False Consciousness

r Qutb speaking:
[there] is a natural struggle between two systems which cannot co-exist for long.
It is Qutb; but it could have been taken from the writings of thousands of followers of Marx, if not from Marx himself, including Mao Tse-Tung.

The violent imposition of a socialist and Islamic society is justified in the same way in Marx and Qutb: if people were really free, that is to say suffering from neither false consciousness not jahilliyah (ignorance of divine guidance), they would accept the socialist or Islamic state not merely without demur, but joyously, as being for their own good freely chosen. True freedom in both Marx and Qutb is the recognition of necessity. Everything that prevents people from seeing the truth of their messages is an enemy of real, as against merely apparent, freedom.

A Marxist would perhaps argue that Dalrymple’s conflating Marx here with Lenin, but still…

Lenin, of course, still has his admirers – see here, and the discussion here and here.