Essentials

Higher education, in the liberal arts, is overrun with Marxists. However, we should distinguish between two different kinds of academic Marxists. One is the Marxist who simply borrows Marxist jargon, uses the Marxist paradigm only as a framework for critical analysis, and then drives home in new a new Mercedes. When I was in grad school, in fact, the strongest resistance to forming a graduate student's union came from professed Marxist critics. So, the "Marxist critic" can easily be against organized labor, seemingly a walking oxymoron.

The other kind of Marxist actually seeks to convert young people to the Communist cause through course content and exercise of the bully pulpit of the lectern. It has apparently not occurred to them that their anti-Americanism flourishes mostly in state-funded and corporate funded universities. This seems to be a riddle. Why would the state and the corporations fund a whole culture of anti-state, anti-corporate activist professors? My answer is that the state/corporate world is happy to fund teachers to trap the idealistic energy of young people within 20th century irrelevancies, essentially removing them from the political landscape forever. Marxism in the academy, far from being radical, is actually state-sponsored political emasculation.

However, no one should fear any real political action originating from academic Marxists. In almost all cases, those hoping for revolution are also paradoxically pacifists. Revolutions tend to be the bloodiest wars going, so these people would evaporate at first sight of a real struggle. In some cases, they in fact do make contributions to society through promoting multiculturalism. Whether that makes up for the harm done in removing the prospective activists of tomorrow from the political process is anyone's call.