monasterywine 's review for:

The Opium of the Intellectuals by Raymond Aron

1.0

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I hate this not because I disagree with it - although I do - but because it is so hypocritical and has one of the flimsiest theses I think I've ever encountered. aron's argument is basically that communism is anti-democratic and unnatural because it was invented by ivory-tower intellectuals in one country and imposed upon the proletariat in others - okay, sure, whatever, but nowhere does he explain why this argument doesn't also apply to his beloved liberal capitalism, which he does not see as an ideology or deliberate political system at all but as some kind of undefiled natural state of mankind. one of his preoccupations is with the foreignness of communism to many of the countries in which it exists, but it's difficult to see how french liberalism is any more native to eastern europe than german communism. his implicit answer, of course, is that french liberalism is not 'french' or 'liberal' at all, but somehow universal and non-ideological - which makes one wonder what the jacobins were so worked up about.

this book reads like satire, because aron is completely incapable of acknowledging the limitations of liberalism, unable to realise that it is his OWN opium, that he is guilty of exactly what he criticises the titular leftist intellectuals of!