I want to be very clear: Marxism and socialism are not, in fact, religions. Or, they shouldn’t be, and needn’t be, and often aren’t. But there is a kind of Gnostic socialist who insists that all bad things are essentially illusions performed by the Demiurge of Capital, and through correct investigation we can see through them and discern that there are no *real* problems and no *real* bad actors in the world apart from that Demiurge itself. All suffering and sin are a kind of spell that Capital casts, and if we could simply overthrow that Demiurge then we would immediately and permanently establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Anyway, the world is of course full of real problems and bad actors of many stripes, and socialism is a way to organize society around defeating those problems and bad actors, but it is not (and never has been) an instantaneous removal of all human sorrow.