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I've definitely met annoying Marxists who say things that you just don't know how to respond to because they're disconnected from reality. But I've also met Mar

I've definitely met annoying Marxists who say things that you just don't know how to respond to because they're disconnected from reality. But I've also met Marxists who weren't weird tankies, who regarded eg the Societ Union as a failure which demanded their ideas be revised. I've heard the complaint that Marxist academics are corrupting the youth many times but I just don't see any evidence for it. No one I met in school was a Marxist. And not to Godwin the conversation but it's uncomfortably close to the literal Nazi conspiracy theory/propaganda of Cultural Marxism, close enough that I suspect this is the original source of the idea (which is, to be clear, a comment on the heritage of the idea, and not a comment about you or anyone else who holds the idea), so I just can't really give much credence to it. And it feels like we're discussing politics rather than critical thinking here. I think it's valuable to have your ideas challenged and to respond to some kind of feedback loop. Reality provides pretty good feedback loops, we're in agreement there. But there are plenty of times when you can talk your way into a bad engineering decision. Not to touch a nerve, but Boeing talked the FAA into approving various bad decisions about pilot training and tolerating a single point of failure around introducing MCAS to the 737 MAX. You might say this is an exception that proves the rules because they did result in an accident, but then why shouldn't we extend that same grace to the Marxists who aren't weird tankies? I think you're discounting other forms of feedback. In the social sciences you often have limited empirical feedback because you can only analyze natural experiments, and because it's very difficult to infer a cause from statistics alone. But I think you overstate the extent to which rhetoric dominates and reason is subordinate. Sophistry doesn't have an infinite hold across space and across time. Maybe you are able to talk someone into believing a bad theory; that doesn't mean you can convince everyone or that they'll stay fooled forever. You clearly have ideas about topics in the social sciences, at a minimum that Marxism is a failure. And I believe I've seen you comment about monetary theory. So you think that these things are epistemologically tractable, right? That it's possible to know these things? So why shouldn't it be possible to organize a field of inquiry into these topics? And if it's so vague and vulnerable to sophistry, how can you be sure you haven't been taken in yourself?

WalterBright 3y ago
> demanded their ideas be revised. There have been many variations on Soviet Marxism. They all failed, too. > I've heard the complaint that Marxist academics are corrupting the youth many times but I just don't see any evidence for it. Ask any of them how the free market works. They have no idea. The latest generation of youth have leaned quite a bit left. > And it feels like we're discussing politics rather than critical thinking here. Sort of. My thesis is that if someone actually applied critical thinking, they'd reject Marxism. I cannot fathom how someone can claim to be educated in critical thinking yet embrace Marxism, a system that fails every time it has been tried History is full of examples. Did you know that the US has had over 20,000 communes tried? With a 100% failure rate. > why shouldn't we extend that same grace to the Marxists who aren't weird tankies? Because they've had the grace. It still doesn't work. > how can you be sure you haven't been taken in yourself? Tens of thousands of attempts to implement Marxism, with a 100% failure rate. > No one I met in school was a Marxist. Most Marxists deny they are Marxist, but when you listen to their philosophy, it's Marxism. BTW, there is one sphere where Marxism works. Hollywood. Hollywood loves to crank out shows where Marxism works. One of them is Star Trek. Before you all jump on me, I'm a Trekkie myself! But come on. The Enterprise is the perfect Marxist society, presided over by the incorruptible benevolent dictator. His loyal comrades are all selfless, also incorruptible, and utterly lack any ambition whatsoever other than serving the ship. Everyone selflessly shares equally. There's no money, and no crime. The bad guys, the Ferengi, are (naturally) capitalists, with their ugly faces and pointed teeth. They are always wrong about everything.
- maxbond 3y ago
  > Tens of thousands of attempts to implement Marxism, with a 100% failure rate. Ten thousand attempts but you didn't seem to feel that the specifics of a single one would illustrate your point? It doesn't seem to me like you're making an evidentiary claim, it seems like an ideological one. And that's not an invalid thing to do but I do think we're increasingly debating politics and ideology and not discussing critical thinking. The closest you come to a specific example is here: > Did you know that the US has had over 20,000 communes tried? With a 100% failure rate. But come on, you must know that there are communes which are successful (eg Israel is well known for it's kibutzes, which are their mode of commune) and that Marxists don't have a monopoly on the concept of a commune. Eg, libertarian seasteading (which also has a rough track record) is a similar concept, but libertarians are seldom Marxists. Intentional communities usually fail, for more or less the same reason startups usually fail; it's a difficult, risky endeavor. > The latest generation of youth have leaned quite a bit left. > My thesis is that if someone actually applied critical thinking, they'd reject Marxism. I cannot fathom how someone can claim to be educated in critical thinking yet embrace Marxism[.] > Most Marxists deny they are Marxist, but when you listen to their philosophy, it's Marxism. To be completely honest, it seems to me like "Marxist" to you means, "someone who is young, politically left of center, and who's ideas I disagree with." Frankly I don't think you have a good grasp on what Marxism is? You're mostly using generalities and when you do get specific, it's usually weird stuff like "the crew of the Enterprise are loyal and selfless" that's entirely tangential. (The notable exception being where you mentioned Marx's prediction that capitalism would implode.) The Hollywood stuff is really reaching. Star Trek is utopian, but utopianism isn't Marxism, and the Ferengi aren't the villains (except in a handful of TNG episodes and one Voyager episode - and I haven't watched the newer stuff like Picard, so perhaps I'm missing some here and there). They're mostly in Deep Space Nine (where they're in nearly every episode), where they are protagonists. The workers do not own the means of production in Star Trek, there is no class struggle, there's nothing about historical materialism, there's nothing I can think of (also a lifelong Trekkie) remotely Marxist about it. If you lump Communism together with Marxism (they're not identical concepts but they're close enough, sure), and take the definition of Communism as "a stateless, classless, moneyless society where workers own the means of production," then there are some surface level similarities. The Federation is moneyless, and while they aren't classless (they're a meritocracy, so class still exists), they are egalitarian. That's pretty thin as far as it being Marxist or Communist. It's techno-utopianism, something I'd associate more with Libertarianism (in that I mostly hear it from people of that persuasion, eg Elon Musk [an avowed anti-Marxist], though I wouldn't call Star Trek Libertarian either). To respond more specifically: > The Enterprise is the perfect Marxist society, presided over by the incorruptible benevolent dictator. His loyal comrades are all selfless, also incorruptible, and utterly lack any ambition whatsoever other than serving the ship. Everyone selflessly shares equally. There's no money, and no crime. None of these things are related to Marxism (except money as discussed earlier), and there's tons of episodes about flaws in their society or crimes that happen. You're objecting to utopianism. > The bad guys, the Ferengi, are (naturally) capitalists, with their ugly faces and pointed teeth. They are always wrong about everything. They're regularly the heroes of the story in DS9, where their negotiating skill or enlightened self interest saves the day. (An arbitrary example from the top of my mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s - in which the Ferengi Quark convinces someone to pursue diplomacy over violence because the "price of peace" is at all at time low)

WalterBright 3y ago

> demanded their ideas be revised. There have been many variations on Soviet Marxism. They all failed, too. > I've heard the complaint that Marxist academics are corrupting the youth many times but I just don't see any evidence for it. Ask any of them how the free market works. They have no idea. The latest generation of youth have leaned quite a bit left. > And it feels like we're discussing politics rather than critical thinking here. Sort of. My thesis is that if someone actually applied critical thinking, they'd reject Marxism. I cannot fathom how someone can claim to be educated in critical thinking yet embrace Marxism, a system that fails every time it has been tried History is full of examples. Did you know that the US has had over 20,000 communes tried? With a 100% failure rate. > why shouldn't we extend that same grace to the Marxists who aren't weird tankies? Because they've had the grace. It still doesn't work. > how can you be sure you haven't been taken in yourself? Tens of thousands of attempts to implement Marxism, with a 100% failure rate. > No one I met in school was a Marxist. Most Marxists deny they are Marxist, but when you listen to their philosophy, it's Marxism. BTW, there is one sphere where Marxism works. Hollywood. Hollywood loves to crank out shows where Marxism works. One of them is Star Trek. Before you all jump on me, I'm a Trekkie myself! But come on. The Enterprise is the perfect Marxist society, presided over by the incorruptible benevolent dictator. His loyal comrades are all selfless, also incorruptible, and utterly lack any ambition whatsoever other than serving the ship. Everyone selflessly shares equally. There's no money, and no crime. The bad guys, the Ferengi, are (naturally) capitalists, with their ugly faces and pointed teeth. They are always wrong about everything.

maxbond 3y ago
> Tens of thousands of attempts to implement Marxism, with a 100% failure rate. Ten thousand attempts but you didn't seem to feel that the specifics of a single one would illustrate your point? It doesn't seem to me like you're making an evidentiary claim, it seems like an ideological one. And that's not an invalid thing to do but I do think we're increasingly debating politics and ideology and not discussing critical thinking. The closest you come to a specific example is here: > Did you know that the US has had over 20,000 communes tried? With a 100% failure rate. But come on, you must know that there are communes which are successful (eg Israel is well known for it's kibutzes, which are their mode of commune) and that Marxists don't have a monopoly on the concept of a commune. Eg, libertarian seasteading (which also has a rough track record) is a similar concept, but libertarians are seldom Marxists. Intentional communities usually fail, for more or less the same reason startups usually fail; it's a difficult, risky endeavor. > The latest generation of youth have leaned quite a bit left. > My thesis is that if someone actually applied critical thinking, they'd reject Marxism. I cannot fathom how someone can claim to be educated in critical thinking yet embrace Marxism[.] > Most Marxists deny they are Marxist, but when you listen to their philosophy, it's Marxism. To be completely honest, it seems to me like "Marxist" to you means, "someone who is young, politically left of center, and who's ideas I disagree with." Frankly I don't think you have a good grasp on what Marxism is? You're mostly using generalities and when you do get specific, it's usually weird stuff like "the crew of the Enterprise are loyal and selfless" that's entirely tangential. (The notable exception being where you mentioned Marx's prediction that capitalism would implode.) The Hollywood stuff is really reaching. Star Trek is utopian, but utopianism isn't Marxism, and the Ferengi aren't the villains (except in a handful of TNG episodes and one Voyager episode - and I haven't watched the newer stuff like Picard, so perhaps I'm missing some here and there). They're mostly in Deep Space Nine (where they're in nearly every episode), where they are protagonists. The workers do not own the means of production in Star Trek, there is no class struggle, there's nothing about historical materialism, there's nothing I can think of (also a lifelong Trekkie) remotely Marxist about it. If you lump Communism together with Marxism (they're not identical concepts but they're close enough, sure), and take the definition of Communism as "a stateless, classless, moneyless society where workers own the means of production," then there are some surface level similarities. The Federation is moneyless, and while they aren't classless (they're a meritocracy, so class still exists), they are egalitarian. That's pretty thin as far as it being Marxist or Communist. It's techno-utopianism, something I'd associate more with Libertarianism (in that I mostly hear it from people of that persuasion, eg Elon Musk [an avowed anti-Marxist], though I wouldn't call Star Trek Libertarian either). To respond more specifically: > The Enterprise is the perfect Marxist society, presided over by the incorruptible benevolent dictator. His loyal comrades are all selfless, also incorruptible, and utterly lack any ambition whatsoever other than serving the ship. Everyone selflessly shares equally. There's no money, and no crime. None of these things are related to Marxism (except money as discussed earlier), and there's tons of episodes about flaws in their society or crimes that happen. You're objecting to utopianism. > The bad guys, the Ferengi, are (naturally) capitalists, with their ugly faces and pointed teeth. They are always wrong about everything. They're regularly the heroes of the story in DS9, where their negotiating skill or enlightened self interest saves the day. (An arbitrary example from the top of my mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s - in which the Ferengi Quark convinces someone to pursue diplomacy over violence because the "price of peace" is at all at time low)