the frog says to the scorpion, "but if you have no Evidence, then we will surely drown"
"LOL" says the Scorpion. "LMAO"
supporting evidence based policy virgin, vs the SOCIALIST METHOD CHAD
theres a big difference between "read every marxist work" and "read enough to understand why your views are right." i cant even begin to imagine how you'd determine who has read every marxist work. do i need to read everything marx ever wrote? Even this letter he wrote to his father?
Do I gotta read Lenin? Trotsky? Stalin? Mao? Kim Il-sung?
Bukharin? Luxemburg? Kautsky? Padmore?
Like, that's a lot of reading shit written by people who have been dead for over 100 years to be considered a real leftist. I'm not saying these works aren't still valuable and that you shouldn't still read them, but I think the bar for "having some idea what you're talking about" is a little bit lower than having read every Marxist work.
The issue is that it's a fundamental contradiction, not that socialists also don't read. Reading Marx (or anything else) is not necessarily a requirement for being a socialist, but if your position is that you believe in evidence-based policy, the bare minimum requirement is that you have evidence.
That's what i meant, most people support an ideology because their moral system feels like it's the correct one, but a lot of people will go on about theory or what Marx said and also not read anything. i.e https://hexbear.net/post/97958/comment/1076841
You can get an intuitive understanding of Communism at the very least without literally reading all 3 volumes of Capital. It's a coherent school of thought and way of analyzing reality. Neoliberal ideology is completely incoherent and contradictory which leads its supporters to completely defer to the ghouls.
A marxist can explain why the U.S has been bombing the middle east but a neoliberal will ask for 'studies' proving why it's a bad thing at all from the very same institutions that will disintegrate if imperialist conquest ends. And then they will not read them anyway because those studies need to be written in biblical latin for the liberal masses to keep faith.
Marxist theory is purposely written in common language; neoliberalism is not meant to be understood. On that alone I can tell you that the ratio of Marxists that understand what they believe in vastly outsizes the proportion of neoliberals that understand what they're doing.
I'm a simple man, I see empire, I say "no"
I see police, I say "BASTARD MAN!"
I see hungry, I say "Feed"
i think this place foster an environment where people are pushed to read and organize, while places like /r/neoliberal don't. like, if i had to guess i'd say the longer someone has been a part of the Chapo Extended Universe™ the more likely they are to have read theory or to have read more theory.
what is there to organize for as a self-proclaimed neoliberal?
There is no difference between good and bad things. You idiot. You imbecile.
You are criticizing the wrong thing though, bad thing in "They believe in bad things and they have no idea about evidence they claim to support" is not the second part of that sentence, it's the first part. I honestly couldn't give a shit if they actually read the neoliberal academics or just parrot things they see from memes to feel smart.
Sure, but imagine believing something on faith but the something is as neurotic as "yes, I trust without evidence that rich people apologia for rich people is how to create the best society." Like at least religions give you the hope for instances of the supernatural, neoliberalism just has pointing out to our shitty reality and being proud about it.
*look, if i want to believe the rich are lizard people, it doesn't hurt anyone, but the things neoliberals believe kill millions every year. *
if you think there are as many marxists as there are neolibs like this then I'm sorry but you're telling on yourself
I think showing interest in a thing is a gateway to learning about a thing. And while there are plenty of Leftists who haven't personally trawled through Das Kapital or The Conquest of Bread, the fact that they're engaged with the ideas behind the books and receptive to the message indicates that they're going to continue to educate themselves more in the future.
Meanwhile, if you're picking up a Thomas Friedman NYT Best Seller or parsing through some AEI hack's essay on how child slavery in Cambodia is their road into the 21st century while nodding sagely in agreement, there's a good chance you'll be telling all your friends about the wisdom of Fredrick Hayek and Arthur Laffer in the near future.
