There is something oddly revealing about Marx and Weitling. We get a snapshot of what Marx really thought about working-class types. He was a plain bourgeois snob. The debate over theory is complex, but in a way Weitling was right. Marx’s theories are a mysterious form of ‘I am smart you are stupid’ so I am the bourgeois classes who gets to snub workers like Weitling. Marx’s theories all backfired. Weitlint is actually right here. Marx’s theories have crippled the left.
Marx’s treatment of Weitling is outrageous. The working class is an abstraction for him, and his theories were off the mark.
In 1846 Weitling complained that the “intellectuals” Marx and Engels wrote only about obscure matters of no interest to the workers. Marx angrily responded with the following words, “Ignorance never yet helped anybody.” Marx’s response is as valid today as it was then.
Source: In Defence of Marxism
