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How is it not hypocritical to argue for equality and wealth redistribution and at the same time hoard wealth for yourself ?

aaron-santos 6y ago
You're correct for pointing that out. What is hidden in the article and also my comment is that this is an oblique tu quoque.
staplers 6y ago
One can act hypocritically toward a belief and yet still maintain the belief. In fact it's baked into many religions.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
Engels viewed communism as a historic inevitability that would see the proletariat rise up and seize the means of production. Redistributing his family's wealth would not help accomplish that.
modo_mario 6y ago
I feel like my govs laws over the past decade (one major party of which i know for sure is in bed with a major real estate development company) has allowed housing prices to grow way too quickly in a country where they're already too high and has disproportionately favoured landlords and scummy real estate agencies. I think this is terrible for society and the younger generations. If I was offered the option of becoming a landlord or the like and making good bank that way of this whole shitfest I'd gladly and quickly accept and on the other side donate some of the money to campaigning for a party against this mess. Nobody would to come around and call me a hypocrite for that and expect me to think highly of them.
claudiawerner 6y ago
The Marxist position is not about 'equality' or wealth distribution, and there are at lease two pieces of work by Marx criticizing those concepts explicitly. Marxist thought is a critique of the production process of capital, and does not concern the wealth of individuals at all - Marx himself went to pains to distance himself from that interpretation of his work. So I'm not sure where the presumption that a socialist must give away his wealth or live modestly comes from. Marx and Engels saw the first step of revolutionary activity being to understand and investigate, bit they were also part of various practical organisations such as the IWA, and the Manifesto was itself an on-the-nose propaganda document. Why doesn't the Queen give away her throne for the good of her country? Because the boost to the economy from the tourism generated around it helps even more. As it turns out, we can imagine that the world would have been very different and the pair of theorists much less consequential had they spent their energies on philanthropy rather than burning the midnight oil at the British Library.
bergstromm466 6y ago
> How is it not hypocritical to argue for equality and wealth redistribution and at the same time hoard wealth for yourself ? Systems change over personal change. Engels was born into a rich capitalist family. Him giving it all away does nothing to change the underlying systems.

aaron-santos 6y ago

You're correct for pointing that out. What is hidden in the article and also my comment is that this is an oblique tu quoque.

staplers 6y ago

One can act hypocritically toward a belief and yet still maintain the belief. In fact it's baked into many religions.

boomboomsubban 6y ago

Engels viewed communism as a historic inevitability that would see the proletariat rise up and seize the means of production. Redistributing his family's wealth would not help accomplish that.

modo_mario 6y ago

I feel like my govs laws over the past decade (one major party of which i know for sure is in bed with a major real estate development company) has allowed housing prices to grow way too quickly in a country where they're already too high and has disproportionately favoured landlords and scummy real estate agencies. I think this is terrible for society and the younger generations. If I was offered the option of becoming a landlord or the like and making good bank that way of this whole shitfest I'd gladly and quickly accept and on the other side donate some of the money to campaigning for a party against this mess. Nobody would to come around and call me a hypocrite for that and expect me to think highly of them.

claudiawerner 6y ago

The Marxist position is not about 'equality' or wealth distribution, and there are at lease two pieces of work by Marx criticizing those concepts explicitly. Marxist thought is a critique of the production process of capital, and does not concern the wealth of individuals at all - Marx himself went to pains to distance himself from that interpretation of his work. So I'm not sure where the presumption that a socialist must give away his wealth or live modestly comes from. Marx and Engels saw the first step of revolutionary activity being to understand and investigate, bit they were also part of various practical organisations such as the IWA, and the Manifesto was itself an on-the-nose propaganda document. Why doesn't the Queen give away her throne for the good of her country? Because the boost to the economy from the tourism generated around it helps even more. As it turns out, we can imagine that the world would have been very different and the pair of theorists much less consequential had they spent their energies on philanthropy rather than burning the midnight oil at the British Library.

bergstromm466 6y ago

> How is it not hypocritical to argue for equality and wealth redistribution and at the same time hoard wealth for yourself ? Systems change over personal change. Engels was born into a rich capitalist family. Him giving it all away does nothing to change the underlying systems.