'Marx's understanding of the requirements for the development of enlightenment is mistaken. Among other things, superstition and prejudice are much more securely anchored than he imagined and so, therefore, are despotic political forms such as those in which large numbers of individuals remain open to demagogic appeals.'
which is to make two errors,
the first to understate Marx's argument that capitalism creates its own superstitions ('commodity _fetishism_' he wrote, adapting Charles de Brosses concept of fetish idol among primitive peoples);
the second error is to overstate the grip of superstition and prejudice, which are all paper thin, and tossed aside in a moment (where, today, is the appeal of the nation state in Europe, which pitched two successive generations into world war?).
It is the ideological shortcomings of capitalism's opponents that have secured its survival, not its intrinsic own strength.