Marxist theory… can
become a false consciousness if, instead of being used for the methodical
investigation of reality through theory and practice, it is misused as a
defence against that very reality… Those who wish to deprive Marxism of its
critical, subversive power and turn it into an affirmative doctrine, generally
dig in behind a series of stereotyped statements which, in their abstraction,
are as irrefutable as devoid of result.
-E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays (1978)
