We started class tonight looking at Hollander and his view on intellectuals in the 1960s and before. We first looked at western communist intellectuals and how the rhetoric behind them was that they were set out to destroy the western world. This was not just people spewing propaganda but rather this was the thought of by many other intellectuals. Professor brought up how it was more difficult to be an American Marxist intellectual who openly stated that their thoughts and ideas were in line with people in the soviet union during the cold war. The limits of the pre-modern period were being broken during this time period and this was seen as radical and shocking to the rest of the intellectuals. From the intellectual perspective, there needs to be an argument made for all intellectuals as to why they think the way that they do. This is why the new modern intellectuals while not always celebrated they were legitimized by the community.
During Nick’s introduction a part that I wanted to highlight is when delving into the idea of intellectuals in a communist space, they were often enticed by being shown the good things of these societies and not the downsides. It was presented to them as more of a utopia than being realistic. But this plays into the western intellectuals’ utopian-seeking mindset which aligned with the communist mindset of propaganda in a way.
After the first student presentation, we discussed the alienation of the Intellectual class is not derived from the original understanding of going insane but rather they have distanced themselves mentally from the biases that are perpetuated in society so they can think and progress without outside influence. We dove deeper into this concept and Professor Riley opened up the class discussion on the idea that it is not feasible for intellectuals to be portrayed as unbiased because they are not. The different intellectuals have different biases and it is important to see them in their professional space to understand the truth that they are proposing. When looking at Marxist theory objectivity is not something that exists because it is expressed by the dominant capitalist society and not society as a whole. Marxists also argue that the people in power would not let any thought that goes against their upward mobility be outwardly expressed because it would take away from their power so we cannot think or defer to the concept of objectivity as a whole.
The next student’s introductory presentation was looking at hierarchy and normality. These themes came from the reading The Opium of the Intellectuals: Intellectuals in Serch of Religion by Raymond Aron. To open up the introduction a question was posed of “whether a Godless doctrine deserves to be called a religion?” Alexandra discussed different arguments and statements made by Aron about communism and religion. She brought up an interesting point that Aron made that Communism arose as a result of the decline of people trusting and accepting the authority of the Church. She then helped to describe the three stages of Communism in religion: the proletariat understanding their role and their symbol within the Communist Party, the interpretation of facts and history to satisfy the dogma of Communism, true Christians could never fully ascribe to which is the idea that humanity will become perfect and organized under Communism. It was also brought up the theory that in order to evolve past the need to use religion in intellectual thought and process one must look past the thought process that has been historically presented. This is because most of western history of thought is rooted in religious backing and as Molnar presents this will not lead society to the utopia it is headed toward. At the end of the second introduction presentation, Alexandra also posed questions at the end of her introduction that Professor touched upon, (paraphrasing) about the role communism and new intellectuals play in secularization and the subjectivity of the justification of communism. We touched on our past class discussions by Molnar and the idea of a utopian society that moves away from religion as a catalyst for progressive thoughts.
To end class we looked deeper into Marx and his view of religion on capitalism and society we looked at the title of the course “Opium of the Intelectual”. Religion in Marxism is seen as a numbing agent that blinds and hinders society from his point of view. We discussed this concept by looking further into the meaning behind opium and also the context that this holds currently as well, in regards to the opioid epidemic.