Marxism for the Few, Or, Let ‘Em Eat Theory
by Doug Dowd
Monthly Review, April 1982

The years since the Second World War have unquestionably produced more people in the United States who see themselves as Marxists, more Marxist periodicals and books, more university and other classes taught by Marxists (in public and in “movement” schools), and more Marxists functioning in a broad range of community and other activist groups, than at any time in U.S. history, and all these by some multiple.

But, in the same years, and despite growing and widespread cynicism, skepticism, despair, and anger of ordinary working people concerning various aspects of the society (though seldom “the system”),  the upsurge of Marxism has just as unquestionably coincided with — not, one trusts, caused — a noticeable decline in the overall political effectiveness of the left in the United States, and an associated dimming of prospects here for even a mildly improving, let alone a democratic socialist society. The Marxists, mostly out of, or still connected with, universities, tend to function like a suburban swimming pool: self contained and self-purifying.

Meanwhile, oozing like a poisonous oil spill over the entire social landscape, is the right. Steadily and with increasing effectiveness, it has wheedled and whined and shouldered its way toward ever higher kinds and levels of power and authority, and even of affection and respect.
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