What makes Marxism so attractive to the academic class?
>>449661
>What makes Marxism so attractive to the academic class?
Because it makes sense.
>>449661
We already had this thread.
If you don't believe in God, then communist/socialism is what you naturally come to conclude.
>>449668
Then why is it such a monumental failure?
>>449661
because the academics believe they'll be top dog
>>449661
Foucault is not a Marxist.
Because Marxist economies need intellectuals more than other economies do
>"Probably the intellectual has more difficulty than the common man in freeing himself from this ideology which, like the State which derives from it, is his especial handiwork. The Soviet government rules in the name of a doctrine elaborated by an intellectual whose life was spent in libraries and interpreted for the past century by countless other intellectuals. Under a Communist régime the intellectuals, sophists rather than philosophers, rule the roost. The examining magistrates who unmask deviations, the writers coerced into socialist realism, the engineers and managers who are supposed to execute the plans and to interpret the ambiguous orders of the central authority—all must be dialecticians. The Secretary-General of the Party, master and arbiter over the lives of millions of men. is also an intellectual: at the end of a triumphal career he offers to the faithful a theory of capitalism and socialism—as though a book represented the highest accomplishment. The emperors of old were often poets or thinkers; for the first time the emperor actually reigns qua dialectician, interpreter of the doctrine and of history."
Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals
Basically, Marxist gives intellectuals absolute power. Under a society governed by Marxism, intellectuals become the ruling caste, like the Magi in Sassanid Persia or the Brahmin in Vedic India.
>>449855
Austrian economics is utopian horseabit but vin Mises says something similar in an essay called something like Socialism and the Intellectuals.
because it's complicated
>Why do people paid by the government want a large government
>>449661
>>449661
Why would academics who exist entirely within the little world of their state-funded university be attracted to an ideology created by someone who was a lifelong academic who relied on handouts? An ideology that proscribes that the means of production be left not in the hands of those with a proven track record of success in the real world, as with that great evil capitalism, but in the hands of a proletariat suitably guided by men of learning.
Really, who can say? It's a complete mystery.
>>449855
That's bullshit, tbqhwymf (to be quite honest with you my friend)
>>449661
Because in Marxist doctrine, Academics are the ruling class.
>What makes aristocracy so attractive to aristocrats?
>>449898
where does marx mention he wants a large government
>>449980
literally the opposite
>>450010
Whose talking about Marx? I thought we were talking about Marxists.
>>450010
Possibly when he says that the government should own all the means of production before full comunism could be achieved.
>>449765
Because people suck at acting rationally.
>>449661
you've asked this before
https://4ch.be/his/thread/377530/
and the answer is the same >>449998
>>449958
Why?
Because it brings the possibility of change. Like every alternative to capitalism, is nice and sane to believe in other ways of economics or life.
In communist countries, academics are interested in capitalism or other things opposed to commie stuff.
Other way around; the academic class is attractive to Marxists.
>>450190
This is the only objectively correct answer in this thread.
>post-soc country here
They like it because universities are the only places where ideas can survive without having to be practical or correct.
>>449684
I think you might be an idiot.
>all these posts and no one has realized the guy isn't a Marxist.
>>449661
> Focault
> Marxist
I'll fuck you up IRL
>>449765
You're conflating economic marxism with political marxism.
>>449855
The soviet union would have been better if that was how it worked.
>>450474
what if all marxism is shit?
what if
>>449998
gr8 b8 m8 i r8 88/88
They're full of people from B and C1 brackets who feel guilty for being statistically inclined to the bourgeoisie
>>450256
When will this meme die? Universities are places where people with a wide variety of opinions and ideologies have discourse.
>>450427
>educated under Marxist philosophers
>socialized and debated exclusively with Marxist-leaning intellectuals
>taught generation of Marxist students
>joined Marxist or Marxist-led fronts and parties, including the Communist Party of France
>his theory has been used ever since to strenghten the political and social power of Marxist intellectuals
>>450508
>wide variety of opinions and ideologies
You mean from social democracy to Maoism.
You are all inverting the actual relationship between communist and intellectuals.
Intellectuals are not attracted to communism because communism is right and they are oh so smart for realizing it. Neither because they are machiavellians schemers who realize that by being communism they have a chance of becoming the intellectual mentors of a totalitarian state.
Communism, in practice if not in theory, is rule by intellectuals. Intellectuals are attracted to communism, therefore, by the same natural force that attracts military types to fascism.
![1389452197511[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qFj4jYb.jpg "1389452197511[1].jpg")
>>450518
Some day, the majority of right-wingers won't be anti-intellectual and I won't be ashamed of claiming I'm right-winged.
Imagine a world where it's as usual for a libertarian to causally talk about Nozick or Popper. But no, we can't have that because ooga booga where the guns and bibles at.
>>449661
This thread again?
Once more political marxism is only a part of marxism; and marxist had a huge influence on historiography, which before the social and economic thinking that marxism brought was singularly big man bullshit.
>>449998
>Thomas Sowell
>not a teat sucker from a think tank so he doesn't even have to apply for grants
Threads like this are just so that /pol/tards can have a big communal hatewank about leftist brainwashing ivory towers as a way to excuse themselves for not pursuing higher education over working themselves into paranoia sitting in their den in their parent's house wasting their life away on autismbux.
>>450539
I know that feel. But it's more of a Murikka problem.
>>450539
You should not confuse anti-intellectualism with anti-intelligence.
I'm anti-intellectual for the same reason many liberals in the past were anti-clericals. I view the intellectuals as a caste of parasites with aspirations to absolute political, cultural, social and economical power who use their monopoly over education and the fabrication of acceptable discourse to propagate harmful lies.
By the way, Nozick and Popper weren't right-wing and there is nothing wrong with guns and bibles. They are the only thing preventing intellectuals from attempting dekulakization at the United States.
>>450535
NOT "RED" ENOUGH!
>all these people thinking communism is rule by intellectuals
Uneducated neoreactionary fuckwits detected
>>449661
>academic class
nerds
>Marxism
The ideology of losers that need other's handicap
>>450539
By the way, right-wing intellectual is a oxymoron. As I said here >>450535
Leftism on practice means rule by intellectuals so a "right-wing intellectual" is as likely to be found as a "communist CEO".
And there is nothing wrong with that, since intellectuals are a cancerous infection of mankind.
>>450561
I can see how some *may* argue that Popper isn't right-wing, but you're just silly if you claim that everything that isn't full-blown anarchy isn't right-wing.
Nozick doesn't even want the state to have a proper police force.
>>450578
>anarchy
>right-wing
No.
>>450567
I'm not talking about communism as a theory spoused by intellectuals. Really, why should I do that, why should anyone actually understand a political system or historical phenomenom by the terms and meanings given to it by it's own proponents. We don't do that with anything else. Do we understand the Divine rights of kings according to the propositions of Robert Filmer? Do we understand Christianity as the revealed truth necessary for salvation or as a religion born in the Roman Empire?
Why should we actually accept what communists say as the standard of what we understand communism to be? Isn't the fact that we do it proof enough that all intellectuals are communist liars?
So, my point here is that analyzing communism as a historical phenomenom, it becomes clear that what links every singe existing communist state or political movement are not it's economical ideas (there is plenty of variation between, say, Janos Kadar's Hungary or Kim Il Sung's North Korea, or between Fidel Castro's Cuba and Tito's Yugoslavia).
What actually unite all communist states and political movements, the trait they all share is absolute control over civil society by the Communist Party. And what is the Communist Party if not the collective agency of the intelligentsia? Antonio Gramsci himself said that, that the Party is less a institution and more the collective will of the communist intelligentsia. If communism is therefore to be defined as rule by the Communist Party, therefore communism means rule by intellectuals.
And that explains why intellectuals are so attracted to communism. Why shouldn't they be?
>>450591
>And what is the Communist Party if not the collective agency of the intelligentsia?
All that filler to make an unsubstantiated claim.
>>450546
Historiography is a purely academic enterprise.
>>450611
Yikes, once again you're presupposing your own correctness while disregarding the arguments of your opponents
>>450561
From a Jouvenelian point of view, rightism could mean any descentralization of political power, while leftism is centralization, but Jouvenel also remarks that many times attempts at descentralization that strike at the roots of society leads to the construction of an even more powerful state apparatus in order to repair the social order that was destroyed by the abstract ideals that sought to reform society.
And that's why Nozick and other American libertarians are left-wing, they cling to an abstract view of anarchy that not only goes against the actual devolution of power to actual civil society, but that through their allegiance to left-wing social views and morality they empower the state and the intelligentsia to undermine social relations that could have acted as a counterbalance to the State.
This isn't about anarchy or big government, that is childish American view of politics, this is about the independence of civil society from a state and ideological apparatus that has been instrumentalized by a caste of communist intellectuals for the purpose of undermining any kind of social relations that do not pass through the approval of the Marxist intelligentsia.
>>450621
You argument is literally "because I said so". You've not provided any evidence to support your claim. So, I am not going to take you seriously. I am not even a communist.
>>449661
"The typical intellectual cannot derive a sense of power from the manipulation of nature – from moving mountains and telling rivers whither to flow. He lusts to manipulate men. The dominant intelligentsia in Soviet Russia sets in motion vast projects to tame and master nature, yet uses these projects as a means for taming and regimenting men. The intellectual will not leave people alone." - Eric Hoffer
>>450518
I've never seen anyone provide evidence to back that up.
>>450632
" The men of words are diverse types. They can be priests, scribes, prophets, writers, artists, professors, students, and intellectuals in general . . . whatever the type, there is a deep seeded craving common to almost all men of words which determines their attitude to the prevailing order. It is a craving for recognition; a craving for a clearly marked status above the common run of humanity." - Eric Hoffer
>>450611
Most communist parties, I'd say all communist parties, were formed and staffed by intellectuals through their whole existence. Even the parties with stronger working-class constituencies, such as the French Communist Party, were also the party of the intelligentsia, case in point, Michel Foucault was a member.
The greatest contribution of the Communist Party of Great Britain was a generation of communist historians that altered British historiography in a way that benefitted the political interests of the Communist Party, in Italy it was even worse, there was literally not a single Italian intellectual that was not a communist, see Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco, for example. All around the world, the Communist Party relies upon the allegiance of intellectuals and I'd say that 90% of it's prestige comes exactly from the fact that most of it's members are identified as "smart people" by the common public.
And that's only in the West, where intellectuals had "freedom" to choose their parties and they always choosed the communist ones. In the Eastern Bloc it was more obvious, there the alliegiance to the Communist Party was required.
>>449661
Because chumps spent 10 years to become an "official academic" and then they want a way to fix their $200k crippling debt and to stop living on welfare.
>>450656
Eric Hoffer wasn't really a "intellectual", he was a longshoreman who turned to political writing later in life. That's the case of most "right-wing intellectuals", they mostly work outside the academia and are never accepted by the "inner circle" as representatives of the intelligentsia. A current one, for example, is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who also has offered scathing criticism of "intellectuals" as a caste.
>>449661
Can we make a sticky that answers this question?
Also, the notion of an 'academic class' is a meme. It goes outside the nominal class structure and only applies to one specific occupation. You never hear people talking about a 'service class' or a 'engineering class'
>>450675
>the nominal class structure
As defined by the academic class itself! Of course they are going to do everything to hide their own political power.
>You never hear people talking about a 'service class' or a 'engineering class'
You never hear enginners telling how society should or shouldn't work or what political and economical system should be implemented against the wills of everyone else. They mostly design bridges.
>>450675
Eric Hoffer called them " men of words", as opposite to "men of action"
>there's someone in this thread complaining about intellectuals like a liberal might do for a businessman
Top kek
>>450673
>Eric Hoffer wasn't really a "intellectual"
>1951 The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature of Mass Movements ISBN 0-06-050591-5
>1955 The Passionate State of Mind, and Other Aphorisms ISBN 1-933435-09-7
>1963 The Ordeal of Change ISBN 1-933435-10-0
>1967 The Temper of Our Time
>1968 Nature and The City
>1969 Working and Thinking on the Waterfront: A Journal, June 1958 to May 1959
>1971 First Things, Last Things
>1973 Reflections on the Human Condition ISBN 1-933435-14-3
>1976 In Our Time
>1979 Before the Sabbath
>1982 Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer ISBN 0-06-014984-1
>1983 Truth Imagined ISBN 1-933435-01-1
>>450692
He wrote books, anyone can do that, but he didn't taught at any university. If you try to cite his work in an academic paper, they will laught at your face.
I say this because I like him, when I say he wasn't a intellectual, I mean it as a compliment.
>>450578
what is this meme that right wing = libertarian?
monarchists are probably the most right wing people there are, to the left of them are classical liberals and then modern liberals and then socialists, communists then (anticapitalist) anarchists. the trend here is the more left you move the more intensely you are willing to work against hierarchy. the liberal wants political equality, then his brother the modern liberal wants social equality, then the commies want absolute economic equality (lol) and the anarchists demand such leveling that they will not build a hierarchy to enforce this equality. i think all of it is a crock of shit but jesus learn about the history of these ideas at least.
>>450508
What sort of university have you attended? The Vatican Academy?
>>450508
Pretty much. I've seen it be very diverse. It just happens that universities are pushing for more minorities and smart people. Smart people and minorities are more likely to be left.
>>450692
IMO, an intellectual is someone whose main income comes from his "intellectual works", like an artist, a college professor, an author ...
Eric Hoffer main profession was a longshoreman and he only started writing when he was old.
Similarly, Paul Tudor Jones wrote books but he's not an intellectual, he's a hedge fund manager - a classic man of action. His main income came from his investments.
On the other hand, Krugman is a typical intellectual.
>>450703
>monarchists are probably the most right wing people there are
Which is kind of silly since the absolute monarchies of Early Modern Age contributed to the destruction of traditional society based on strong aristocracies, parlements and guilds.
The French Revolution merely finished the work that began with Louis XIV when he crushed the Fronde... that's why even though I am probably one of the "most right wing people there" I am not a monarchist.
>>450546
>Thomas Sowell
>/pol/
I think you might have confused a black libertarian for a white-trash neonazi.
>>450718
Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls it "skin in the game". He actually worked in finance before writing about economics so he absolutely lambasts people like Krugman and Piketty who make decisions without having any notion on how they will actually affect the real world.
>>450702
>I say this because I like him, when I say he wasn't a intellectual, I mean it as a compliment.
Exactly, the only reason he wouldn't count as an intellectual is because that would harm a narrative about aloof leftist intellectuals.
He was part of public discourse in his lifetime, he penned newspaper columns, towards the end of his life he was was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
>>450736
Ann Coulter is part of public discourse nowadays, would you call her a intellectual?
>>450719
Sure, that would be even more right, still, perhaps.
That quote is interesting to me in that it is very in line with Stirner's (sorry to invoke a meme, but I like the guy's book, sorry) critique of liberalism. IE that it was an intensification of man becoming more fettered to the state and it's moralities, briefly.
>>450681
Actually 14 out of 50 (28%) of Fortune 50 CEOs have engineering degrees. So engineers have a decent amount of influence in the world.
>>450745
If she held herself to the same standards of deep critical thinking and this was reflected in her output as with Hoffer, then I would.
However this is clearly not the universe in which that is a consideration I have to make.
Marxism is a intellectually masturbatory source of meaning in a godless age.
>>450681
>As defined by the academic class itself! Of course they are going to do everything to hide their own political power.
Is this the new "jews secretly rule the world"?
>>450710
>appeal to common sense
It's the only kind of argument you get on this topic.
>>450964
Conservatives don't like to use logic. It makes them feel like robots. It's the same psychological complex that caused the rise of the religious right.
>>449765
it's never been implemented so we don't know if it would work or not
>>450703
Oh fuck off your pretentious nigger, when your average joe say he's right-winged pretty much always for a smaller state and lower taxes. And you know this damn well, or do you have your ivory tower so far up your arse that you've lost connection with how people speak?
>>450572
>Leftism on practice means rule by intellectuals
Then explain all the leftist governments run by non-intellectuals. Or isn't social-democracy left-wing enough to be considered leftism?
>>450976
Tell me us more about your logical convictions which just happen to correlate with your time and place
>>449684
leninism specifically is a failure, not necessarily marxism
libertarian socialism worked quite well in spain during the spanish revolution
>>452062
Too bad Marx wasn't an anarchist.
>>452078
he thought a centralized government would dissolve in a truly communist society
>>452093
And it's a failure.
>>452109
leninism is a failure
marxism is too broad to be called a failure
yet another thread shit up by clueless uneducated amerifats
>>452121
But ye olde revolutionary state socialism is a failure, no?
It's revolutionary, and real people don't have time for revolutions, you can leave that to academics to pontificate over.
>>452062
>libertarian socialism worked quite well in spain during the spanish revolution
No it didn't, it collapsed after a few months.
>>452018
>Then explain all the leftist governments run by non-intellectuals.
Such as?
>>449678
Link?
>>449661
>What makes Marxism so attractive to the academic class?
Same thing that made the french revolution so attractive to them: it puts them on the top spot.
Also academic =/= smart, tho people don't always remember that.
>>452018
>Then explain all the leftist governments run by non-intellectuals.
The inevitable conclusion of incompetent unwordly intellectuals put in power is wordly and politically savvy thrusters taking their place.
>>452236
Khmer Rouge, China during cultural revolution.
>>449765
the failure of USSR != the failure of marxism
come on son
>>453052
>the failure of USSR
One wonders why the onus of proof ain't on commies to prove that their system works, instead than on the rest of us to just wait for commie regime after commie regime to fail until a working one magically appears. Communism should be held not to work until otherwise proven.
>>450954
>new
Reads more like old fashioned "THE VAGUELY FOREIGN JEW IS HERE TO RUIN MUH COUNTRY"
>>453063
>you just have to prove your system works while it holds to to massive external attack.
>>453082
Of course you do fool. Just like every new business needs to holds its own against the established competition tries to squash it down, just like every new scientifical theory gets bashed to shit by the previous generation, etc. If your system only works in the absence of opposition, it means it doesn't work at all, and I'm amazed that some people actually don't get this.
>>453093
Thats the thing though. Communism could only work if the entire COMMunity worked together towards it.
>>450648
Which class do you think these Communist Intellectuals tended to represent in their policies? (Intellectuals isn't a class)
Also, I may add that plenty of intellectuals and artists have been supporters of the far-right (Heidegger, Mishima, D.W. Griffith, etc.).
>>453108
>he expect unanimity of purpose to happen
>ever
And you people get mad when you're called out for being ivory tower residing unwordly idealistic fools.
>>449661
Because they were subverted by KGB spooks in the 50's and 60's. The vietnam war and counter-culture provided the excellent petri dish for them to grow and multiply. Thus creating a self sustaining chain reaction through the generations that we are still seeing the effects of even today.
>>449827
He's not, but he's commonly interpreted as one, unfortunately. It is my opinion that only French people have gotten Foucault right. Anglos tend to take him in a much more neo-Marxist new-left sort of way, which was far from his intentions.
>>449855
Raymond Aron is based af and every person who aspires to be not-retarded is obliged to read Opium.
>>452018
>when your average joe say he's right-winged pretty much always for a smaller state and lower taxes
Except he wants a huge military and probably some government interference in peoples lives regarding drugs or sex or abortion, whatever.
i agree that he is to the right of modern liberals, socialist etc but he is also to the left of monarchists and radical traditionalists.
Just because many people have a retarded understanding of how different political ideas sit relative to each other doesn't mean I should, as well.
>>449998
>people take this clown seriously
He says what he does because he knows he can rake in the big bucks from neoliberals who want a black guy to point to to prove they aren't racist
>>453048
Both Pol Pot and Mao Zedong were intellectuals. Pol Pot was even educated at Sorbonne.
>>449765
I'm one of the few people(at least on this board) who have been to both USSR and Russia while not being vata myself.
Believe me, the fall of communism was probably biggest disaster for Russians in the 20th century apart from WW2.
>>453527
Is that supposed to be a point for communism? The fact that its collapse was so disastrous that Rússia hasnt recovered ever since just shows how badly it fucked that country.
>>453626
>I-it was communism guize!
>not yeltsins hilariously bad leadership or the development of an oligarchy
>>453637
>Russian history in the 1990s has no relation with what happened before
>>453659
>all the outcomes are totally determined from the beginning
>>449684
Bullshit, I'm an atheist and I know humans are naturally inclined to screw each other over
>>453668
No, but the fact that communism in Russia completely destroyed independent civil society and corrupted social relations in a way that made crime the only venue to upward mobility outside of patronage and clientelism must help explain why Russian society became so particularly vulnerable to a mafia of hostile oligarchs who shared ethnic solidarity in the aftermath of the collapse of the Party-State.
>>453724
And a strong leader, not an alcoholic who randomly went on benders could've dulled that effect
>>449661
Cold war era soviet subversion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLqHv0xgOlc&index=38&list=FLzmNIib1QdRcsV4Uv4zFpCg
>>450474
The world we live in today is proof of its failure.
>>453082
I lol'd.
>>453127
It failed because it was in the minority.
Just like capitalism would fail if it had been in the minority.
>>453626
The country was relatively fine before the collapse.
How does one prevent himself from becoming an intellectual whilst studying a degree in an subject such as history?
>>455960
From what im reading on this thread, i guess losing touch with real life while getting a living from theorizing about real life would make you become an intellectual.
Foucault wasn't a Marxist, he was a post-structuralist and wasn't even a Communist.
>By the way, right-wing intellectual is a oxymoron
>using a picture of Gramsci
fucking moron
The intellectual conspiracy theory, nice one.
>>452148
there's ambiguity in state socialism and opening a can of worms for arbitrary bullshit. If you're a leninist, it's state capitalism, if you're trotsky it's transitional, and if you're stalin it's socialism.
>all of the "muh true Marxism, never been tried" in this thread rather than focusing on the thread's topic
Like clockwork.
>>449855
>>450632
>>450645
/thread
>>450546
Sowell actually discusses this in his book Intellectuals and Society. Universities actively work against hiring right-leaning professors, because you must be voted in by your peers, most of whom are left-leaning and have no qualms about voting out qualified candidates because of their politics. Over time they have become so heavily entrenched leftist positions that all there is left for the unlucky right-leaning educated researchers is to go to think-tanks. That's why think tanks tend to be predominantly right-wing.
Git gud.
>>453495
>calling based Sowell a house nigger
And you look down on /pol/ for their retarded racism. He's been writing books and doing research in his field for decades, and your *feelings* that he must just be doing it because he's an Uncle Tom rather than that he's convinced it's the right thing to do shows how racist you uneducated fucks are.
>>455960
I don't know, I guess make an effort to avoid networking with others and also take it easy on the studying?
>>450474
>>449765
because its a utopian theory, and all utopian theories are impractical.
Communism only functions in an autocratic state, and socialism naturally leads to autocracy.
taking away economic power from the people is a very powerful limit to their freedom, and beyond that for a command economy to function, naturally there must be some group to command it (usually a bureaucratic class) and by necessity they must exert total control over all economic action in orfder for the system to function, naturally leading to an autocratic/aristocratic situation where a minority hold total economic control while the masses have nearly zero economic and personal freedom because of it.
and being intelligent doesn't make you any less susceptible to ego stroking or utopian fantasy
>>451999
The idea is so shit you can't even implement it in the real world.
>>457805
I'm a true Scottsman because I call myself a Scottsman, even though I meet none of the definition requirements of being a Scottsman
>>455459
>economic disaster
>international pariah
>relatively fine
>>449661
>What makes Marxism so attractive to the academic class?
The answer is in the question.
The "academic class" lives in a bubble of ignorance created by their environment.
They have no personal experience, or knowledge, of human nature, and humanity, outside of academia. They are naive idealists that completely discount human nature in the belief that "everyone" would share their idealist visions in order to create and live in their "perfect" world. This, of course, is not true, which is why Marxists always need to create totalitarian dictatorships to implement and enforce their ridiculous policies, and why they always end up murdering their own citizens due to the fact that said citizens refuse to support their bullshit.
"Academia" is filled with egomaniacs that refuse to accept the fact that just because one is talented in one field, that doesn't mean they aren't a fucking moron in others.
>>458200
>economic disaster
That has more to do with falling oil prices in the 80's than communism.
>international pariah
Among NATO countries? Sure, just like the US was an international pariah among Warsaw Pact countries.
>relatively fine
Compared to post collapse, yes. You're not familiar with late soviet history are you?
ITT:
>I have never set foot into a college, let me tell you how academia is.
>>458248
>Your college experience is invalid because mine is valid
>>458248
>My university was special, and so am I
Yup, you're a product of academia...
>>458282
>>458287
>>458282
Are you academicians? If not why are you coming up to conclusions about a group that you are not a part of?
I'm not saying experience is valid, I'm saying that one should have knowledge before having ideas. Don't pretend to be experts in stuff you have no experience in. I'm not an academician and I don't go around telling how a group that I'm not a part of thinks-acts, you do. Ironic because that is the same thing you accuse academicians doing to others.
>>458297
my experience*
>>458297
>Are you academicians? If not why are you coming up to conclusions about a group that you are not a part of?
Because those are the naive, moronic, assholes that have consistently advocated for Marxist ideals in our society...the same ideals that have consistently FAILED in EVERY nation they've been implemented in throughout the past century.
Dumb ass.
>>458297
You're a product of academia, perpetuating the ideology which says that think tanks are inferior to universities because universities are universities, not because think tanks produce worse ideas. If you take pride in being an academic you're probably a societal cancer cell.
>>450066
Because there is more to life than rationality.
>>449668
>>>/revleft/
This board is shit enough without edgy teenage/student leftards shitting it up. Fuck off
>a political ideology that seems perfect and just in theory
>appeals to a career group who exists solely in the real of theory
No shit they like it.
https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Intellectuals%20and%20Socialism_4.pdf
Hayek nailed it
Note how that academic class does not include economists. Says a lot really
>>458331
>>458348
again
-I'm not a product of academia, I'm not an academician
and again
-Neither are you, so stop pretending to be an authority over something you know nothing about.
I'm not claiming any superiority over you, I'm joe the plumber but I know what I don't know. You don't. Again you scold academicians about how they talk about shit they have no idea about, yet you do the same to them.
I understand anti intellectualism is rampant especially(and sadly given the fact I'm also a conservative with libertarian leanings) in right wing but please have some dignity.
>>449684
You mean libertarianism.
How is something quasireligious as communism compatible with atheism? you're just replacing god with the state.
>>458382
That not even academics will hang out with those perpetual fuckups?
>>449661
Because academics lack Jobs
>>458382
This,it doesnt include any real career, only dumb people's majors like political science,philosophy,etc.
>>458395
>-Neither are you, so stop pretending to be an authority over something you know nothing about.
I base my opinion on being IN academia, and observing academia upon departure.
>>458395
Why should I listen to you? Academia is only one place where intellectual effort is exerted. Government and the business sector are better avenues for someone who actually wants to use their mind.
>>458395
>>459063
Plus I'm going to be graduating next semester so I've got firsthand experience of this phenomenon. Yes, I'm an undergrad. That's beside the point entirely. Undergrads see the public face of academia more clearly than grad students do. I don't have a career in this shit yet and I hope I never do. Academia is a circle-jerk.
>>458165
>taking away economic power from the people is a very powerful limit to their freedom
>implying we have any economic freedom aside from choosing which of 12 shampoos to buy
>>455453
>Capitalism is minority Bourgeoisie rule
>Capitalism is majority proletariat favoured
Commies...
>>450510
????????????????? Foucault supported the Iranian revolution
>>459088
What does that have to do with anything?
>>450508
This ideological diversity is supposed to foster debate so that bad ideas can be thrown out. Marxism is somehow above this due scrutiny in academia.
All of you need to read what Marx actually said.
It's not about the USSR, or dumb Maoism, or Stalin's disgusting crimes -- all of these were historical continuations of reactionary ideologies.
We need to abolish the value-form. Communist power will assert itself initially as a rogue state -- it must declare war against capitalism, it must be international, and it must go down fighting.
As Walter Benjamin writes in "On the Concept of History":
"The class struggle, which always remains in view for a historian schooled in Marx, is a struggle for the rough and material things, without which there is nothing fine and spiritual. Nevertheless these latter are present in the class struggle as something other than mere booty, which falls to the victor. They are present as confidence, as courage, as humor, as cunning, as steadfastness in this struggle, and they reach far back into the mists of time. They will, ever and anon, call every victory which has ever been won by the rulers into question. Just as flowers turn their heads towards the sun, so too does that which has been turn, by virtue of a secret kind of heliotropism, towards the sun which is dawning in the sky of history. To this most inconspicuous of all transformations the historical materialist must pay heed."
Communism is not about the spoils of victory nor just power. It about redeeming us of the "nightmare of history," all of which is one great catastrophe.
>>459150
Part of the reason Marx was such an excellent historian was because he understood History as continuity. Part of the failures of past "revolutions" was that they play historical dress-up -- they fail to acknowledge a radical break and conjure up the spirits of the dead to do their bidding.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue." - I, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Karl Marx 1852
>>459189
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte isn't about overthrowing capitalism you idiot. Marx barely wrote anything on revolution, he was mostly a historian and economist.
I don't need to defend modern academia because postmodernism is fucking brainrot and acadmia is filled with neoliberal garbage. Marx, on the other hand, was brilliant.
>None of this text has any bearing on this thread.
This is a conversation buddy. Do you think half of these posts have anything to do with OP? No.
>>459166
This isn't a conversation, you posted in the middle of the thread without replying to anybody. If you were responding to OP, I don't see how your post had anything to do with the content of that post.
>>450721
>Implying there isn't at least one thread on /pol/ with a pic of him as the OP and a caption "Why is he so based?" every single month
The lolbertarian part of /pol/ loves Sowell.
>>459250
It's a defense of Marxism, think of it what you will. It obviously ruffled your jimmies enuff to get you going on how I "proved the point of the anti-Marxists."
>>459230
>acadmia is filled with neoliberal garbage.
Really? Libertarianism is on the rise in the academics?
>>459289
Libertarianism ≠ neoliberalism. Try again m8
>>459288
It's not a very good defense of Marx.
>>459298
soz, I'm just throwing my ideas out there but OK
>>459293
>neoliberal
>/pol/ using words they don't understand again
>>459309
>Part of the reason Marx was such an excellent historian was because he understood History as continuity. Part of the failures of past "revolutions" was that they play historical dress-up -- they fail to acknowledge a radical break and conjure up the spirits of the dead to do their bidding.
I just don't understand how this makes him a good historian.
>>450954
Conservatives use conspiracy theories to reconcile their belief in their own innate superiority with the reality of their failures.
>>459369
So do socialists
>>459381
No, socialists are paranoid because conservatives are always trying to kill them.
>>459404
As they should.
>>449998
One of the nice things about the Iraq War was the way it revealed people to be fucking idiots.
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2003/03/25/who_is_pro-war/page/full
>>459425
Did he go back on this after?
Hind sight is always 20/20.
>>449661
Because the academic class likes to see the "big picture" and that Marxism predicts good "big picture" results.
The reason Marxism failed is that it didn't take into account the basic fact that each human mind is hard wired to act in its own individual interest.
It doesn't mean that humans cannot act for a greater good, just that they need some amount of self interest to do so.
The best system is probably a balance of communism and individualism.
