The Opium of the Intellectuals

Raymond Aron's 1955 masterpiece The Opium of the Intellectuals, is one of the great works of twentieth- century political reflection. Aron shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular religion" and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the truth about social and political reality-in all its mundane imperfections and tragic complexities.

Aron explodes the three "myths" of radical thought: the Left, the Revolution, and the Proletariat. Each...