Idealist revisions of Marxism came from pure intellectuals while orthodoxy came from activists.

Evidence

It can be observed, in general terms, that the currents which have attempted combinations of the philosophy of praxis with idealist tendencies consist for the most part of “pure” intellectuals, whereas the current which has constituted the orthodoxy consisted of intellectual personalities more markedly dedicated to practical activity and therefore more closely linked (with more or less extrinsic links) to the great popular masses (a fact which, however, has not prevented the majority of them from performing somersaults of no small historico-political consequence). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1385

Categorization

• XREF: Links forward to the Islamophobia readings: who gets to be the ‘pure intellectual’ versus who is tied to the masses is a class-position question that recurs in critiques of academic knowledge production.