Goodbye Mr Marx
Goodbye Mr Marx Darren Allen Many of the problems with socialism, both official and unofficial , in fact many of the problems with the world, can be traced back to Karl Marx. Not that all leftists are, say, Marxist materialists — many today are idealists (e.g. pacifistic Buddhists) — nor that all leftists are uncritical of Marx — they understand that completely uncritical adulation is absurd and are often intelligent enough to see the more obvious flaws in Marxist philosophy. Nor even that all have read Marx — I’d guess that most haven’t. Rather, Marx is the source of — and we might say embodies — leftism as a whole, as a gestalt. Through understanding his philosophy, and seeing through it, it is possible to gain a more radical understanding of the humdrum world — or at least see through the unspoken, and quite insane, assumptions of leftism. Marx’s economic and social theories were based on a rationally apprehendable, law-like universe, a continuation of Western civilisation’s perenn