(3 of 5)
This appeal arises from the fact that many countries are now in situations resembling the Europe of the 1840s. Those who wish to lead must notice the resentments of men displaced by progress from the land and from the certainties of traditional society. In developing countries, for example, a leader can put himself on the side of industrialization and modernization while at the same time blaming the capitalists (in practice, this often means the U.S.) for the suffering and alienation. "Yankee go home" descends from the Marxist vision, combining rising nationalism with class hostility.
Many advanced nations, including the U.S., contain "underdeveloped countries," groups experiencing their first intensive contact with industrialism. Formal Marxism has not achieved a substantial following among American Negroes, but Marx would not be surprised at the rise of black militancy in recent years. As Southern Negroes move from the land to the cities, their rising material expectations collide with the frustrations of impersonal urban life. In many ways, the ghetto riots are recurrences of the blind old anarchist reaction that the Marxist vision tries to channel into another kind of political expression. Black Panther slogans have undergone an evolution typical of Marxist influence. The Panthers began with a program of ethnic separation, resisting assimilation by the national state with anarchistic verve. In effect, their leaders express Marxist concepts, calling for a class struggle joining blacks and whites against "exploiters."
Less obvious but no less real is the analogy between 19th century Europe and the situation of modern intellectuals. Today intellectuals are prospering, and their susceptibility to Marxist concepts can hardly be explained on grounds of material "immiserization" (growing poverty). But there are other reasons for alienation among intellectuals. The specialization of the sciences tends to dissociate the academic intellectual from the decisions, almost invariably multidisciplinary in nature, that actually shape the course of society. The intellectual often feels irrelevant. As a scientist, he pursues work that does not include concern for the moral or esthetic content of progress, but as a man he has not forgotten the intellectual's traditional responsibility for the good, the beautiful and the unity between kinds of truth. Many intellectuals draw symbols from the Marxist vision to explain what is wrong and to suggest how their lives might regain a sense of relevance.
Sir Isaiah Berlin, non-Marxist biographer of Marx, in a recent interview made this appraisal of Marxism's influence upon intellectuals: "Marx has entered the texture of thought of all sorts of intellectuals without their being conscious of it. Anyone who ignores Marx is a kind of primitive, a prescientific." Sir Isaiah is quite conscious of Marx's mistakes, but "most important thinkers have violently exaggerated. If they don't, they're not listened to. Plato, Descartes, the writers of the Gospels, Kant, Hegel, Bertrand Russell, exaggerated. Exaggeration breaks the crust of accepted opinion. Freudianism would have been an eclectic mess if Freud hadn't exaggerated."