"As a result of his rootedness in the Western tradition, the Marxist intellectual obstinately believes in the inner man, whose change he expects and predicts, although this is in contradiction to his Marxist faith. Again, we may quote Rousseau, whom the intellectuals follow perhaps as often as they follow Marx: "For a society in its initial stages to be able to adopt the right political precepts and to follow the fundamental rules of the common good, the effect ought to become the cause: instead of the communal spirit being the achievement of the new institutions, it would be more desirable that it might inform them; [in other words, it would be better] if men were what they ought to be before the laws are instituted, rather than become what they ought to be through these laws.""
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Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) quoting Contract social, p.99
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract
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The Social Contract
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