What made the left obnoxious, for Marx, was its faith in the notion that ideas and subjective beliefs and moral abstractions, rather than material economic realities, move history. The middle-class leftists of the 19th century, for example, put a lot of hope in reforming the manners and mores of working people, instead of seeking to address material inequalities between classes. In doing so, they merely preserved the existing order.

Sound familiar? Nearly two centuries later, the left is still in the business of spreading moral uplift (moral by its own lights, that is) in ways that paradoxically worsen the conditions of working people, while strengthening the position of large shareholders and the professionals who service them: America is divided, because your thoughts are racist! We don’t have true equality, because you are subconsciously transphobic! There is no justice, because you cling to the backward notion that police are good, actually! The earth is literally burning up, because working-class people insist on their barbeques.

You needn’t be a Marxist to see Marx’s point: that for all the “revolutionary” sound and fury of the left, most leftism in practice immiserates working people. Yes, even Marx hated the left.