Reply to a Marxist Critic

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Continued from here.

Thank you for your reply. 

It is a good thing that this excellent blog attracts readers of varying perspectives. 

You will not be surprised when I tell you that in evaluating your interesting points I arrive at different conclusions than you do. 

Still, your ideas are stimulating to me, encouraging me to revoke intriguing themes such as Marx's critique of religion, the issue of Utopianism, Critical Realism, capitalism and nature, the Frankfurt School and the early, long since elapsed Marxist phase in the intellectual development of Jürgen Habermas.

Admittedly, I find it hard to think of Marx as "one of the kindest ... critics of religion". 

Criticism of a dogmatic system of belief (such as religion or Utopianism) does not immunise the critic from dogmatism (of the religious, Utopian or any other kind). 

The work and biography of Marx is full of rage, and I do not think it incongruous to associate the history of communism with extensive episodes of systemic frenzy. 

Unfortunately, I am not acquainted with Critical Realism. 

Capitalism I tend to associate with the overcoming of the Malthusian trap — the most important victory of man over his worst enemy: nature.

Looking at the full course of Habermas' oeuvre, I see him more of a thinker rejecting Marxism rather than supporting it, and his non-Marxist theories (such as offered in his magnum opus "Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns") strike me as inappropriately rationalistic, a regression back toward obsolete philosophical projects searching for a Cartesian fundamentum inconcussum, rather than exploring the openness of and the role of revision in the process of acquiring knowledge.