It’s very funny to me that liberals, the most politically and historically illiterate group of people of all time, are so self-assured that they speak of communism with the confidence of a PhD
It’s very funny to me that liberals, the most politically and historically illiterate group of people of all time, are so self-assured that they speak of communism with the confidence of a PhD
“Communism bad”
“Why?”
200 year old tropes so ancient they were debunked by Marx himself
Of course, you go through the motions of explaining the most basic political concepts that could be grasped by skimming the cliff notes for literally any Marxist works
“Friedrich Engels? Is he like the president of Germany or something?”
It’s like a kindergartener trying to teach you calculus.
In every American community, you have varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.
- Phil Ochs, Love Me I'm a Liberal, 1968
200 year old tropes so ancient they were debunked by Marx himself
In the very first lecture of my Macro 101 course in undergrad, my libertarian econ professor talked about how if the LTV was correct then an inedible mud pie would have as much value as a real pie. I was delighted when I first read Capital and I saw that Marx debunked this very myth like on page 4. Marx is great at anticipating objections and then thoroughly responding, it’s just the libs don’t bother to read him.
realizing this has actually helped my mental health so much. liberals are fundamentally unserious about politics, so I simply don't have to care what they think, in the same way I don't care about childrens opinion on topics they dont understand. it's very liberating, I've found
Death to America
Even PhDs aren't great. I've had history professors tell me directly that communism in practice is the same as monarchy. One time a sociology prof I had was having a casual chat with me about why socialists can't achieve their aims unless they integrate within American Protestantism. Then he called Marxism a religion.
For the life of me I just want some educated liberals who know their class position and I want them to be openly evil about it. That would be so much easier. I thought that's what self-identified neoliberals would be, but even they're very confused.
The most common experience I've seen new leftists talk about is how overwhelmingly large the left is and how much there is to learn. The average switched off liberal has missed out on decades of political education.
I was just reading this thread on r/neoliberal yesterday (ik that sub is basically cheating) that is exactly what you speak of here. An echo chamber of “Marx was wrong about almost everything” with almost no specifics or demonstration of understanding of the actual theory. In the few cases where they happen to mention a real Marxian term like alienation, it’s purely a vibes thing for these libs. They’ll take the alienation stuff, thank you, because Marx was right about workers being depressed and stuff. No no, don’t worry about the content and motivation of Marx’s theory of alienation or the progression of thoughts which led him to it; it is sufficient to take the results based on your gut intuition.
The more Marx (or good Marxist theory more generally) that you read, the more you realise how detached from reality liberal discourse about anything even remotely connected to Marxist thought is. This is blindingly obvious in mainstream economics departments, where the average professor or TA normally manages to combine both shocking ignorance of any economic theory beyond their barrenly narrow purview, and depressing naivety when it comes to the apparent self-evidence of their arguments.
That being said, economics is only the most obvious example. Set foot inside the average history, sociology or anthropology department and the epistemic consequences of a lack of Marxist approaches becomes immediately obvious when you see the low quality of alot of the work being produced and ask why that's the case.
History probably has the best showing, although it's nothing like it was in the 1960's or 70's, and I suspect that that's because history is an area where the necessity of a materialist analysis makes itself the most immediately obvious, and because the results in this area achieved by Marxist are obviously superior and so more easily form the basis for further productive historical analysis. For example the debates around the origins of capitalism out of late feudalism cannot avoid the Brenner Debate. You see the influence of materialist thought here even in thinkers who are not explicitly Marxist. Historians who are otherwise not rigorously materialist and politically liberal will still sometimes readily recognise the validity, or make use of, class-analysis.
Sociology is interesting because it's mainstream's basic methods seem deeply idealistic to me despite the fact that Marx is also one of the key figures in the development of modern sociology, and given that Marx's political economy, as opposed to modern neoclassical economics, recognises that you cannot really engage in productive economic analysis beyond a very superficial level if you do not recognise that it's essential to talk about the economic sociology, the economic institutions and social structures that serve differnent socio-economic functions and fit together in certain contexts to distribute the socio-economics functions amongst themselves, including the fundamentally important point of noting how different societies and different modes of production will see different social structures serve as the social relations of production. Otherwise you end up with an idealist theory of economic production.
Honestly though you also see this among self-described leftists or even 'Marxists' who do not understand the meaning of the term 'value' in Marx, i.e. that it is a technical economic concept, not a moral one (though through its social and political implications we are obviously naturally going to attach normative value to how it functions or affects us).
Another think that both liberals and soc dems do when discussing Marxism is taking quotes completely out of context and radically misunderstanding or misinterpreting what it being claimed or discussed. Which just makes all the more obvious the need for reeducation in the fundamentals of Marxism.
It's not funny. It should be terrifying. Because confidence works. Because that's how millions of people have been convinced in the holiness of capitalism and will fight you, literally fight you with guns and bombs, to prevent even a ghost of communism from echoing meekly anywhere in their bubble.
And they back it all up with decades upon decades of propaganda, media, shite pushed endlessly since the creation of USSR at least. Which feeds the confidence. "Oh yeah, if gommunism so good why did this random bloke who ran away from Russia in 1992 as his country burned and boiled around him says he lives okay in USA?! Checkmate, tankie!".
It's not funny, it's not fun. It's horrifying and gutwrenching
how did this fascism end up in my anticommunism??!?!?!?!?!?
It goes back to the presentation of politics and political history as fundamentally a logic puzzle whereby you deduce the most freedom-y system in the abstract and everything descends from that. You see this all the time with the Founding Fathers where the revolution is taught as being purely about their ideals of what a just state should be and any historical context, discussions of their material interests, is brushed to the side or treated as a footnote. So it’s not just there’s an ignorance of historical context, it’s that they outright dismiss it as being important.
This is why we get “Communism 200 billion dead vuvuzela no iPhone” when it comes to nominally socialist states but when it comes to US atrocities it’s always “that’s not what we truly are, those are hiccups on the path to a more perfect union.” If they think the logic puzzle fits, then deaths don’t matter because we need to trust the process.
The part that infuriates me the most when libs talk about history is how little research they do. "Oh I watched a documentary" dude I have studied history at the "college level" or whatever you call it for 2 decades. I'm still learning new things. Go back to putting an Einstein book on your shelf instead of reading it. I'm a dumbass sometimes but I'm still putting in the work and I ain't proud of a lot of things I've done but I am proud of that.
Communism isn't a thing we can achieve. It's a goal. We strive to make it real. But it's elusive. You just try to make life better for others. It's all we got. You'd think with the west's fascination with establishing "christendom" they'd fucking understand that you don't judge an ideal because it failed to be real. You keep working for it. If it makes lives better that is a success. Even if it is limited it still happened!
Contrast that with fascism where the whole goal is to continually drag the human race through hell. Communism "failed" because it wasn't a utopia - but libs are sure willing to give fascism another turn at the wheel.
usians are the most propangandized people on earth
Even monarchists are more historically literate that liberals because of all the family lines they have to memorize
I wish I could be so confidently wrong. Sounds nice. Job interviews would be easier
i mean, same, but the difference is i think it's a good thing.
for those spellbound by the bourgeoisie (libs and conservatives) communism is anything they don't like!
It's not even just being ignorant but confident, I saw a post on
the other day saying "communism has never given any rights to women, why are there women communists"Typical lib response was to ignore that it just literally isn't true and instead say that they showed token support for "propaganda". Some were even saying that the rights women had gained, such as the ability to own land, vote, and divorce, were also only done for propaganda purposes. They actively ignore the evidence presented in front of them in favour of "ooOoOOOOoOOoO COMMUNISM SPOOKY EVIL"
who claims to have studied communism for over 20 years and by study he meant be really mad at the Manifesto.