Now don't fall out of your chair in astonishment or anything, but the author of this piece in the Economist prefers Adam Smith to Karl Marx. Communism is all but dead as a system of government, but Marxism lives on as a religion. It's obvious and often stated, but no less true for all that, and this is as engaging restatement as you'll find, with many witty and well-turned phrases. For example:
What goes for ethics also goes for history, literature, the rest of the humanities and the social sciences. The “late Marxist” sees them all, as traditionally understood, not as subjects for disinterested intellectual inquiry but as forms of social control. Never ask what a painter, playwright, architect or philosopher thought he was doing. You know before you even glance at his work what he was really doing: shoring up the ruling class. This mindset has made deep inroads—most notoriously in literary studies, but not just there—in university departments and on campuses across Western Europe and especially in the United States. The result is a withering away not of the state but of opportunities for intelligent conversation and of confidence that young people might receive a decent liberal education.Posted by Dr. Frank at December 20, 2002 02:25 PM | TrackBack