ANTI-SYSTEM PHENOMENON: SOCIO-PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT
The article is devoted to the consideration of a social aspect of anti-systems, syncretic social-spiritual movements of destructive orientation. The study of anti-system has a long tradition in the Russian and Western social-philosophical thought, but no author has investigated social mechanisms that attract numerous adherents to anti-system organizations. Manichaeism, the Taiping movement, the voodoo cult, and modern radical Islamism are analysed as examples of such communities. The author deals with the social factors that led to the emergence of these organizations, as well as the principles of their hierarchical structure and functioning.