a lot of people that call themselves leftists just adopt “capitalism bad and culturally underdeveloped people good” as their core principle and go from there instead of reading the books
Honestly, (aside from the racist framing) if you follow these rules you'll probably be on the correct side of history 99% of the time
"culturally underdeveloped" has got to be the most liberal way of saying something racist I've ever heard. They might as well just come out and say savages or barbarians. How does this framework even operate? The USA is supposedly culturally developed? The only country that has dropped atom bombs on civilians and has the largest prison population? Ok.
Their predecessors were perfectly happy to criminalize homosexuality and chemically castrate Alan Turing, all while saying "well at least we don't practice ritual cannibalism like those foreign savages."
Meanwhile THEIR predecessors were ritually grinding up and snorting mummies at parties waited on by veritable slaves. It's bullshit excuses and racism all the way down. It always just boils down to "well at least we don't do (thing we were doing quite recently until better people forcibly stopped us)".
its like that viral video about north korea, where the lady explains that if you just assume the US state department is lying you end up on the right side of history most times