The Opium of the Intellectuals

The Opium of the Intellectuals
en.wikipedia.org

But to be fair, it's not like those intellectuals are advocating for the authoritarian parts of Marxism. They're advocating for the egalitarian parts as well as his methodology. Marx was a good philosopher, and is certainly a fascinating thinker. Sartre absolutely believes that Marxism and Existentialism are the same thing (read his work search for a method if you don't believe me).

Maybe academics need to make it very clear that just because they dislike capitalism as its practiced doesn't mean that they should immediately run to what appears to be its opposite uncritically. Most left-wing academics just take dialectical materialism and the primacy of the dialectic method of achieving truth as being a given (though Plato/Socrates is responsible for the latter error not Marx). They don't even see how authoritarian that the dialectical method can be. It's why I realized that Paulo Freire was the opposite of liberatory despite trying to write a book "liberating education" (he reveals himself to be obsessed with Dialectics in Pedagogy of the Oppressed).

Yet, for all of the criticism I have of the Marxist method and praxis, I think that equating it to a religion is also incorrect. No one peddling critical theory seriously is going to tell you to believe in its dogma religiously. Though, they may give you worse grades on your papers if you do a bad job of calling out its authoritarian tendencies so maybe there is some truth to the analogy...

And since HN is getting on me for posting too fast (it's necessary to combat the rampant Philosophical disinfo going on), I'll respond here to the commentator whose slandering Kant as being some how similar to Marx and Hegel

Kant is the opposite of a Frankfurt school author and you are sorely mistaken for equating him with the likes of Hegel or Marx.

It sickens me to see how poorly Philosophy is understood even by HN readers. You'll find really quickly that Kant is actually one of the most enlightened scholars of all time (and certainly not even close to a Frankfurt school author) if you read even 5 pages of him! My god! Kant would most likely be horrified by any Marxist or Marx-decending authors works.

The real opiate of the intellectuals is any system that gives you the belief that you've got things mostly figured out. Neo-liberalism definitely qualifies for some, but so does Marxism.

However, given the current state of things, there's probably more value to be had now from reading Marx than some venerable free market tract. Just don't let it go to your head.