Marvin: "by academics not wanting to be mistaken for Marxists"
>
> [WS:] I am not sure about it. If there is any truth in it, is likely
> because marxism often sounds very much like a cult. The words of the
> Prophet are the ultimate test of The Truth, everything else is false
> prophecy or heresy. I do not know that many academics who are
> comfortable with cults.
>
True in some cases, but there are at least as many members of the "Marxism is just a cult" cult.
Here are some of the better known self-described Marxists - I'm sure I've left out many - who viewed Marx, not as a Prophet, but as the progenitor of a creative method, whatever weight you might want to attach to their respective, often conflicting, theoretical contributions:
Engels. Lenin. Trotsky. Luxembourg. Hilferding. Mehring. Labriola. Bernstein. Kautsky. Plekhanov. Korsh. Gramsci. Lukacs. Bukharin, Preobrazhensky. Grossman. Adorno. Benjamin. Marcuse. Deutscher. CLR James.
Draper. Mandel. Cliff. Althusser. Hobsbawm. Hill. Lefebvre. Sartre. Althusser. E.P. Thompson. Brenner. G.A. Cohen. Eagleton. Jameson. Raymond Williams. Mariategui. Poulantzas.