8 ms·

The Opium of the Intellectuals (2005)

79 points by danielam 8y ago

extralego 8y ago
This is a distillation of Roger Kimball’s (and many others’) accusations that Marx was an intellectual’s intellectual. He mentions Raymond Aron publishing the same idea in a 1955 book. I’m not sure anyone would argue with the drier thesis. It’s what isn’t mentioned which guides the dishonesty. Marx’s commitments and adorations were always to the working class, and his proper legacy was won exclusively through the working class. He was a strictly anti-authoritarian democracy absolutist, for the record. The article is a strategic smear for a target who knows literal nothing about the history of Karl Marx, because all the facts will check out true. But is this only a cheap framing of Marx’s work as hype? I get a sense there is an additional mythical context I’m missing out on. Can anybody explain why this is compelling to it’s audience?
- jack_pp 8y ago
  This article is very little about marx himself.
  - extralego 8y ago
    Exactly my point! It’s almost entirely peripheral trivia mounted around a cheap smear. No elaboration, no explanation, no evidence beyond references to past claims.
    - jack_pp 8y ago
      Is every article supposed to contain the entire history of a topic? This particular one did not feel like a smear to me as much as a presentation of an opposing perspective, one given in a calm respectful tone which contradicts your obvious tone in trying to smear the article itself.
      - topspin 8y ago
        > Is every article supposed to contain the entire history of a topic? Every article is supposed to perform however much mental gymnastics are necessary to absolve Marx et al of any fault or flaw.
      - extralego 8y ago
        OK. This was only my interpretation. I don’t have any goals or anything against the author. I actually like some of his art writing. I just think the article delivers a bold misrepresentation of it’s central figure; also one of the most studied persons of the 19th century. It seems silly that’s all.
- johnalamos 8y ago
  You're the kind of intellectual this article is about
  - extralego 8y ago
    Doubt it. I went to community college.
- darkmighty 8y ago
  I can't comment much about Marx as I don't know the details of his claims or how they relate to implemented politics. What I enjoyed very much was the claimed position of Raymond Aron's w.r.t. intellectualism: "Aron’s generosity of spirit was a coefficient of his recognition that reality was complex, knowledge limited, and action essential. The leitmotif of Aron’s career was responsibility. He understood that political wisdom rests in the ability to choose the better course of action even when the best course is unavailable--which is always. The subject of politics, Aristotle noted, is “the good life for man.” What constitutes the good life? Aron cannily reminds us that the more extravagant answers to this question are often the most malevolent. They promise everything. They tend to deliver misery and impoverishment." I think this is a great thing to be reminded of, constantly -- in particular for intellectuals and scientists. It is almost too easy to be fooled in thinking the scientific principles or intellectual ideals will apply nicely to humans, the complexities of the real world; that we can be certain about what is truly good or the true nature of reality. It's not that we shouldn't investigate political systems, moral systems, economic theory, metaphysics, etc; it's that we should be specially skeptic about grandiose claims that go against common sense or personal freedom. And quoting the recent Aaronson AMA: "(...) partly it's because I take it as almost an axiom of rationality that, if a metaphysical belief leads you to do "obviously insane" things with your life, then it's probably time to look for a better metaphysical belief. :-) (I wouldn't say the same about scientific or mathematical beliefs.)"
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Is a cult of “personal freedom” that creates its own extinction event and alters the climate of its own planet to make it less habitable more or less insane than Marxism?
    - latte 8y ago
      As if the non-capitalist world had cared more about the environment. Kyshtym, Chernobyl and Aral Sea disasters have no relation to the "cult" of personal freedom in any way. The only reason the Western / capitalist world had a greater impact on the planet is because they were able to build industrial power faster than the Marxist countries, not because they were less concerned about the environment (looking at the Soviet Union and China, I would rather say the opposite is true).
- imbokodo 8y ago
  > This is a distillation of Roger Kimball’s (and many others’) accusations that Marx was an intellectual’s intellectual I don't even see why it matters. I myself am not an expert on gravitational waves. If Neil Degrasse Tyson or Michio Kazu read a scientific paper by Rainer Weiss on gravitational waves and then break it down for me in layman's language, I don't see why that takes any shine off Weiss's Nobel prize. As it is, Marx wrote some work for the public like the Communist Manifesto (although 170 years later where the names Metternich and Guizot are less familiar than Merkel and Macron, it may seem more obscure), as well as more dense works like Capital. It's an silly argument - if Marx went over things lightly, his ideas would be more easily attacked and he would be called lightweight. If he writes densely and goes over each argument thoroughly to make it airtight he can be accused of being difficult for the layman to understand with light reading. I guess Marx preferred making his arguments more airtight than worrying about accusations of being a chore to read.
oblib 8y ago
"The primary target of Aron’s polemic was fanaticism." I believe this is as relevant to our current social/political divisiveness as it ever has been. I'd like to read more of what he wrote about that.
Animats 8y ago
"Even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist" - Keynes. That's the trouble with looking backward to Marx or Smith for guidance. Both predate the Industrial Revolution reaching full speed. The basic problem of their era was making enough stuff, just as it had been for millenia. Today's basic problem is that we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Neither Marx nor Smith addressed that problem. Keynes said it might be a problem for generations after his. Well, we're there. We've also conquered scale. One of the assumptions of capitalism is that lots of people working for their own self-interest would outperform a central planning system. It looked that way in the days of the USSR. Big companies had trouble getting out of their own way. General Motors, once the biggest company, had to operate as a bunch of independent companies under one corporate umbrella just to make the thing manageable. That's no longer true. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Apple, FedEx, UPS, AT&T, and WalMart are all very centralized. It doesn't seem to hurt their performance. They don't compete on price - they define markets and platforms, and dictate terms. They're able to change rapidly compared to monopolies of the past - each of those companies is quite different than a decade ago. Computers and networks have made this possible - deployment at scale works far better than it did even twenty years ago. Even for companies with physical products. Economics for the 21st century needs to start dealing with these issues, not rehashing the 19th century.
- gepi79 8y ago
  Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism > This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production, results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness. This crisis culminates in a proletarian revolution and eventually leads to the establishment of socialism—a socioeconomic system based on social ownership of the means of production, distribution based on one's contribution and production organized directly for use. As the productive forces continued to advance, Marx hypothesized that socialism would ultimately transform into a communist society; a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership and the underlying principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi... Marx fantasized about what is called a democratic post-scarcity economy today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy Compare with classic socialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contr... I doubt that the author of the book tried to understand Marx because he wrote this: > Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”? and > He quotes the French writer Simone Weil’s sly reversal of Marx: “Marxism is undoubtedly a religion, in the lowest sense of the word. . . . [I]t has been continually used . . . as an opiate for the people.” Marx wanted the opposite: - Marx wanted power for the people. I guess Marxism and Stalinism is the same for many people although they are opposites. - Marx wanted a revolution and not soothed tranquilized workers. And your claim is wrong too: > Today's basic problem is that we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Neither Marx nor Smith addressed that problem. Regarding: > Economics for the 21st century needs to start dealing with these issues, not rehashing the 19th century. IMO some of today's economic, social and political concerns and proposed solutions seem similar to those in the 19th century.
repolfx 8y ago
This set of observations has been made repeatedly throughout history, albeit usually in works that sink immediately into obscurity. That's a pity because the key insights are very important. The same theme - why do so many intellectuals find themselves supporting dictatorships long after the rest of the world has understood their true nature - has been extensively explored by Sowell in books like Intellectuals & Society, and a Conflict of Visions. He finds similar explanations: * Difficulty in accepting that individuals are inherently limited and corruptible, and that ideas are often worthless when tested in the forge of reality. After all, intellectuals are almost by definition people whose value to society comes from production of ideas and who see themselves as unchained from the normal moral and mental limits most people slave under. * That reason, reflection and debate are limited tactics that can't yield that much insight about the world. * That to believe in intellectuals as a concept is almost inherently to disbelieve in the notion of democracy, because if insight and wisdom were really so compressed into a few moralistic bookworms and if most people really had none to share, then voting itself is pointless or even harmful. Instead the best outcomes would be yielded by a dictatorship of intellectuals (which is what communism is, in effect). So you end up with academics, writers, some kinds of politician ... the people who would these days be called the 'elite' or 'globalists' ... having a distinctly lukewarm relationship with markets and votes throughout history. Yet because they are fundamentally wrong about human nature, where their ideas are put into practice things inevitably go wrong. The intellectuals who end up in charge don't create a utopia. Their 5 year plans turn out to be not that well planned, their price-fixing turns out to create other problems elsewhere, and their profound belief that most people are too stupid or immoral to rule turns into an oppressive dystopia. And so the wheel turns. If you're interested in these ideas or philosophies, this video interview with Sowell is a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERj3QeGw9Ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERj3QeGw9Ok
randomsearch 8y ago
Might be a little off topic, but I’d really appreciate it if someone could explain why highly educated people describe themselves as Marxists. I’m quite left-leaning in my views, and I agree with many of the criticisms levelled at capitalism, but I don’t see why people support Marxism. Two main arguments: 1. Hasn’t Marxism had its chance? Yes, it wasn’t “real Marxism” in a sense, but why would you think it’d turn out different if tried again? We have to consider the reality of the world we live in. 2. How many precedents are there for a complete upheaval of the economic system on that scale that have worked? I’m aware of some of the history, but I can’t think of a change that large which worked. How do modern Marxists answer those concerns? From the outside it looks like they’re ignoring history or the reality of human behaviour.
- kiliantics 8y ago
  You're conflating Marxism with soviet-style socialism. Marxism in academia typically refers to an analysis framework where social dynamics are understood as a conflict between members of different social classes.
  - randomsearch 8y ago
    Ah, so they are simply saying that they think the Marxist viewpoint represents a good understanding of the world, rather than agreeing with communism as the best system? Is that correct? Thanks.
    - imbokodo 8y ago
      > communism as the best system Marx said capitalism due to its nature would lead to a cycle of wealth inequality, overproduction, debt bubbles and financial crises, and that these would get worse over time. Capitalism would collapse due to this and be replaced not by communism but socialism. Communism would be the system that comes after socialism.
- zukzuk 8y ago
  Marxism is widely identified as the intellectual underpinning of Communism, but Marx's philosophy has been hugely influential beyond just that particular economic model. For example, Feminism is often said to be rooted in Marxism, so it's arguable that many of those who identify as Feminists are also Marxists-by-proxy. As is often the case in philosophy, Marx was brilliant in critique, but lacking in his prescription. Philosophy tends to be great at asking questions, but not so much at answering them. I suspect many intellectuals who call themselves Marxists identify with Marx's critique — which arguably still stands and a brilliant and revolutionary body of thought — but not with some of its eventual realizations.
MarkMc 8y ago
An excellent book on this subject is "The Fall-Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence" by Andrew Anthony [1]. From the book: All but the most obsessively hard-line anti-communist grew up in post-war Europe accepting that the political witch-hunts conducted by Senator McCarthy and his acolytes in the 1950s were a severe assault on freedom – which indeed they were. Yet if you took McCarthyism at its most demented and placed it against the Soviet model at its most liberal – say, for instance, the Khrushchev era – the repression in the East was incomparably more ruthless and extensive than in the West. Almost no one now, except for the most zealous Stalinist, would dispute this fact. Nonetheless the litany of human rights abuses committed by the Soviet state from Prague to Vladivostok never elicited the same invective of intellectuals or protesters in the West. Two books were kept with two totally different methods of accounting. Why? [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fallout-guilty-liberal-lost-innocence/dp/0099507854 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fallout-guilty-liberal-lost-innocen...
woodandsteel 8y ago
"The ideals in question prominently featured faith in the power of reason. Aron’s discrimination showed itself in his recognition that reason’s power is always limited." That's the key point. There have been two competing traditions in Western philosophy, going back to the Greeks. They have to do with the various finitudes that humans experience, such as ignorance, death, and suffering. According to one view, these are illusions and not only is human understanding potential infinite, but so are all the other types of finitude that interconnect with it. Perhaps the most famous proponent of this view is Plato. The other view, perhaps first made clear by Aristotle, is that human beings and human existence, while they can be improved in important ways, can never be made perfect because our ability to understand the world and act in it are always limited. In the modern era, Marx thought we could abolish most or all finitudes, and have a utopia. Some liberals also think something like this, but the Anglo-American political tradition is more on the Aristotelian side, as was Aron.

79 points by danielam 8y ago

This is a distillation of Roger Kimball’s (and many others’) accusations that Marx was an intellectual’s intellectual. He mentions Raymond Aron publishing the same idea in a 1955 book. I’m not sure anyone would argue with the drier thesis. It’s what isn’t mentioned which guides the dishonesty. Marx’s commitments and adorations were always to the working class, and his proper legacy was won exclusively through the working class. He was a strictly anti-authoritarian democracy absolutist, for the record. The article is a strategic smear for a target who knows literal nothing about the history of Karl Marx, because all the facts will check out true. But is this only a cheap framing of Marx’s work as hype? I get a sense there is an additional mythical context I’m missing out on. Can anybody explain why this is compelling to it’s audience?

jack_pp 8y ago
This article is very little about marx himself.
- extralego 8y ago
  Exactly my point! It’s almost entirely peripheral trivia mounted around a cheap smear. No elaboration, no explanation, no evidence beyond references to past claims.
  - jack_pp 8y ago
    Is every article supposed to contain the entire history of a topic? This particular one did not feel like a smear to me as much as a presentation of an opposing perspective, one given in a calm respectful tone which contradicts your obvious tone in trying to smear the article itself.
    - topspin 8y ago
      > Is every article supposed to contain the entire history of a topic? Every article is supposed to perform however much mental gymnastics are necessary to absolve Marx et al of any fault or flaw.
    - extralego 8y ago
      OK. This was only my interpretation. I don’t have any goals or anything against the author. I actually like some of his art writing. I just think the article delivers a bold misrepresentation of it’s central figure; also one of the most studied persons of the 19th century. It seems silly that’s all.
johnalamos 8y ago
You're the kind of intellectual this article is about
- extralego 8y ago
  Doubt it. I went to community college.
darkmighty 8y ago
I can't comment much about Marx as I don't know the details of his claims or how they relate to implemented politics. What I enjoyed very much was the claimed position of Raymond Aron's w.r.t. intellectualism: "Aron’s generosity of spirit was a coefficient of his recognition that reality was complex, knowledge limited, and action essential. The leitmotif of Aron’s career was responsibility. He understood that political wisdom rests in the ability to choose the better course of action even when the best course is unavailable--which is always. The subject of politics, Aristotle noted, is “the good life for man.” What constitutes the good life? Aron cannily reminds us that the more extravagant answers to this question are often the most malevolent. They promise everything. They tend to deliver misery and impoverishment." I think this is a great thing to be reminded of, constantly -- in particular for intellectuals and scientists. It is almost too easy to be fooled in thinking the scientific principles or intellectual ideals will apply nicely to humans, the complexities of the real world; that we can be certain about what is truly good or the true nature of reality. It's not that we shouldn't investigate political systems, moral systems, economic theory, metaphysics, etc; it's that we should be specially skeptic about grandiose claims that go against common sense or personal freedom. And quoting the recent Aaronson AMA: "(...) partly it's because I take it as almost an axiom of rationality that, if a metaphysical belief leads you to do "obviously insane" things with your life, then it's probably time to look for a better metaphysical belief. :-) (I wouldn't say the same about scientific or mathematical beliefs.)"
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  Is a cult of “personal freedom” that creates its own extinction event and alters the climate of its own planet to make it less habitable more or less insane than Marxism?
  - latte 8y ago
    As if the non-capitalist world had cared more about the environment. Kyshtym, Chernobyl and Aral Sea disasters have no relation to the "cult" of personal freedom in any way. The only reason the Western / capitalist world had a greater impact on the planet is because they were able to build industrial power faster than the Marxist countries, not because they were less concerned about the environment (looking at the Soviet Union and China, I would rather say the opposite is true).
imbokodo 8y ago
> This is a distillation of Roger Kimball’s (and many others’) accusations that Marx was an intellectual’s intellectual I don't even see why it matters. I myself am not an expert on gravitational waves. If Neil Degrasse Tyson or Michio Kazu read a scientific paper by Rainer Weiss on gravitational waves and then break it down for me in layman's language, I don't see why that takes any shine off Weiss's Nobel prize. As it is, Marx wrote some work for the public like the Communist Manifesto (although 170 years later where the names Metternich and Guizot are less familiar than Merkel and Macron, it may seem more obscure), as well as more dense works like Capital. It's an silly argument - if Marx went over things lightly, his ideas would be more easily attacked and he would be called lightweight. If he writes densely and goes over each argument thoroughly to make it airtight he can be accused of being difficult for the layman to understand with light reading. I guess Marx preferred making his arguments more airtight than worrying about accusations of being a chore to read.

oblib 8y ago

"The primary target of Aron’s polemic was fanaticism." I believe this is as relevant to our current social/political divisiveness as it ever has been. I'd like to read more of what he wrote about that.

Animats 8y ago

"Even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist" - Keynes. That's the trouble with looking backward to Marx or Smith for guidance. Both predate the Industrial Revolution reaching full speed. The basic problem of their era was making enough stuff, just as it had been for millenia. Today's basic problem is that we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Neither Marx nor Smith addressed that problem. Keynes said it might be a problem for generations after his. Well, we're there. We've also conquered scale. One of the assumptions of capitalism is that lots of people working for their own self-interest would outperform a central planning system. It looked that way in the days of the USSR. Big companies had trouble getting out of their own way. General Motors, once the biggest company, had to operate as a bunch of independent companies under one corporate umbrella just to make the thing manageable. That's no longer true. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Apple, FedEx, UPS, AT&T, and WalMart are all very centralized. It doesn't seem to hurt their performance. They don't compete on price - they define markets and platforms, and dictate terms. They're able to change rapidly compared to monopolies of the past - each of those companies is quite different than a decade ago. Computers and networks have made this possible - deployment at scale works far better than it did even twenty years ago. Even for companies with physical products. Economics for the 21st century needs to start dealing with these issues, not rehashing the 19th century.

gepi79 8y ago
Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism > This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production, results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness. This crisis culminates in a proletarian revolution and eventually leads to the establishment of socialism—a socioeconomic system based on social ownership of the means of production, distribution based on one's contribution and production organized directly for use. As the productive forces continued to advance, Marx hypothesized that socialism would ultimately transform into a communist society; a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership and the underlying principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi... Marx fantasized about what is called a democratic post-scarcity economy today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy Compare with classic socialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contr... I doubt that the author of the book tried to understand Marx because he wrote this: > Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”? and > He quotes the French writer Simone Weil’s sly reversal of Marx: “Marxism is undoubtedly a religion, in the lowest sense of the word. . . . [I]t has been continually used . . . as an opiate for the people.” Marx wanted the opposite: - Marx wanted power for the people. I guess Marxism and Stalinism is the same for many people although they are opposites. - Marx wanted a revolution and not soothed tranquilized workers. And your claim is wrong too: > Today's basic problem is that we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Neither Marx nor Smith addressed that problem. Regarding: > Economics for the 21st century needs to start dealing with these issues, not rehashing the 19th century. IMO some of today's economic, social and political concerns and proposed solutions seem similar to those in the 19th century.

repolfx 8y ago

This set of observations has been made repeatedly throughout history, albeit usually in works that sink immediately into obscurity. That's a pity because the key insights are very important. The same theme - why do so many intellectuals find themselves supporting dictatorships long after the rest of the world has understood their true nature - has been extensively explored by Sowell in books like Intellectuals & Society, and a Conflict of Visions. He finds similar explanations: * Difficulty in accepting that individuals are inherently limited and corruptible, and that ideas are often worthless when tested in the forge of reality. After all, intellectuals are almost by definition people whose value to society comes from production of ideas and who see themselves as unchained from the normal moral and mental limits most people slave under. * That reason, reflection and debate are limited tactics that can't yield that much insight about the world. * That to believe in intellectuals as a concept is almost inherently to disbelieve in the notion of democracy, because if insight and wisdom were really so compressed into a few moralistic bookworms and if most people really had none to share, then voting itself is pointless or even harmful. Instead the best outcomes would be yielded by a dictatorship of intellectuals (which is what communism is, in effect). So you end up with academics, writers, some kinds of politician ... the people who would these days be called the 'elite' or 'globalists' ... having a distinctly lukewarm relationship with markets and votes throughout history. Yet because they are fundamentally wrong about human nature, where their ideas are put into practice things inevitably go wrong. The intellectuals who end up in charge don't create a utopia. Their 5 year plans turn out to be not that well planned, their price-fixing turns out to create other problems elsewhere, and their profound belief that most people are too stupid or immoral to rule turns into an oppressive dystopia. And so the wheel turns. If you're interested in these ideas or philosophies, this video interview with Sowell is a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERj3QeGw9Ok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERj3QeGw9Ok

randomsearch 8y ago

Might be a little off topic, but I’d really appreciate it if someone could explain why highly educated people describe themselves as Marxists. I’m quite left-leaning in my views, and I agree with many of the criticisms levelled at capitalism, but I don’t see why people support Marxism. Two main arguments: 1. Hasn’t Marxism had its chance? Yes, it wasn’t “real Marxism” in a sense, but why would you think it’d turn out different if tried again? We have to consider the reality of the world we live in. 2. How many precedents are there for a complete upheaval of the economic system on that scale that have worked? I’m aware of some of the history, but I can’t think of a change that large which worked. How do modern Marxists answer those concerns? From the outside it looks like they’re ignoring history or the reality of human behaviour.

kiliantics 8y ago
You're conflating Marxism with soviet-style socialism. Marxism in academia typically refers to an analysis framework where social dynamics are understood as a conflict between members of different social classes.
- randomsearch 8y ago
  Ah, so they are simply saying that they think the Marxist viewpoint represents a good understanding of the world, rather than agreeing with communism as the best system? Is that correct? Thanks.
  - imbokodo 8y ago
    > communism as the best system Marx said capitalism due to its nature would lead to a cycle of wealth inequality, overproduction, debt bubbles and financial crises, and that these would get worse over time. Capitalism would collapse due to this and be replaced not by communism but socialism. Communism would be the system that comes after socialism.
zukzuk 8y ago
Marxism is widely identified as the intellectual underpinning of Communism, but Marx's philosophy has been hugely influential beyond just that particular economic model. For example, Feminism is often said to be rooted in Marxism, so it's arguable that many of those who identify as Feminists are also Marxists-by-proxy. As is often the case in philosophy, Marx was brilliant in critique, but lacking in his prescription. Philosophy tends to be great at asking questions, but not so much at answering them. I suspect many intellectuals who call themselves Marxists identify with Marx's critique — which arguably still stands and a brilliant and revolutionary body of thought — but not with some of its eventual realizations.

MarkMc 8y ago

An excellent book on this subject is "The Fall-Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence" by Andrew Anthony [1]. From the book: All but the most obsessively hard-line anti-communist grew up in post-war Europe accepting that the political witch-hunts conducted by Senator McCarthy and his acolytes in the 1950s were a severe assault on freedom – which indeed they were. Yet if you took McCarthyism at its most demented and placed it against the Soviet model at its most liberal – say, for instance, the Khrushchev era – the repression in the East was incomparably more ruthless and extensive than in the West. Almost no one now, except for the most zealous Stalinist, would dispute this fact. Nonetheless the litany of human rights abuses committed by the Soviet state from Prague to Vladivostok never elicited the same invective of intellectuals or protesters in the West. Two books were kept with two totally different methods of accounting. Why? [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fallout-guilty-liberal-lost-innocence/dp/0099507854 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fallout-guilty-liberal-lost-innocen...

woodandsteel 8y ago

"The ideals in question prominently featured faith in the power of reason. Aron’s discrimination showed itself in his recognition that reason’s power is always limited." That's the key point. There have been two competing traditions in Western philosophy, going back to the Greeks. They have to do with the various finitudes that humans experience, such as ignorance, death, and suffering. According to one view, these are illusions and not only is human understanding potential infinite, but so are all the other types of finitude that interconnect with it. Perhaps the most famous proponent of this view is Plato. The other view, perhaps first made clear by Aristotle, is that human beings and human existence, while they can be improved in important ways, can never be made perfect because our ability to understand the world and act in it are always limited. In the modern era, Marx thought we could abolish most or all finitudes, and have a utopia. Some liberals also think something like this, but the Anglo-American political tradition is more on the Aristotelian side, as was Aron.