His critique of Marxism is on the level of skimmed Wikipedia articles and your patriotic eighth-grade teacher The idea that Marx naively thought "Good people will replace evil ones after a clean slate" is not a critique of Marx It does not remotely resemble anything he thought
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It is a *stereotype* of doctrinaire Marxists, if you have any contact with their subculture and their language, to banish "moralism" and "idealism" from all discourse Opposition to "romantic socialism" is one of the PRIMARY REASONS MARX STARTED WRITING
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The concept of dialectical materialism is intended to banish the CONCEPT of "personal virtue" from discourse The WHOLE IDEA of Marxism is that personal virtue doesn't exist on the large scale and doesn't matter People act according to their class background dictates, period
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The communist revolution does not happen in Marx's mind because "good people" defeat "bad people" eventually -- there is no such thing as "good people" It happens because the structural contradictions that hold the ruling class together fall apart
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To vastly oversimplify, Marx's belief was that eventually the way power works as technological and economic development change the material circumstances of society, eventually no one can be in charge It becomes impossible to tell people what to do
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It's not that "good people" take the reins of power and benevolently let the working class go free It's that it becomes impossible for a ruling class to give orders to the working class People in general are empowered enough that anyone can say "take this job and shove it"
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No one becomes "good", everyone remains the same selfish shitheels they've always been, it's just that if we get enough progress in society EVERYONE gets the POWER to act on their selfishness and that means the people who've been forced to work get to walk away and not starve
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I'm not saying this to *defend* this idea In fact, this idea, baldly stated, is vulnerable to critique and mockery in a lot of ways that the "romantic" view of "Why not put decent people in charge" is not It has been mocked and taken apart by better people than Scott
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I'm just saying that is what Marxism says This isn't esoteric theory, this is very well known, you just have to read the *most famous* works of Marx (the Communist Manifest, Capital) to get it front and center Or talk to a Marxist and ask them to explain it to you
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And Scott *doesn't know this* and he's still arguing with the Straw Communist in his head Your 3rd-grade teacher telling you "The problem with communism is, they expect everyone to be good, while capitalism expects people to be greedy and cleverly harnesses their greed"
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This aphorism is one of the dumbest fucking things people say, especially because the people who say it don't even believe it -- defenders of capitalism *constantly* appeal to philanthropy on the part of actual rich people as a defense of capitalism -- but Scott takes it as fact
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It's just a shining example of how Scott, like his partner-in-arms Jordan Peterson, thinks he's really fucking smart and really fucking "fair" and empathetic and he doesn't even faintly live up to his own ideals
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He's spent exactly *zero time* even actually trying to learn what Marxists *actually think*, much less debate them in "good faith" or "steelman" their position The same applies to critical race theory, feminism, and all the other bogeymen of the Slatestarcodex community
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Like, if I had to name a particular academic tendency that's like the anti-Slatestarcodex in every respect -- not that they'd understand it enough to oppose it -- it's Afropessimism (Indeed, Scott is like the ultimate avatar of the "whiteness" Afropessimism is pessimistic about)
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And then Scott, Mr. Rational Facts Man himself, in his constant search for contrarian ideas to out-insightful himself, comes *this close* to inventing the basic idea of Afropessimism Only of course he doesn't because the word "racism" is taboo to himhttps://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/06/asymmetric-weapons-gone-bad/ …
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The above blog post is him musing about the scary Lovecraftian idea "What if there are incorrect ideas that are so perversely attractive to the human mind that the *more* you think about them, the *more likely you are to be wrong*"
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"Such that people's naive, emotional rejection of certain ideas is more likely to be right than other people's obsessive lifelong expertise on the matter The experts are the ones who are the most wrong, because the reason they become invested is their attraction to wrongness"
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And the big historical example he gives for this is... communism! Which was once, in his view, a universally popular idea, and now has been irrefutably proven to be evil
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Even if he were right about this it'd be kind of useless to fucking bring it up now that all the hegemonic world powers agree with him and "won the argument" in 1991 huh But then maybe that's why he hasn't actually read the Communist Manifesto Gotta avoid those memetic viruses
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At NO POINT does he EVER apply this to his own community and to the hordes of people lamenting "I've spent my life trying to research the genetic basis of IQ and everyone keeps calling me a racist!" Why the hell would he He can tolerate everything but the outgroup
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End of conversation
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