In the 1970s, many intellectuals had become political radicals. Marxism was correct, liberalism was for wimps, and Marx had pronounced that 'the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974.
I was born in 1948, so I'm a '60s kid, and in the '60s everyone talked all the time, endlessly, about socialism versus capitalism, about political choices, ideology, Marxism, revolution, 'the system' and so on.
At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.
The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
Karl Marx was in favor of socialist and communist-socialist revolutions, but he had a pretty nuanced view about it.
I still think like a Marxist in many ways.
In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.
Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be.
Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.
Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.