Word: marxist
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...condition. The great change that had set in by the middle of the 19th century still rolls on, gathering speed and extending its breadth. Today, as in Marx's time, men feel the change as both a threat and a promise. It evokes fear and hope simultaneously. The Marxist vision is a peculiar, sometimes deadly-but for many men an effective-way of perceiving the moving society and relating themselves...
...history, and he intended his theory to be swallowed whole. The vision derives much of its poetic force from its unity, although few modern men gulp down the whole brew. Outside the Communist countries, formal conversion to Marxism is now rarer than it was a generation ago. Much Marxist influence is indirect and fragmentary. In some minds, fragments of the Marxist vision coexist-illogically-with Christianity or Freudianism. For most, it provides a rationale for criticizing society as it is, rather than a plan for moving toward society as it ought...
Nevertheless, Marxist influence is still potent, especially where men find themselves in situations somehow analogous to those that surrounded Marx in the Europe of five generations ago. Leaving aside the uses of Marxism within the Communist-ruled countries, groups especially susceptible to the vision today include the peoples of less advanced countries now experiencing early stages of modernization, and certain unassimilated groups (for example, radical U.S. blacks) in advanced countries. Equally susceptible are intellectuals and youth...
...Marxist vision attracts many members of this mixed bag may be explained by a quick look back at Marx's Europe of the 1840s, which in today's parlance would be called a "developing area." Its social structure was crumbling under the impact of science and industrialization. Three attitudes toward change were fairly clearly defined: 1) conservative, 2) progressive or, as it was called, "liberal," and 3) revolutionary. Then, as now, thoroughgoing reactionaries were hard to find; nobody seriously tried to restore the pre-industrial Europe. But there were many clingers, people who fought rearguard actions, defending...
Thus, a key element in the Marxist vision was his effort to channel the anarchistic spirit so that it would be in favor of industrialism but opposed to the capitalists. His intellectual support of the new order fused with his passionate sense of justice to shape a way of being that was simultaneously on the side of progress and in revolt against its present villains who controlled both government and the means of production. This ambivalent way of dealing with the stress of rapid social change retains its appeal for many men today...