COMPARED to the duplicitous scheming and conscious dishonesty that strongly prevails among a majority of today’s leftists, the Marxists of the past were often an altogether different bunch and more interested in alleviating the debilitating effects of capitalism on the poor and downtrodden than in seeking to control others through a form of Orwellian authoritarianism.

Take V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957), for example, the Australian archaeologist and philologist who, in 1926, wrote a quite brilliant and as-of-yet unsurpassed work on the cultural and linguistic heritage of the Aryan peoples. It seems ironic, perhaps, that this book is often recommended by people on the Far Right who know very little about Childe’s left-wing background, but apart from the odd reference to the alleged unprofessionalism of the twentieth-century “skull-measurer” or the notion that Aryan religions such as Buddhism and Zoroastranism are designed for “all men irrespective of race and nationality,” Childe’s work is beautifully honest and impartial. Indeed, he fully appreciates and accentuates the natural differences between the various tribes of humankind, even praising the grammatical superiority and “exceptional mental endowments” of the Aryans themselves in contrast to that of the Babylonians and Egyptians. At one point, he openly lauds the “sweet-sounding” poetry of the Indo-European peoples at the expense of our Semitic counterparts. I don’t subscribe to racial supremacism, but I’m sure you will agree that such remarks are extremely unusual for a self-professed Marxist.

Childe, who was a fierce critic of Stalinism, is said to have possessed “an individual interpretation” of socialist values and had little time for those whom, he believed, had knowingly twisted the words of Hegel, Marx and Engels to suit themselves. He wrote, of course, at a time when the Frankfurt School had yet to complete its long-term objective of filtering the Marxist worldview through its own ideological lens and long before Herbert Marcuse and the New Left had taken things in an even more insidious direction. Childe, therefore, despite his internationalist proclivities, was a perfectly honest and upstanding individual and it is clear to see the enormous gulf between the Marxists of a century ago and the politically-correct, deeply hypocritical and hate-mongering rabble of today. For that, at least, he deserves our respect.