“The challenge that Marx confronts us with today is far more serious than these academic disputes about influences and hierarchies. The fact that a form of totalitarian dominance uses Marxism, from which it obviously emerged, undoubtedly represents the most terrifying accusation ever made against Marx. And this accusation cannot be easily silenced, as happens with similarly natured accusations – against Nietzsche, Hegel, Luther, or Plato, all of whom, like many others, were at some point accused of being forerunners of Naziism.

It has become fashionable in recent years to assume an unbroken line from Marx to Lenin to Stalin, thus accusing Marx of being the father of totalitarian dominance. Few of those who adopt this line seem to realize that blaming Marx for totalitarianism is equivalent to blaming the very Western tradition for inevitably leading to this monstrosity of a new form of governance. Whoever touches Marx, touches the tradition of Western thought.

I believe it can be demonstrated that the line from Aristotle to Marx shows fewer and less significant cracks than that from Marx to Stalin.” Hannah Arendt