“Left-wing ideas are predicated on Marx’s materialist understanding. Whether or not an individual who espouses Left-wing ideas considers himself a Marxist – and few have since the fall of the Soviet Union – Left-wing ideas are predicated on Marx’s materialist understanding of life. In popular jargon, ‘materialism’ means an excessive love of material things. But philosophically, ‘materialism’ means that only matter is real; there is no reality beyond the material world.”