I’m re-reading David Harvey’s timeless article, “The practical contradictions of Marxism”. This is what he has to say about the sorry state of post-60s wannabe radical intellectuals:
“But all is not well among the new academic enterepreneurs. Sealed off from the regulative dialectics of the proleterain public sphere and hence, deprived of a corrective dialogue with the producing classes, they are now turning in on themselves. Safely sequestered in the universities but still playing at resistance, their “discourse radicalism” has led them into a dead end dalliance that fetishizes language. When not promoting the ‘politics of complaint’ (Hughes, 1993), these masters of theory-in-and-for-itself engage in the hollow puffery of introspection, creating occupationally safe crusades, and demanding bad faith reforms that deftly side-step the enduring conundrums of class struggle” (29-30).
Colourful. And scathing. There’s a lot more where that came from. You should read it.