holy shit I think I’m actually starting to understand some basic theory finally. Marxism really was like the quantum physics breakthrough of the social sciences wasn’t it? anything else after i go through the whole Red Menace backlog?
I literally spent dozens of hours in college studying “theories of social change” trying to find a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of how qualitative changes in society occur and every librarian I went to told me I was out of luck and all theories that were easy to find were narrowly focused on some specific feature of change (e.g. “resource mobilization theory”). Then I find Marxism and I realised bourgeois social science must be intentionally keeping students in the stone ages.
tl;dr I was literally going to go to grad school unknowingly trying to re-discover Marxism but after I actually read Marx I’m glad I don’t have to
i was always told Marxism was just an ideological framework and that was it. i take this now as deliberate suppression. unfortunately when i went to college it was technical focused and never took any philosophy or history classes so who knows.
Marxism really was like the quantum physics breakthrough of the social sciences
I liked how they used the analogy in that episode that Marx is to socioeconomics as Darwin is to biology. It’s something I’ve said when trying to persuade science-minded but liberal family members to give consideration to leftist ideas, and I’m surprised I don’t hear it used a lot more often.
Really understanding dialectical and historical materialism is such a profound shift in how you can interpret the world. Every liberal I know thinks I’m an asshole.
As hard as it is, we have to convince the libs in our life one step at a time. If we’re That Asshole Who Argues Everything, they’re going to tune us out. An enormous part of being persuasive is being likable.
it’s not called the immortal science for nothing!
There are so many great RevLeft episodes outside of the red menace stuff, literally just browse through the feed and listen to whatever piques your interest. Breht is a true comrade.
If you’re interested in Marxist theory and its application to revolutionary struggle, I recently read The Principal Contradiction (purchase/download link at the bottom of that post), I thought it was a great summation of the Marxist concept of contradiction, laid in an accessible way, with real world examples. It’s also a pretty short read! (Incidentally I learned about that book from a RevLeft interview the author did, lol).
Also, join us at c/Marxism!
