Slavoj Zizek told The Guardian ‘I am a philosopher not a prophet.’

But Zizek also considers himself to be a Marxist and Marx, in his Theses on Fuerbach, wrote:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Isn’t that also the goal of the prophet? So shouldn’t that also be the goal of a Marxist, even one who is also a philosopher?

And weren’t many of the most towering figures of philosophy also prophets who changed the world, rather than just critiquing it. I specifically wrote ‘towering’ instead of ‘great.’

I am thinking of Descartes who, more even than Netwon, set the table for a mechanistic view of the world.

Marx himself, of course.

Hegel, who built a structure to contain a scientific sounding determinism (and who set the table for Marx).

If one is truly Marxist (and I, for one, am not) and a philosopher (I am not that, either), shouldn’t thinkers like those above be what one strives for?