“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.
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.
I doubt they’ve read a single word of Marx. They reed the Debooooonking articles but don’t care to read the original source material.
Imagine a prosecutor showing up to court with zero evidence other than “he just looks guilty”. That’s the liberal standard.
lol I just looked back at the same thread and found this amazing take by another Marx Understander
Had he lived to 200, he'd have become the methuselan overlord of Earth based solely on how messianic that seems
I for one, welcome our new unfathomably ancient overlord. May he live centuries past us all
Liberals don’t even know that some Marxist economists (David Harvey) can be annoying in their dialectical praise of capitalism as an engine of historical progress.
They would simply assume he was a capitalist like how they all say China is capitalist
Reminds me of a debate I had.
Poster said "Marxists lack nuance".
I asked which one of these works lacked nuance in his opinion: The German Ideology? The Grundrisse? Anti-Dühring? Or maybe slightly more recent stuff like Gramsci's Prison Notebooks?
The reply: "Marxists don't understand human nature: it's about the stronger monkey having things."
The irony didn't even hit him. He was dead seriously try to sell me this "human natooor is strong dogs fuck" as a social theory.
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That's when you take out your pocket knife and tell him that, because you came to this discussion prepared, you own him and everything he used to own because he's a weaker monkey. And then you demand he takes you to your new house.
It’s always like this. They refuse to engage with the works themselves, because all they can muster is vague allusions to “human nature” and “debunked”
And I didn't even really tried to debate them, I just wanted them to admit they haven't read anything. Because why are they lying when we both know they have not?!
I love how their assumption "human nature is homo homini lupus" lies with the underlying assumption of "so we have to let people be bad and not do anything to reign in these tendencies for a better life."
It even contradicts liberal theory, such as the social contract. "Oh humans are bad, so to try and create a state where it rules over society and keeps peace won't succeed. It's against human nature and they'll rebel"
I'll just mention it is not even about reading Marx's actual works; it is not really necessary to read all the volumes of Capital. It is about the method of inquiry and intellectual honesty.
If you want to know Marx, then reading any modern Marxist economic text is sufficient (for example, Michael Roberts' Marx 200); other texts like the Communist Manifesto are not even that long, and I'm sure Lenin's Imperialism has already been distilled down by other Marxists somewhere. There are also YT etc...
The point, though, is intellectual honesty, and as you said, you don't learn a theory by first going to read what the critics have to say. Sure, that may be, and arguably even should be, part of the inquiry, but they make no effort to actually understand the Marxist point of view; they don't seek Marxist sources. They take the conclusion as granted to them on a silver platter.
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Marx was a capitalist, he even wrote 3 books about capitalism
first comment is 'child labor bad' and the very first response to that is some brainworms about how kids can earn kill that board