Zombies of Marx: The Return of Practical Reason

Where do the obsessions of our time come from? What is this strange version of "social justice" imported from the United States? How did Marxism survive the collapse of the Soviet Union? And why do those who invoke "common sense" so often seem to possess neither common sense nor good judgment?

From Ulysses to Hiroo Onoda, this book explores the intellectual roots of modern culture and some of its most irrational developments. In Zombies of Marx, Davide Smith Borrelli traces the evolution of Marxist thought, exposing the theoretical drift that transformed many of its heirs into "zombies": intellectuals who abandoned the pursuit of emancipation through knowledge in favor of moralistic zeal and ideological conformity.

Inspired by Specters of Marx by Jacques Derrida, Borrelli reconstructs the genealogy of contemporary intellectual activism—from the collapse of Soviet communism to the rise of moralized political discourse in the West. He shows how academic preoccupations with power, identity, and authority have increasingly polarized public debate while eroding the values of reason, individual freedom, and open inquiry.

Part intellectual history, part cultural criticism, and part philosophical essay, Zombies of Marx is both a sharp critique and a call to recover the original purpose of knowledge: not to manipulate minds, but to illuminate them.

This book is for readers who are willing to question dogma, challenge fashionable certainties, and confront the intellectual conflicts shaping the modern world.