Like how the do you “do” historical materialism? Or dialectical materialism? How the fuck do I look at a problem and then apply this method? What are the steps? Why is it so difficult to learn left theory? I feel like I have to fight people to learn because the first thing anyone will do is throw jargon at me. Like imagine you're trying to learn physics and everyone says you start by reading Einstein as if a beginner would even be able to understand what Einstein is saying, who he is responding to, what the concepts in his work are.

At some point once you think you understand a concept you actually try your hand at it. If you're studying calculus you'll do a bunch of problem sets and that actually helps you understand what it is that you're doing, how mistakes happen, and how to get better. How do I practice this skill? Every suggestion I see basically amounts to: read lots of stuff. And I don't see how this is different than just being a lib and reading a bunch of stuff and popping off with hot takes

Edit: kind of confused that there are lots of responses but no answer.

  • Mouhamed_McYggdrasil [they/them,any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Honestly Marx's methods were well over 150 years old. Well not at the time, of course, back then they were bleeding edge brand spanking new. Well, I don't know if they were that hot off the plate, actually, Hegel had been around the block quite a bit by the time Marx got to him. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that we've made tons of advances in what would come to be called Systems Theory, which Marx and Engels are often actually recognized as being the forebearing grandfathers of. We've also greatly fleshed out social scienes past "something that might exist". So use modern techniques to try to make sense of the modern world. Or well, any time period of the world, or really any world in general. Familarize yourself with Systems Theory and especially Chaos Theory because the sum whole of social human interaction in the political and economic realms is quite complex, which lends to it characteristics similar of all complex systems like the weather or the interaction of neurons in a brain, esp a human brain.