ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the philosophical premises and doctrines of Marxism. It considers the process of intellectual adjustments necessitated by the historical development of Communism and the Soviet State. Marxism should be studied for two reasons. One is that it illustrates an intellectual choice, logically following from the utopian aspiration for the total, unanimous, peaceful, and prosperous society. The second is the historical development of this ideology under the concrete pressure of actual occurrences, which obliged the intellectuals to make choices, adapt themselves, and constantly reinterpret new events— that is, to live, not only intellectually, but with Communism as a historical-institutional-political phenomenon. Karl Marx was an economist, whereas most of the Marxist intellectuals have been of humanistic formation, and at any rate, poor on economics. G. W. Hegel proposed two elements, both of which were destined for a glamorous intellectual career in the Marxist system: the reification of consciousness and the reconciliation of the alienated individual within the framework of the State.
