On Marxists

Can it be true that I am alone in finding tiresome the impertinence of these Marxists? They complain of neglect, and they take it as evidence of the degeneration of the intellectual standards that we do not give ourselves wholly to the study of their writings. They insinuate themselves as persons to be taken seriously because people whom we respect recommend them (this turns our to be the usual mixture of truth and falsehood, but it gets them into the conversation). Here they reveal themselves as pertinacious bores: if there is anything worse than their whining complain that they are always misunderstood by those who do not agree with them, it is their self-important demand to be refuted. But when their muddles and equivocations are exposed they complain that this is merely 'academic' criticism and takes no account of the noise they have made in the world. Can what millions of Russian proletarians and several British scientist believe be false?

What happened to these Marxists? They used to have some semblance of pride, the cloudy dignity of fanaticism. They used to be as certain of themselves as the man who holds the ace of trumps for the last trick. But now the best of them are like broken-down dissemblers who have failed so often that they go through the formalities of deception with a tired determination and when, once again, the wrong card is turned up, they mumble with clown-like pathos: 'Oh, well, I knew it wouldn't work' - and nobody has the heart to ask for his money back.

- Michael Oakeshott, 'Marxism and the Open Mind' in The Vocabulary of the Modern European State, p. 137.