While it is a pleasure to be roughly on the same page with Jerry (who is IMO one of the clearest writers -- and also thinkers -- on this forum), I have to unfortunately note the difference between my position and that of the critique-of-obscurantism side, some of which I might have glossed over in my response to Doug (on mountain climbing).
I have no problem with Marx, or Zizek, or anybody else writing whatever in the style that they choose, nor do I object to those who understand or follow them, doing so. The humility that is required by the inadequacy of theory (of any kind) -- and also basic leftist humanism -- compels me to give them their space and respect, and the possibility that they indeed have it right (or righter than others).
What I do find troublesome is the criticism of say Chomsky on the grounds that his analysis is superficial, inadequate, incomplete, useless, etc in comparison to an alternative. In such a case, especially in human matters (e.g: politics), I think it is not disingenuous for me to claim a non-partisan role and look for knowledge and reasoning that I can use to understand the issues and act. It is (I claim) a matter of coincidence that Chomsky chooses the language of the non-expert non-partisan: common sense. In other words, it is not that I choose common sense narratives because I support Chomsky but the other way around: I (as a non-expert non-partisan) choose Chomsky because his language is (or is reducible) to the language of the non-expert non-partisan (whose life is what the issues are about). That this is so will (hopefully) be made clear in my criticism of Chomsky below. If Marx or Zizek's language is understandable (and more so) to you, there is not much reason to set up a contest of truth claims.
There are two positions neither of which I can much subscribe to:
On the one hand there is the outright rejection of non-common-sense narratives or analysis (such as by extending the fact that they are obscure to me or to the average human), often in the form of an unfair (I hesitate to use the word "disingenuous" for Chomsky is anything but) naivete. For instance, Chomsky while talking of pomo says he is nonplussed by pomo: he is unable to reduce it to rational common-sense terms and this he implicitly holds against the theory. He offers a poor argument: that he can walk across the hall to the Physics department and have someone explain quantum mechanics to him, though it might take days, because (and this is a because that is unsubstantiated) it is ultimately reducible to everyday logic/reasoning. Perhaps the same is true of pomo, but worse: perhaps the claim is not true of everyone: no amount of time at the Physics department might make quantum mechanics sensible to me. Similarly, he quotes Heidegger with sarcasm "truth is the revealing of the beautiful" (not exact quote) finding this some sort of a fairy-tale claim in comparison to the [in his mind] more pedestrian notion of empirically verifiable or deductively sound statements. I do not have the energy to go into why Chomsky is being unfair to Heidegger here, but I hope that that he is being so is clear to most without my explication. This is Zeilberger's point about ridiculing language. Zeilberger nails it by pointing out that it is easy to ridicule someone's language if it's symbols/tokens happen to be the same as everyday language.
On the other hand there is the claim to privilege that is not just of utility and predictive power, but to language itself, including an appropriation of language ("ideology", "theory", "fish"(*), "truth", etc). There is here a reversing of the burden of proof (and effort). As I have written, it is at the least required of the special language expert to be able to raise his/her objections/criticism in the general language, even if she/he cannot reduce their explanations to the general language.
--ravi
(*) reference to my earlier thoughts on the statement: "a dolphin is not a fish".