Avineri, Shlomo. “Marx and the Intellectuals.” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 28 (1967), pp. 269–278.

Excerpt:

 

“Marx’s major contribution to political thought has undoubtedly been
the philosophical connection he establishes between the proletariat as social
phenomenon and socialism as program of social action. In that program
of social action, Marx always insists, intellectuals have a great role to
play; yet it is clear, too, that Marx never did shake quite free from radical
ambivalence about the r6le of intellectuals. Marx’s few remarks about the
“ideologues” are far from systematically thought out or historically satisfy-
ing.1 The development of political parties which termed themselves “Marx-
ist” was never wholly free from the paradox: i.e. precisely those parties
that viewed history through the conceptual lenses of class-war and prole-
tarian revolution were led by an intellectual elite which was very far from
being proletarian in its social origins and educational background or in its
occupational status and actual way of living. Few political parties in the
moder world could boast of a leadership as intellectual in composition and
outlook as the Russian Communist Party under Lenin.”

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