The Opium of the Intellectuals

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".


Contunuing relevance of Aron's classic   March 18, 2000
MARGARET, PETER (RIPON, WI USA)
38 out of 45 found this review helpful

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.


a book for our time   August 9, 2003
I. Tysoe (Earth)
61 out of 78 found this review helpful

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!


Brilliant book by a brillian mind   March 26, 2003
John Mudd Gonzalez (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
18 out of 25 found this review helpful

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.


A book against all extremists   November 23, 2004
Lou (the EU)
17 out of 38 found this review helpful

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.