Obligatory:
What do you even say to something like this? Lol
When reactionaries enter “not even wrong” territory, there’s really no reasoning. Their colourful positions based on inventions and fancies of imagination cannot be refuted to their satisfaction, so why bother?
You could ask for sources and watch them malfunction from the question.
That this person is definitely not looking to get their views changed since they already have their pre-conceived excuses ready. Clearly even half-truths can be used to engage in anti-intellectualism.
Furthermore historical materialism is a theory of history, not a series of predictions. Marx could very well be wrong about a number of predictions, but that doesn’t negate the explanatory power of the method itself especially in contrast to other theories where history is little more than a string of accidents.
The realm of political science within bourgeois discourse is antiscientific itself, because it is (due to the mode of production) generally made to uphold bourgeois society; such results include using scientific terminology for idealistic concepts (totalitarianism or authoritarianism) or concepts so general they are hardly helpful (power).
We know that it is unscientific because we see the unscientific elements of political science.
I don’t remember Marx ever espousing a singular imminent world revolution, or that the state will wither away under current conditions, or that class will override nationalism. If he did, then indeed he was wrong about those subjects.
Nevertheless there were socialist revolutions all across the world that encompassed a good chunk of the planet for a time; and in many countries that didn’t end up becoming socialist, there were revolutionary conditions that weren’t turned into a changing of class relations due to lack of a proper vanguard party because socialism isn’t that automatic and deterministic. Even if it doesn’t look like it right now, all of the world will eventually be encompassed by socialism; reactionaries don’t see round two coming, but it will, mark my words.
I doubt he ever really said anything that the bird said above (or at the very least, there is no context given).
In his defense, reading Kapital and understanding Kapital are two wildly different things. I reread it twice because it seemed like one of those things you had to do as a communist. Not being the sharpest tack in the box, very little of it actually sunk in (I am definitely not destined to be in the vanguard). I think it is probably best suited to a group discussion scenario. It was until I listened to the Cliff Notes version, “Reading Capital with Comrades” from the Liberation School, that the gist-of-the-matter lightbulb switched on. I’ve told myself to go back and reread it one more time, but I’m old and probably won’t. So many books, so little time.
The thing is that they are blatantly making up anti-communist myths that can be debunked by simple research (no need to read Capital).
haha 67
