or lenin or mao or etc
i’m curious. I don’t think I’m a marxist but I have been trying to read marxist theory and I got caught by my family and had a huge argument with everyone. it was really interesting because it seemed like we weren’t talking about the same thing at all. Things like everyone is paid the same or everything is made by the government etc, I know very little but I have asked and read the basics and I was able to point out that wasn’t true
i’m used to people being smug about things they know nothing about, but it’s interesting how they look down on communists, like looking at a silly child that doesn’t know anything - while not knowing anything about what communists said in the first place. I actually tried to pull out quotes from the book but they didn’t want me to, they actually refused to know what they hate, it’s strange. I mean, I do the same, I’ve never read fascist theory or ayn rand or stuff like that, so I can’t really blame them, but I don’t try to seriously argue with fascists and libertarians anyways
some of them have a lived experience in eastern europe or cuba or something so I can’t really argue against that, but when it’s just an argument I’ve never met someone extremely vehemently against communist thoughts who actually read any of what communists wrote
have you ever had like, a productive, genuine conversation with an anti-communist?
Not really. I’ve met a few that have read like the Manifesto or a few other works and like some secondary lit on Marx; usually completely misunderstanding things (as they don’t know anything about what Marxists have done historically, the philosophical context Marx emerged from, etc.). None that have given a serious good faith effort to study Marx. And certainly not anyone who’s actually studied like MARXISM (which, IMO goes way fucking beyond Marx - like Marx is important to Marxism, sure, but like if you aren’t taking into account everything that’s happened since then, you have no fucking idea what Marxism is). Anti-Marxists have no fucking clue.
Honestly Marxists have the only interesting and useful critiques of Marxism. It’s still very useful to read lib theorists though