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The Opium of the Intellectuals

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Aron's book deserves recognition as one of the classic works of 20th century intellectual history. Written 40 years ago during the battle of ideas between communism and liberal democracy, "The Opium of the Intellectuals" provided profound insight into the mind of the communist intellectual. Aron, a renowned French historian and philosopher, wrote this devastating critique of French radicals (such as John Paul Sartre) during the height of the Cold War. Unlike Albert Camus in his famous book "The Rebel", Aron fires his guns without mercy and exposes these intellectuals' penchant for irrationalism and extremism.

The book's title was derived from Marx's famous quote "Religion is the opium of the people". Marx's belief was that religion diverted people's attention from misery on earth by promising a glorious afterlife. Aron explains communism served this role for radical intellectuals who eloquently rationalized and apologized for communism's barbarism because its promise to deliver utopia on earth. In a nutshell, communism replaced Christianity and other established religions as a new faith, but one grounded in the secular world, not in the heavens. As in all religions, faith is paramount, not reason. Communism's monstrous crimes and wholesale destruction of the individual did not bother these radicals because they believed in the ultimate "means / ends" justification. Since only communism could deliver humanity to the promised-land, it was privileged by its goal, thus any crime could be rationalized as the part of the twisted path to salvation.

This masterpiece illustrates the dangers of radical intellectuals who take a wild leap into political fantasy for the sake of an idea. Fredrich Hayek, the famous Austrian economist, summarized it best 50 years ago when he stated "The distance between a single-minded idealist and a fanatic is just one step".

Although Aron's treatise was published many decades ago as a brilliant and unsurpassed analysis of French intellectual culture, it has direct relevance for contemporary fads and foibles of Western cultural and intellectual life. Much of what goes on in the academy today becomes lucid when read within Aron's analytical framework. This book should be read by all who care about the education of their children.

Raymond Aron wrote this brilliant book as a devastating attack on intellectuals who were then much taken with communism, revolution and the proletariat. But it has, as he recognized, obvious relevance to the intellectual climate in the post Cold War world.

Consider, for example, this his profound insight that the intellectual "protests against police brutality, the inhuman rhythm of industrial production, the severity of bourgeois courts, the execution of prisoners whose guilt has not been proved beyond doubt.... But as soon as he decides to give his allegiance to a party which is implacably hostile as he is himself to the established order, we find him forgiving.. everything he has hitherto relentlessly denounced. The revolutionary myth bridges the gap between moral intransigence and terrorism."

Hence today's intellectuals no longer defend Stalin; they applaud Arafat. They do not question whether Western democratic values are superior to those of the USSR but whether Western values are superior to those of Mid-East and Africa. It is no longer fashionable to question whether the way we see communist countries is culturally apt; instead we question whether how we see terrorists is culturally apt. After all, should we not look for "root causes" of terrorism? That question is still asked. It's just that before 1989 intellectuals asked that question about communist terrorism; today they ask it about Mid-East terrorism.

The myth of the revolution has moved to a new continent and intellectuals, the Revolution's devotees, have a new Pope.

What a difference a few years make!

The title of the book is interesting not only for its reference to Marx's famous statement but because Raymon Aaron was such a giant among intellectuals. This book, written in 1955, is a perfect indictment of the follies and inconsistencys of Marxist thought and intellectual fawning over the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, when I went to college, I had the same ideas but not Mr. Aaron's impressive prose and aplomb in destroying Marxist discourse. I wish I knew of the book back then. An excellen indictment on the longest folly of the 20th century.

Intellectuals "are always inclined to judge their country and its institutions by comparing present realitities with theoretical ideals rather than with other realitities." It's evocative of "...the monumental impatience of intellectuals with human complexity and imperfection," and the inability to (quoting from the intro by H. Mansfield) "appreciate the inevitability of partisanship; hence they do not understand politics." But one does not understand politics until one sees that it is a permanent feature of human life, and that it defines human imperfection as the striving for perfection of beings incapable of it." After all, man (as in people-kind) is not God. But for those without any faith in a higher being it is far easier to imagine the feasibility of utopian perfection on earth. Marxism is a 'religion' that supplants religion (& faith in a higher being) and "marxism is in itself a synthesis of all the principal themes of progressive thought." So, it does not beg credulity to see why intellectuals (inclined to "progressive" beliefs & less inclined to be religious---in a traditional sense) imagine anything to be possibile. And it explains why many such people excused away the "terrorism erected into a system of government" in the Soviet Union utilizing a belief that any "progressive" government must be given the benefit of any possible doubts: such is the faith of progressives, easily inebriated on great collective utopian schemes.People are imperfect, though, are they not? Yet intellectuals (far more prone than workers or oppressed minorities) are "merciless toward the failings of democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines." It's an inclination that betrays a penchant for aristocratic values and contempt for average people. A little historical context: After the fall of the aristocratic French monarchy "the revolutionary fervour...split into two separate channels, nationalist and socialist," but "the nationalist ideology is nonetheless condemned in Western Europe." After all, how can European 'powers' "get excited about the temporal grandeur of a collectivity which is incapable of manufacturing its own arms" or unwilling to do so. It is much more economical to free-ride off 'nationalist' America, bemoan such a self-imposed predicament, and channel their frustrations into socialist collectivity. Progresive intellectuals in America (who see the proverbial glass more than half-empty) are no different and "are more pained than simpler mortals by the hegemony of the United States." To quote General Wesley Clark, of all people (though many have said this): "people have an instinctive need to feel a part of something greater than themselves." Citizenship in "a second-class nation state [ie., any European state] is not an adequate framework for full human expression," Aron posits. Hence the increased level of anti-Americanism since the defeat of the USSR (a campaign Europe was very much an important contributing part of) & European intellectual elites frantic drive to federally collectivise their continent despite their citizens' mixed inclinations on the matter. So much for the here-&-now-ideals of democracy when judged against the 'limitless' possibilities of the future. Fair warning PS: This very worthy book, like many philosophical works, is heavy reading at times. An example of the author's writing style: "A pseudo-unity is obtained by subordinating the specific meaning of each spiritual universe to the social fuction which is assigned to it, by setting up equivocal or false propositions as the basis of a doctrine which is alleged to be at once scientific and philosophical." (06Jul) Cheers!

I read this book here in Brazil, some years ago.Writen in 1955, this books showed the socialim's frauds, in a time who was fashion to be a marxist even in France.
Here in Brazil, our hollow minded "intelectuals" continuous to be marxist.Brazilian "intelectuals" today continuous to be in love in marxism.Brazilian elite is today marxist, like it was slaverist 150 years ago, and was positivist 100 years ago.
In fact marxism is a religion such as islamism and hinduism.The sole difference between marxism and "normal" religions is that marxism don't has a god, but it has a prophet:Karl Marx.The moslens tells:"There's just one God, Allah.And Muhhamad is his prophet!".A leftist tells:"There's no God.And Marx is your prophet!".
All religion believes.One god, one hundred gods, no God; are all religions.
The problem in this book is that it's becoming a little outdated.Today, religion with one God, Allah, is replacing marxism in left's minds.All the left in world(USA and Brazil included) change Moscow to Mecca.They forgot Berlim Wall, but they are looking for the Kaaba, in Arabia.They forgot "The Capital" and they are following "The Kuran".They are forgeting Lenin and are looking for Iran's Aiatollahs.

(Apologies for the alliteration, I couldn't resist.)

Raymond Aron's masterpiece, "The Opium of the Intellectuals", uses Marx' famous description of the nature of religion to turn it against the latter-day followers of Marxism in France, in particular the Stalinist fellow travellers of the 1950s and their "Third Way"-ish epigones of the 1960s. Against these, Aron flings volley after volley of critique, most of it aimed to demonstrate the debatability if not meaninglessness of the concepts used by these authors (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, etc.), such as "The Proletariat", "The Revolution", "The Meaning of History", and so on and so forth. Aron's criticisms of the many-sidedness, flexibility and reified nature (if we may use that Marxist term here) of those terms is well-done and in most cases hits home.

Less certain is Aron's general criticism of the French left and its intellectual pretensions. The more Aron leaves the easily attacked Stalinists for what they are and the more he tries to attack the general viewpoint of leftist politics, whether communist or not, the more vague and meandering his arguments get and the less clear his actual point becomes. He seems to be leaning on a Weberian idea of responsibility in politics, involving the need to deal mainly with practical and administrative problems rather than invoking grand phrases, and he also has some discussions about the importance of "productivity" and how considerations of this inevitably have to govern the real political debates of the kind he feels are sensible. But what he means by this "productivity" is never explained, and his side discussion about philosophy of history only makes this more confused.

On the whole, Aron seems to be advocating a conservative and pragmatic approach to political issues, focusing on the need for making choices, dealing with practical problems, and compromise, something on the continent definitely belonging to the political center-right. That Marxism-Leninism has mostly been ideological, uninterested in reality and full of hollow invective is certainly true, but even then it was no longer necessary for Aron to point it out - it was obvious to all but the orthodox communists themselves, and the famous collection "The God That Failed" had already been written, the XXnd Party Congress held. Almost nothing Aron writes in this book is applicable to the left in general, and in so far as he makes meaningful commentary about that, it is definitely incorrect; as can be seen from his general complete ignorance of economics (hidden behind a lot of vague phrasing), his Anglophilia, and his disinclination to understand socialism as anything else than state ownership of certain factories and the like.

That makes this work vaguely useful as a critique of the fashionable Leninism of the French left, and maybe also interesting as a document from the debates of those times, but it is of no lasting meaning or value.

Raymond Aron's famous work is more relevant than ever before. His basic thesis is that intellectuals and politicians should dare to question and even destroy their ideology, if it drives them to do things which they accuse their ideological "opponents" of doing.
Today, we see two of those ideologies at work, which Aron would abhorr: Islamic radicalism, and Christian Americanism. Both ideologies have their "intellectuals": the neo-conservatives in the USA and the extremist Imams in the Islamic world. Both accuse the others of horrible crimes, while both don't look at their own crimes, because they are blinded by ideology.
Read this great book, and you'll understand why both Born Again Messianism and the Islamists' vision of a New Caliphat are both supported by a new genre of drugged "intellectuals".
The "left" which Aron attacked 50 years ago, has long ago become very moderate and liberal (social-democrats in the Western world). A reading of Aron's critique today would not focus on them, but on America's radicals and on Islam's extremists.

The French intelligensia are fortunate in counting Aron a member - without him the term would be oxymoronic.

Reading this book today drives home just how little the French 'intelligensia' have learnt in the past 50 years. They remain wedded to socialist theories that have killed millions while scoffing at the simple ideas that have made the United States the greatest power to roam the earth. In short, French attitudes to America are based on bilious envy...