THAT'S THE POST.
Every human instinctly knows that a very small minority living in unlimited luxury while half the world lives in squalor is an unforgivable evil that can't be forgiven.
Theory is cool and good, and you should study it as much as you're able to, but at the end of the day, you don't need to read any theory at all to understand why this is wrong. You just need the basic human empathy we're all born with.
A significant amount of people enjoy being one the priviliged few and have no sympathy for those screwed over. They still KNOW it's morally wrong, they just enjoy it. Most people don't think like that though, and have just been conditiond since childhood into believing contrived justifications of why it has to be this way or why change is dangerous if not outright impossible. In my experience, they all know the current capitalist system is unacceptable if you press them enough, even if they'd never use those words or think about it in those terms. It's just that none of us know what to do about it.
The entire point of both modern political and economic theory is to justify something we all intuitively understand isn't okay, which is probably part of why modern society is so fucked.
understanding why it's wrong doesn't seem to be the point of reading theory to me, I think it's more trying to shed light on the second part you get to here:
True. Definitely don't want to discourage people from reading theory. It also helps people understand why the world is the way it is, which is a really good way to combat capitalist propaganda.
There's explanatory theory like Capital, and there's instructional theory like State and Rev. Both are necessary, the first to combat capitalist propaganda and the second to combat capitalism itself.
A lot of people aren't going to intrinsically view captialism as wrong if they're on its good side. They'll automatically conjure its defense into existence by sheer refusal to view themselves as bad peoole because of their status. That's where you get all the stories of self made millionaires or the risk of being a business owner, or any number of bigotries or raw hatred of the homeless.
My cousin is a small business dipshit in a small town. Complete reactionary and goes to a cultish evangelical church that teaches prosperity gospel. He's never going to view his business as exploitation no matter how it's explained unless he's humiliated onto the other side of it...and probably re-educated with theory.
Sorry about your cousing. People will latch onto the wildest shit to justify their own privileges.
you read theory to keep caring when you burn through your supplies of compassion. to know what you're fighting for, more than just treats-for-the-weak-too. more than just switching out the titles in the hierarchy and putting yourself at the top.
and also to have ideas for other ways things could be, ways winning might be possible, or undermine itself. but that's not more important than the other thing.