This tired old contention that some great historical thinker is
somehow single-handedly responsible for the fall of civilisation is
nothing more than railing against intellect itself.
All I am saying Hegel established a framework which eased the works of some scum.
"You notice I haven’t given an analysis of the Enlightenment but of
modernity, of modernisation, of the advance of capital, because
four pedants don’t make an age. And two or three weird philosophers
don’t give birth to a century of unreason. You know, Nietzsche
didn’t, you know, from his drawing room give birth to a century of
cannonade, slaughter, concentration camps, CIA subterfuge, the
raping and the murdering of nuns, the bombing of continents, the
despoiling of beaches and the ruin of a planet! Four or five
pedants do not have that much power, and never have. That’s just a
sort of bugbear. They didn’t 'unleash unreason on the world'
Jesus... how crazy can some people get. I mean, even in the
postmodern world you shouldn't be that crazy, to say that three or
four pedants invented this stuff. " -- R. Roderick Nietzsche’s
Progeny (1991)A world where Karl Marx isn't responsible for millions of deaths is a world where the existence of intellectuals is ultimately pointless. There, a wise potentate could send philosophers into labor camps and he'd only benefit from the elimination of waste.
If you believe that ideas matter, then you should allow for spectacularly bad ideas to have spectacularly bad real world consequences.
to me this seems to imply ideas don't matter, or we wouldn't be living in a market-oriented society. I suppose there's still room for global warming to demonstrate your point.
Any accounting scheme which assigns Marx blame for the consequences of his poorer ideas, has to assign far more to "wise potentate" believers. Or even people who unironically use words like "wise potentate" at all.
But just out of curiosity, what exactly Marx said that you deem so dangerous? Can you show some quotes?
Well, we can start with this problematic statement. Taken to its literal conclusion, it's not surprising to think it could end up with mass graves. Granted, it originated from Mephistopheles, but Marx wasn't being poetic in his recitations.
The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the second Sunday in May, 1852 – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for the moment, so that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: “All that exists deserves to perish.” [From Goethe’s Faust, Part One.]
Can you explain, in your interpretation, what was Marx trying to say?