kind of hopeful and militant vision, when sustained over a long period of time, yields a history of struggle, frustration, adaptation, sectarianism, and defection. Like their religious predecessors, the new secular movements spread out over a spectrum of positions reflecting defeated expectations, changed historical conditions, and the psychologies of individuals creating the movements' doctrines and strategies.” — Philip Pomper