Any of several movements that attempt to revive the polytheistic religions of Europe and the Middle East. Largely a product of the 1960s, contemporary Neo-Paganism has flourished particularly in the U.S., Britain, and Scandinavia. Its adherents often have deep ecological concerns and an attachment to nature; many worship an earth-mother goddess and center their rituals on the change of the seasons. Since the late 1970s, Neo-Paganism has also attracted feminists open to female personifications of the deity. Major Neo-Pagan groups include the Church of All Worlds, Feraferia, Pagan Way, the Reformed Druids of North America, the Church of the Eternal Source, and the Viking Brotherhood. Seealso Wicca.
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Philosophical approach expressed through the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and later by Georgy Plekhanov, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, and Joseph Stalin, the official philosophy of communism. Its central tenet, borrowed from Hegelianism, is that all historical growth, change, and development results from the struggle of opposites. (In philosophical terms, a thesis is opposed by its antithesis, which results in a synthesis.) Specifically, it is the class struggle—the struggle between the capitalist and landowning classes, on the one hand, and the proletariat and peasantry, on the other—that creates the dynamic of history. The laws of historical dialectics are seen to be so powerful that individual leaders are of little historical consequence. Originally conceived as operating primarily in the social, economic, and political realm, the principle was extended in the 20th century to the scientific realm as well, with major effects on Soviet science. Marx and Engels stated their philosophical views mainly in the course of polemics and brief historical studies; there is no systematic exposition of dialectical materialism.
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