Inoculation Against Neo-Marxism: the Literature of Liberty

The origins of this magazine can be traced to a classroom in Lisbon 16 years ago.

In the winter of 2009, I took a political science class at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa under Professor João Carlos Espada. One afternoon he handed us a syllabus: Hayek, Popper, Oakeshott, Berlin, Aron, Strauss, Schumpeter, Dahrendorf. At the time, I was hardly an ideal student. My energies went more into Lisbon itself than into coursework. I read Fernando Pessoa while wandering its steep streets, absorbed in the melancholy rhythms of his Livro do Desassossego. I explored the Atlantic culture—the saudade that clings to the stones of that city—more than the library stacks. It was a season of life.

And yet that syllabus would shape my intellectual life more profoundly than anything else I encountered in those years. Professor Espada had been a colleague and friend of Karl Popper in London. To sit in his classroom was to receive a living link to the man who had written The Open Society and Its Enemies. That connection thrilled me, though I hardly appreciated it at the time. Only later did I realize how rare a gift it was to encounter the literature of liberty through someone who had walked with its greatest defender.

Those texts became, retrospectively, my inoculation against the legacy of neo-Marxism—not only against the economic determinism of the past, but against the broader cultural forms that still intoxicate our politics today.

Those texts became, retrospectively, my inoculation against the legacy of neo-Marxism—not only against the economic determinism of the past, but against the broader cultural forms that still intoxicate our politics today. I did not grasp this fully as a student. The seed lay dormant. But years later, working within a multilateral organization—the mother of all bureaucracies—it germinated.

Friedrich Hayek gave me the first antibodies. His entire project was to unmask the hubris of those who believed society could be treated as a machine, redesigned at will by enlightened planners. In Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics he offered a deceptively simple reminder: “Civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess.” (Hayek, 1967, p. 108) This line captures his deepest insight: the knowledge that sustains society is dispersed, tacit, and local. No planner, however brilliant, can ever gather or command it. Markets, institutions, and traditions work not because they are designed but because they evolve, incorporating countless fragments of experience. Order is not imposed from above; it grows from below.

Markets, institutions, and traditions work not because they are designed but because they evolve, incorporating countless fragments of experience.

Hayek pressed the point further in Law, Legislation and Liberty. Against those who insisted that modern states should redistribute wealth in the name of “social justice,” he was blunt: “The demand for ‘social justice’ is … a primitive emotional demand which cannot be reconciled with the rule of law.” (Hayek, 1976, vol. 2, p. 63) By calling this demand “atavistic,” Hayek meant that it smuggles into modern life the instincts of the tribe—the urge to treat society as a family where goods are consciously distributed. But large, complex societies cannot function on those terms. To try is to undermine the impartial rules of law that protect liberty.

I did not fully understand this as a student, but years later, when I heard colleagues in large organizations speak as if fairness could be engineered by regulation alone, Hayek’s warning returned vividly. The faith in “purposive social formations”—institutions designed from scratch to guarantee equity—was precisely the kind of rationalist overreach he exposed. The result, as he foresaw, is not justice but a corrosion of freedom.

Karl Popper armed me against utopianism. Few thinkers diagnosed more clearly the dangers of political dreams unmoored from reality. In The Open Society and Its Enemies he issued a judgment that still resonates with unsettling force: “Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.” (Popper, 1945, vol. 1, p. 157) Popper’s point was not rhetorical excess but historical observation. From Plato’s philosopher-kings to Marx’s classless society, every attempt to realize perfection by design had ended in coercion, violence, or tyranny. He rejected the seductive idea that history moves by necessity toward some ultimate end. For Popper, there is no predetermined arc of progress—only the messy, uncertain path of human trial, error, and correction. This insight came alive for me years later when I heard ambitious claims about “eradicating conflict,” “ending poverty once and for all,” or “remaking societies from scratch.” Such aspirations, however noble, almost always collapse under the weight of their own abstraction. They confuse goals with guarantees, ideals with instruments. And in that confusion, dissenting voices are too easily dismissed as obstacles to progress.

For Popper, there is no predetermined arc of progress—only the messy, uncertain path of human trial, error, and correction.

Popper’s antidote was humility: the acceptance that human beings can only improve their institutions through piecemeal reform, open criticism, and the courage to admit error. A free society is one that treats mistakes not as heresies but as opportunities to learn. That I first encountered Popper through a teacher who had known him personally—Professor Espada, who had once been his colleague and friend—gave the words a kind of moral weight I could not ignore. They were living testimony from a man who had seen the twentieth century’s utopias for what they truly were.

Michael Oakeshott revealed why bureaucratic reform so often fails. His essay Rationalism in Politics is one of the most elegant critiques of the modern faith in planning. There he contrasts two ways of thinking: the rationalist, who trusts only in technical knowledge, and the conservative, who relies on the slow, accumulated wisdom of tradition. As he put it:

“The Rationalist never doubts the power of his ‘reason’; he never doubts its competence to determine the worth of a thing… The knowledge he values most is technical knowledge.” (Rationalism in Politics, 1962, p. 7)

This rationalist, Oakeshott argued, approaches political life like an engineer confronted with a set of problems to be solved by blueprints. The assumption is that technical knowledge—policies, procedures, frameworks—can be detached from the historical and cultural soil in which human life actually grows. But politics is never simply a matter of technique. It involves habits, loyalties, languages, and tacit understandings that no plan can fully capture. This distinction illuminated why carefully engineered “frameworks” within large organizations so often wilt in practice. However meticulously written, they remained indifferent to local knowledge, resistant to nuance, blind to tacit wisdom. Oakeshott reminded me that political life is not architecture but husbandry: not the erection of a tower, but the tending of a garden.

Gardens flourish by patience, pruning, and adaptation to seasons, not by grand designs imposed from above. Bureaucracies, when they forget this, become monuments to rationalism—impressive on paper, but sterile in life.

That image has stayed with me. Gardens flourish by patience, pruning, and adaptation to seasons, not by grand designs imposed from above. Bureaucracies, when they forget this, become monuments to rationalism—impressive on paper, but sterile in life.

Isaiah Berlin gave me the vocabulary of freedom. Before reading him, I had thought of liberty in fairly simple terms: more of it was always good, less of it always bad. Berlin complicated that picture in his celebrated 1958 lecture Two Concepts of Liberty. There he drew a distinction that has since become canonical: “negative liberty,” the freedom from coercion, and “positive liberty,” the freedom to be one’s own master. Both, he insisted, are real and legitimate—but they can collide. Negative liberty protects individuals from intrusion; it tells the state to leave us alone. Positive liberty empowers individuals to realize their own potential; it often invites the state to intervene. Each can shade into tyranny. Too much emphasis on negative liberty may ignore poverty or social exclusion; too much on positive liberty risks paternalism or coercion in the name of “true” freedom.

Berlin’s larger point was even more unsettling. He reminded us that human values themselves are many, and that they often conflict irreconcilably:

“The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition.” (Four Essays on Liberty, 1969, p. 168)

This was not relativism but pluralism. Berlin believed that values such as liberty, equality, justice, and belonging are all genuine, yet they cannot be perfectly harmonized. Every society, every individual, must choose—sacrificing one good in order to preserve another. In multilateral life I often heard officials speak as if every value—peace, justice, equality, freedom—could be reconciled by the right institutional framework. Berlin taught me to see this as wishful thinking. Liberty matters not because values fit neatly together, but precisely because they do not. Political life is tragic: there is no blueprint that can dissolve the tension. To deny this is to risk both illusion and tyranny.

Berlin believed that values such as liberty, equality, justice, and belonging are all genuine, yet they cannot be perfectly harmonized. Every society, every individual, must choose—sacrificing one good in order to preserve another.

Raymond Aron warned me of ideology’s intoxication. Writing in 1955, at the height of Marxism’s hold on the intellectual classes of Europe, he dared to puncture its spell. In The Opium of the Intellectuals he observed:

“Marxism has been the opium of the intellectuals.” (The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1955, ch. 1)

With that line, Aron turned Marx’s own critique back on his disciples. Where Marx had accused religion of numbing the oppressed with illusions, Aron argued that Marxism itself had become the narcotic of the intelligentsia: a system of faith dressed up as science, a theology that promised salvation through revolution. Theologians of socialism, he wrote, preferred the comfort of abstract dogma to the stubborn resistance of reality. This insight came back to me years later, in meetings where colleagues invoked terms like “structural violence” or “intersectionality” as if they were beyond question. These concepts, valuable as tools of analysis, too often hardened into liturgy—ritual incantations that insulated believers from criticism. Any attempt at nuance could be dismissed as heresy.

Aron taught me to see ideology not as enlightenment but as opiate: it soothes, it explains, it gives meaning—but at the cost of clarity. Once it grips a culture, it blinds more than it reveals.

Aron taught me to see ideology not as enlightenment but as opiate: it soothes, it explains, it gives meaning—but at the cost of clarity. Once it grips a culture, it blinds more than it reveals. That recognition remains bracing in our own age, where new forms of cultural neo-Marxism have taken the place once occupied by dialectical materialism, promising liberation but offering instead another kind of conformity.

Ralf Dahrendorf reminded me that radical breaks rarely deliver liberty. In Society and Democracy in Germany he gave modern force to an old warning:

“Revolutions devour their children, and only reforms have durable results.” (1967, p. 13)

Revolutions can topple regimes, but they rarely build stable freedom. From the French and Russian revolutions to the Arab Spring, rupture promised liberation but delivered terror, dictatorship, or collapse. For Dahrendorf, lasting change comes through institutions—laws, courts, associations—that slowly redirect power without shattering civic life. His realism is bracing: liberty advances by reform, not spasms.

Leo Strauss insisted that education, rightly understood, is not indoctrination into a creed but confrontation with fundamental problems. Against the mass culture of the mid-20th century, he defended the permanence of classical questions:

“Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity… it is the counter-poison to mass culture.” (What Is Liberal Education?, 1959, p. 5)

For Strauss, vulgarity meant surrendering one’s mind to the slogans and fashions of the moment. Liberal education was an antidote because it returned students to the great texts and perennial questions, forcing them to wrestle with the deepest alternatives in political and moral life. He also offered a powerful genealogy of modernity. In Natural Right and History (1953), Strauss described three “waves.” The first, the Enlightenment, exalted reason and science as the path to emancipation. The second, 19th-century historicism, denied universal truths in favor of cultural relativism. The third, the 20th century, culminated in nihilism—an age in which truth itself was denied. Each wave brought liberation, but also disorientation.

This framework still illuminates our present discontents. We see the confidence of technocrats who imagine science can answer all moral questions; the relativism of intellectuals who dismiss truth as a construct; and the despair of a culture tempted by nihilism, where irony and detachment replace conviction. Strauss sharpened my sense that true education is not about being supplied with ready-made answers but about awakening responsibility. It resists slogans, cultivates judgment, and reminds us that beneath every ideology lie permanent questions about justice, freedom, and the good life.

This, then, is what I call the literature of liberty. It is not a single doctrine but a civilizational vaccine. Hayek guards against the arrogance of planners. Popper warns against utopias. Oakeshott counsels humility. Berlin defends pluralism. Aron unmasks ideology. Dahrendorf shows why revolutions fail. Strauss restores philosophy against fashion. Over time I would add Pope John Paul II, Tocqueville, Arendt, Miłosz, MacIntyre, and Kołakowski. Together they form not a catechism but a chorus, reminding us that liberty is fragile, pluralism is real, and ideology is always seductive.

In today’s universities, where ideology crowds out argument, exposure to these thinkers is indispensable. They do not inoculate against doubt, but against dogma. They train students not to conform, but to think.

This magazine seeks to return that Liberty Literature to our cultural bloodstream. Our divisions—between left and right, populists and technocrats, postmodern dogmas and nationalist reactions—become intelligible in its light. Liberty is fragile.

Concordia Discors Magazine seeks to return that literature to our cultural bloodstream. Our divisions—between left and right, populists and technocrats, postmodern dogmas and nationalist reactions—become intelligible in its light. Liberty is fragile. Bureaucracies can wound as well as protect. Laws are not guarantees. Movements can intoxicate.

Once read, they cannot be unread. Their recognition—that ideology blinds, liberty is precarious, and pluralism is real—is the beginning of freedom.

I was not a diligent student when I first encountered these works; handed to me almost casually, they became companions for life. They have never ceased to teach. Once read, they cannot be unread. Their recognition—that ideology blinds, liberty is fragile, and pluralism irreducible—is the beginning of freedom. To hand on that recognition is to entrust each generation with liberty and pluralism, the enduring safeguard of freedom’s future. [gc]

The Syllabus of Liberty

Friedrich Hayek

• The Road to Serfdom (1944)
• The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
• Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973–79)

“Civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess.” (Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, 1967, p. 108)

Karl Popper

• The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
• The Poverty of Historicism (1957)

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.” (The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1, 1945, p. 157)

Michael Oakeshott

• Rationalism in Politics (1962)
• On Human Conduct (1975)

“The Rationalist never doubts the power of his ‘reason’… The knowledge he values most is technical knowledge.” (Rationalism in Politics, 1962, p. 7)

Isaiah Berlin

• Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)
• Four Essays on Liberty (1969)
• The Crooked Timber of Humanity (1990)

“The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition.” (Four Essays on Liberty, 1969, p. 168)

Raymond Aron

• The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955)
• Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (1962)
• Clausewitz: Philosopher of War (1976)

“Marxism has been the opium of the intellectuals.” (The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1955, ch. 1)

Ralf Dahrendorf

• Society and Democracy in Germany (1967)
• Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (1990)

“Revolutions devour their children, and only reforms have durable results.” (Society and Democracy in Germany, 1967, p. 13)

Leo Strauss

• Natural Right and History (1953)
• Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)
• What Is Liberal Education? (1959)
• Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

“Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity… it is the counter-poison to mass culture.” (What Is Liberal Education?, 1959, p. 5)

Joseph Schumpeter

• Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)

“Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.” (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942, p. 61)

Alexis de Tocqueville

• Democracy in America (1835/1840)

“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.” (Democracy in America, Vol. 2, 1840, Part 2, Ch. 5)

Hannah Arendt

• The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
• The Human Condition (1958)
• Between Past and Future (1961)

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951, p. 474)

Leszek Kołakowski

• Main Currents of Marxism (1976)
• Is God Happy? (2013, essays)

“The self-deification of mankind takes the form of the deification of history.” (Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 3, 1978, p. 529)

Alasdair MacIntyre

• After Virtue (1981)
• Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988)

“What we possess… are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack the contexts from which their significance derived.” (After Virtue, 1981, p. 2)

Czesław Miłosz

• The Captive Mind (1953)
• The Witness of Poetry (1983)

“When a writer is a great poet, then his words contain their opposite, and not only their opposite but many opposites.” (The Witness of Poetry, 1983, p. 4)

Pope John Paul II

• Redemptor Hominis (1979)
• Centesimus Annus (1991)
• Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994)

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” (Homily at Baltimore, 1995)