I was thinking about this today while working out: Marxists foresee a period of time in which the proletarians (by which we should understand “non-intellectual”) will need to be ruled by their betters, the so-called Dictatorship of the Proletariat. After that, in some magical fashion, a workers utopia will evolve.
Yet, how will this happen? What Marx is describing, implicitly, is a self organizing system, where the “workers” get together and create something beautiful, noble and lasting. Yet, the presupposition of the self organizing system is ordered motion in each of the parts. The individuals in the collective need, each, to be operating as sentient agents, and the whole goal of dictatorship is to STRIP them of initiative and the capacity for independent thought.
Thus, the means and purportedly desired result are at loggerheads. Marx never thought it through; nor do his followers, who as intellectuals themselves tend to view all ideas as equal, since they can be thought. People who have actually accomplished something, though–say building a bridge–understand that ideas are NOT all equal, that there are many wrong ways to do things, and that failing to plan is planning to fail. Obviously, failure is the legacy of all utopians to date, and this was both predictable and preventable.