The Opium of the Intellectuals
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Opium of the Intellectuals
| Full title | The Opium of the Intellectuals (L'Opium des intellectuels) |
|---|---|
| Author | Raymond Aron |
| Published | 1955 |
| Pages | 324 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Raymond Aron’s 1955 attack on the French intelligentsia’s attachment to Marxism, written while most of his Parisian peers were still excusing Stalin: the myths of the Left, the Revolution and the Proletariat function as a secular religion, giving intellectuals meaning at the price of judgement. Its lasting charge is that the clerisy applies a harsh standard to the societies it lives in and none at all to the ones it admires. |
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List (March 2026), opening Marxism and Collective Psychology ahead of Hayek’s “The Intellectuals and Socialism” — the pair that frame the section’s real question, which is less what Marxism claims than why clever people believed it. Marked with a ☑️ (the page gives no legend for the mark). Full transcription: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
About this edition
First published in French in 1955 as L’Opium des intellectuels; the standard English translation followed in 1957. The title inverts Marx’s line about religion being the opium of the people.
Connections
- Karl Marx — the thinker whose line the title inverts and whose system Aron dissects.
- Socialism — the commitment under examination.
- Collectivism — the political form Aron argues the myths underwrite.
- Witness (Chambers) — a first-person account of the same commitment, later in the same section of McCord’s list.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.