The emergence of 'Marxism' in its historical context: a perspective from religious studies.

This review essay discusses Gareth Stedman Jones's biography of Karl Marx from a Religious Studies perspective. It highlights the benefits of this study for ongoing discussions about the relationship between socialism and religion. Despite a substantial body of scholarship from other disciplines, scholars of religion often perceive this relationship from a more or less implicitly Marxist perspective. For this reason, Stedman Jones's critical view on the emergence of 'Marxism,' as well as his historical contextualization of Marx's intellectual development, can help to shed new light on the historical accuracy of Marxist and other socialist narratives that attempted to exclude religion from the history of socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]