Revolutionary Imagination and the Waning of Marxism

The intellectual legacy of Marxism grows more complex and ambiguous with the passage of time. Now that the last credible Marxist orthodoxies have disintegrated, Marxism as a significant force in intellectual life functions more as an orientation for thinkers in a variety of fields as a well-defined school of thought with a rigorous method. Reading the sober-minded analytical writings of academic Marxists makes it difficult to comprehend the revolutionary passions once aroused by Marx's evocation of class struggle. The intellectual disintegration of Marxism has not, however, eliminated its political potency. The mediocrity of Soviet Marxism is without intellectual authority, but this has not caused the wholesale abandonment of Marxism by legions of revolutionary cadres. Instead, the decay of Marxist ideas has produced a progressive de-intellectualization of revolutionary Marxism, the replacement of revolutionary theology with mere dogma. The leading revolutionaries no longer write theoretical books--as if their credibility as scientists of history were of some serious concern to them--they just give long haranguing speeches and erect pictures of themselves to hang five stories high next to similar hagiographic renderings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.