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These are all simple platitudes, provided without reference. Imagine believing that 'socialism is just a phase' -- as if the entire history of the USSR, the Eastern bloc, most of Asia, and the 20th century history of labor and social activism can be reduced to just 'idealistic children'! Among my age cohort (29), most of my peers have received an élite education, and this included a study of Hegel, Marx, Adam Smith, Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky, Deleuze, etc. Nearly all of us identify as socialists of varying stripes (syndicalists, trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and so on) Nearly everyone I've interacted with who has espoused similar views to yourself has in fact never read even the introductory text of socialism, and this ignorance leads to debate in bad faith. In the interest of meeting the debate on its own terms, you should have at least read an introductory pamphlet presented by your opponent. We have of course, The Communist Manifesto. It's a 20 page propaganda pamphlet that has been translated for over a century now into every language, and is of course freely available on the internet. You should be able to get through it in a few hours. You may be surprised to find that your strawmen do not exist. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m... |
> These are all simple platitudes, provided without reference. Imagine believing that 'socialism is just a phase' -- as if the entire history of the USSR, the Eastern bloc, most of Asia, and the 20th century history of labor and social activism can be reduced to just 'idealistic children'!
Any cursory study of the history of the USSR, Cuba, Marxist China, Cambodia, etc shows a very small minority group of radical, violent thugs taking power through intimidation, assassination, political propaganda and getting lucky from the presence of destabilized imperialistic regimes. It was indeed 'just a phase' and a god-awful phase at that. As an example, the proletariat that Lenin and the Bolsheviks claimed to liberate hated the Bolsheviks, and instead supported the Socialist Revolutionaries, who were actually a center-left agrarian reform party who won the first and only election in revolutionary Russia (1917) before being disbanded by Lenin.
> Among my age cohort (29), most of my peers have received an élite education, and this included a study of Hegel, Marx, Adam Smith, Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky, Deleuze, etc. Nearly all of us identify as socialists of varying stripes (syndicalists, trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and so on)
I don't see your point here. People with elite educations can obviously go both ways. I myself have an education from an elite institution, for instance. And obviously many people without so-called elite educations have been known to support leftist politics.
> Nearly everyone I've interacted with who has espoused similar views to yourself has in fact never read even the introductory text of socialism, and this ignorance leads to debate in bad faith.
While that's definitely something I can't argue with, but I'll say that I have closely read Hegel, Marx, Smith, Trotsky, Engels...that said, political persuasion tends to be based on moral precepts more than intellectual ones. Political differences in human societies far precede reading. It's a fair point that debating particular ideas requires the reading of those ideas, but it's also a fair point that practice trumps theory -- I don't need to read anything to know that Capitalist China is better than Communist China on all meaningful metrics of human development and thriving; that Capitalist Korea is better than Communist Korea, etc.
> In the interest of meeting the debate on its own terms, you should have at least read an introductory pamphlet presented by your opponent. We have of course, The Communist Manifesto. It's a 20 page propaganda pamphlet that has been translated for over a century now into every language, and is of course freely available on the internet. You should be able to get through it in a few hours.
Don't know how to deal with the patronization here. I've read it! Although of Marx's writing, I find Das Kapital to be the most persuasive, though weak as a justification for political action.