"As the left became more academic, it lost its taste for simplistic anecdotes and engaged in post modern gobbledygook (err.. "textual analysis and deconstruction" ) or straightforward neo-liberalism (esp. in Europe) ceding the ground to right wing demagogues. I think that it has a lot to do with material condition of the production of ideas - especially a growing cultural divide between the masses and the increasingly rarefied nature of academic discourse. Simplistic anecdotes did not win tenures and research grants."
I have a friend with a Ph.D. in Physics, who minored in economics as an undergraduate. He has an IQ of 170. He was arguing the other day (after reading most of the first volume of Capital) that I was a capitalist because I had some savings (capital). He also argues that anybody who has a 401K is a capitalist....
It's not just the uneducated masses.
Sigh,
Joanna