
The Opium of the Intellectuals (2005) - danielam
https://www.newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/the-opium-of-the-intellectuals
======
Animats
"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
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_abi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs)

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_contr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution)

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.

~~~
coldtea
> _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”?_

He didn't write it about Marx, he wrote it about the Marxists of his day
(mid-20-th century France) -- people who were justifying Stalinism crimes and
so on.

> _Marx wanted the opposite_

What Marx wanted is not really relevant. As Marx himself said, you don't judge
a man by what he thinks himself to be. Similarly, you don't just whether
Marxism has been used as an opiate for the people by whether Marx wanted that
to happen or not.

Ideas leave the hands of their creators. To see how they end up and what kind
of influence they have, we must examine them in actual use, after they spread.

~~~
gepi79
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism)

The words Communism and Marxism are quite meaningless without context after
mid 20th century.

Granted, I am not a historian and most people who called themselves Marxists
or Communists in the mid 20th century might have defended Stalinism.

------
repolfx
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)

------
oblib
"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.

------
randomsearch
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Hasn’t Marxism had its chance?

No, the two closest things to Marxism that have been tried as alternatives to
19th century capitalism are modern mixed economies (fairly successful in
practical terms) and Leninism and it's derivatives (mostly horrible in both
practical and moral terms).

Both are pretty different than Marxism on fairly fundamental levels. (The
first incorporates many elements of the Marxist program, including it's
fundamental prerequisites, but abandons — or at least delays, as the long term
arc of the modern mixed economies might be interpreted as a kind of
“evolutionary Marxism” with periodic setbacks — key others; the second
likewise cherry picks from Marxism, but also abandons the fundamental
prerequisites.)

> but why would you think it’d turn out different if tried again?

Well, because it wouldn't be “again”, Marxism is fundamentally different than
anything that has been tried before, and the nearest approximations to Marxism
that have been tried have widely divergent results.

> How many precedents are there for a complete upheaval of the economic system
> on that scale that have worked?

The displacement of the dominant feudal economic system with capitalism and
the displacement of the original system named capitalism with modern mixed
economies (often called “capitalism” and retaining some key features, but
distinctly different) are at or, in the former case, beyond the scale of the
replacement of modern mixed economies with Marxist ones, and both were
reasonably successful.

~~~
claudiawerner
Why are you saying that "capitalism with modern mixed economies" doesn't
qualify as capitalism? To my knowledge, it's capitalism through and through,
and I say this going from the ways in which Marx described the capitalist mode
of production.

I also think there's some issue with using "Marxism" to refer to some kind of
programme rather than the critique of political economy from the writings of
Marx and Engels. This kind of usage lets you get away with saying that a
"mixed economy" is something even close to Marxism.

Marx described Communism, with a lower and upper stage. There's not much more
to it than that, unless like the Leninists you call the lower stage as
"Socialism". Either way, Badiou has a pretty good overview of historical
Communist societies (well, as close as one could get) such as the Paris and
Shanghai communes. But I wholly disagree with GP's idea that Marx has had his
chance. He most certainly hasn't, and it's becoming clearer every passing day.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why are you saying that "capitalism with modern mixed economies" doesn't
> qualify as capitalism?

I'm saying the 19th century system for which the name “capitalism” was coined
was replaced basically everywhere with modern mixed economies which are a
different but related system; the two share some features just as 19th Century
capitalism and feudalism share some features, but they aren't the same system.

> To my knowledge, it's capitalism through and through

It's not; as many people, not least advocates of reversion to (or at least
toward) the 19th Century system for which “capitalism” was coined, have noted,
modern mixed economies compromise in fairly significant ways the property
relations which both defenders of capitalism and it's opponents (including the
ones that coined the term “capitalism” for that which they opposed) define as
central to capitalism.

> I also think there's some issue with using "Marxism" to refer to some kind
> of programme rather than the critique of political economy from the writings
> of Marx and Engels.

That may be valid on some level, but even if so it's purely semantic pedantry
that has no bearing on the substance of the discussion; Marx and Engels laid
out a program as well as a critique of capitalism, and when we are talking
about concrete economic systems that can be tried out, the program is
relevant, the critique is not (it is merely the oriel motivating rationale for
the concrete program.) A critique can be believed, but not instantiated.

So, if you want to mentally replace “Marxism” with “the concrete program Marx
and Engels proposed to address the Marxist critique of capitalism” throughout
the discussion, feel free. But don't expect the usage to catch on when the
distinction between the Marxist critique and the Marxist program is generally
clear from context such that no additional clarity of meaning would be succeed
from making the restriction you propose to the use of “Marxism” even if I've
were to agree that their is on done level a basis for that restriction.

> This kind of usage lets you get away with saying that a "mixed economy" is
> something even close to Marxism.

I didn't say it was close to Marxism, I said it was one of the two closest
things to Marxism that had been tried (both of which are directly attributable
to Marxist influence mitigated by other forces); in fact, my point was
expressly that neither of those two things was close enough to Marxism to draw
substantive conclusions about Marxism from either, or even both considered
together.

~~~
claudiawerner
I'd say that capitalism shares the features of wage labour being the
predominant way of making a living, mostly private ownership of means of
production, the production of things with value (exchange value to be
prioritised over use-value) , as in generalised commodity production, and
accumulation of capital affording greater amounts of power. These seem to
apply (more or less) to the world today; sure, you can point at finance
capitalism, the shrinking of manual labour industries, the general ownership
of more than one's labour-time, the price of oil being "incongruent" with
labour theories of value, whatever. But if you don't want to call it
capitalism, then you don't have to - though the experts on both sides of the
coin seem to want to do so (and those I'm most sympathetic to in the Frankfurt
School) - it doesn't change the reality of what's being faced.

At best, I think the only reformulation required would be to put an adjective
on the front of "capitalism". Or we could talk in terms of the Spectacle, the
culture industry, "the economy", ideological state apparatuses etc. But no
matter what, it is economy, and thus in fundamental contradiction to
Communism, the end of economy.

I was trying to get at using "Communism" or "Socialism" for their program,
rather than "Marxism", which to me is the critique of political economy _and
out of which_ necessarily flows Communism.

------
MarkMc
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-
innocen...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fallout-guilty-liberal-lost-
innocence/dp/0099507854)

------
woodandsteel
"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.

------
extralego
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?

~~~
darkmighty
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
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?

~~~
dnautics
in a large part the excessive consumerism and concommitant environmental
destruction that is characteristic of the 20th century comes from deliberate,
centralized attempts to encourage consumerism (e.g. lowering interest rates,
inflating currencies) on the part of governments, on "behalf" of the common
people, to prop up "figures of merit" such as employment, which is hardly an
expression of personal freedom.

The fact that capitalism is able to channel and bring to productive efficiency
greener solutions out of collective individual preferences for a better world
in spite of the artificial rolling economic treadmill, is a testament to
capitalism.

