Seriously tho, 99% of the criticisms that completely deny Marxism I have ever heard came from people whose arguments could simply have been answered by "maybe actually read Marx?"
Seriously tho, 99% of the criticisms that completely deny Marxism I have ever heard came from people whose arguments could simply have been answered by "maybe actually read Marx?"
We do need to be a little careful with the “immortal science” thing. Of course historical materialism is a brilliant prism through which to view history and society, and I’d call it a science, but obviously it’s a “soft science”.
Sometimes I think we give off the impression that we believe dogmatically in Marx/Engels/Lenin’s individual utterances, which obviously shouldn’t be the case. They gave us the tools with which to analyse and devise the correct action for ourselves.
Yeah re-reading my post, I noticed it was poorly worded. I meant criticisms of Marxism from people who somehow believe capitalism works well the way it is. Obviously Marx is still not to be considered the bible. That being said, my point stands. If human civilization survives to live a hundred more year, nobody will remember Ben Shapiro or TPUSA, or Ayn Rand. Pretty sure Marx and Engels tho, will be remembered pretty well.
Yeh, 100%, I wasn’t accusing you of saying that. Just saying in general we need to be careful with that, I think it turns some people off Marxism because they think we’re a bunch of religious zealots obsessed with a 150 year old book.
To your original point, my favourite case of this was peterson showing up to debate Zizek about Marxism having basically skimmed the manifesto as preparation. What a clown.
I avoided citing this as an example at first because it seemed a bit unfair; like, Peterson is an idiot but I wanted to separate the fact that he hadn't done his homework (which was completely on him for being a dumbass) from the fact that completely dismissing Marx was impossible. But again if Peterson had actually read Marx maybe there wouldn't have been a debate at all lol