Twilight of the Intellectuals

Much of the potency of contemporary attacks on socialism lies not in the points they score against Marx’s ideas—since these points when valid could be made equally well, and often have been, by Marxists themselves—but in the fact that all ideas have turned out so badly. Ideas as such are suspect. A century ago Cardinal Newman thought that one might “look for a blessing through obedience even to an erroneous system, and a guidance even by means of it out of it.” Today, from the truest system nothing but evil is expected, if only because it is a system. As for guidance out of it, the more systematic it is the deeper it leads you into its trap. Once inside, the only hope is to break the system to pieces.

Given ...