Lieber Engels,
Read this in a cool moment, if you have any nowadays. And don’t, for goodness’ sake, bother to reply. I do not know if you have seen a letter about me, written by a young barrister called Tony Blair. He is clearly not a member of the proloteriat, is naive and not generally well read or what one might describe as ein Intellektuell. But he claims, einleuchtend, I have to admit, to have taken the trouble to read my Das Kapital. And he has assimilated some of our message. For example, he asserts that we have irreversibly altered his perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live. If I could take him in hand, I could teach him to adapt the Hegelian dialectic for a materialist account of social formations that is based upon an analysis of the opposition between different classes.
Of course, the young puppy is not yet wholly enlightened. He claims to find our ideology stifling because it seeks to embrace as its philosophy every facet of existence. But of what good is a philosophy that does not embrace human existence as a whole? The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. Sycophantic Master Blair is correct to say that the arrogance and self-righteousness of some of those who call themselves Marxists is deeply unattractive to the ordinary would-be member of our revolution. It is hard to detect his Weltanschauung. But apparently he is considering going into British politics. Alas, the dialectic of history shows that this dilettante is destined to a life of mediocrity. He should stick to fishing in the morning.
Mit freundlichen Grüssen, Karl Marx