How Billionaires See Themselves ❧ Current Affairs
www.currentaffairs.org

Reading the dreadful memoirs of the super-rich offers an illuminating look at their delusions.

In his latest article he explicitly and approvingly cites Marx twice (with a few more implicit mentions) and comes up with two elegant destructions of common billionaire apologia arguments: " They don't do it for the money - then it should be no problem if we tax most of it away, right?" and "They worked hard for it - well, thieves can also work hard".

Obviously he has a number of very shitty takes but it's over the top to dismiss him completely.

    • Terkrockerfeller [she/her]
      2·
      4 years ago

      Denounced Lenin and tankies in general on twitter, and claimed Marx has a personality cult and that his actual ideas are outdated iirc

      • Infamousblt [any]
        2·
        4 years ago

        I mean, that can be a good take though. Marx himself would likely say his ideas are at least partially out of date. That's sort of the point of dialectical materialism...if the material conditions change so too does the approach. And although broadly the material conditions caused by capitalism are the same there are still a ton of more nuanced differences that Marx would no doubt recognize and readjust his views on.

        I'm not familiar with this guy or his specific criticism of Marx but I think if it's something similar to the above it's probably fair

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Denounced Lenin and tankies in general on twitter

        He's a left anticommunist, which is bad -- and I say that as someone who thinks he's doing good work overall. But if we cancelled every U.S. leftist who's stuck on Cold War propaganda about socialist states (even ones who've shown the willingness to disregard Cold War propaganda on other issues), we're not getting anywhere.

        The approach for these people is critical support. Praise the good stuff they do. Call out the bad stuff without turning it into "this person is awful, fuck them and everything they've ever stood for, they get the wall." Challenge them on their bad takes in the way you'd challenge a friend on a bad take.