You must read the originator to practice something. You aren’t a real capitalist if you haven’t read Adam Smith and you aren’t a real sadist if you haven’t read the 120 days of Sodom. /s
Fr though, theory is great and more people should read it, but also we must burn our bookshelves to be free as it were. Theory is just ideas, both vital to our ability to imagine and build a better world, but ultimately something that should be willing to build on, challenge, and eventually make even the most important thinkers academic.
So yeah read Marx, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Stirner, Goldman, Lenin, Mao, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Graeber… but not like how a Christian would read the Bible. Read them as one reads philosophers (and a biologist and anthropologist who also did philosophy). Read them critically and see what they got right, ask what they might have gotten wrong and why. Ask what you can learn from their ideas and the effects of different people’s approaches to building on their ideas. When we treat them as secular prophets we do a disservice to them, ourselves, and those who will come after us.
Also like, do more than just read them. You actually have to try to meet people where they are. Talk about the ideas in ways that people are receptive to then eventually drop in where you got them. Convince ordinary people about this stuff as you organize to make more of it happen. Not through smugness but by sympathizing with their actual problems and building a dialog. Practice what you preach, both because it enhances credibility and is the right thing to do, but also because what we on the left preach is difficult to do and we need the practice.
you aren’t a real sadist if you haven’t read the 120 days of Sodom. /s
Trying to read that is what proved to me that I’m not really “open-minded” at all - and I’m perfectly fine with that.
Fr though, theory is great and more people should read it, but also we must burn our bookshelves to be free as it were.
That is perfectly fine… but there is a good reason why the working class rejects politics that is purely based on theory - it’s the reason why the status quo does not rely on political theory to shape it’s propaganda, but rather the lived experience of the working class.
Theory can enlighten you, but it can also constrain you - ask any leftist to ELI5 the relationship between liberal ideology, fascism, and the capitalist mode of production without resorting to “Marxist-speak” and you’ll see it for yourself. Very few can.
You must read the originator to practice something. You aren’t a real capitalist if you haven’t read Adam Smith and you aren’t a real sadist if you haven’t read the 120 days of Sodom. /s
Fr though, theory is great and more people should read it, but also we must burn our bookshelves to be free as it were. Theory is just ideas, both vital to our ability to imagine and build a better world, but ultimately something that should be willing to build on, challenge, and eventually make even the most important thinkers academic.
So yeah read Marx, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Stirner, Goldman, Lenin, Mao, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Graeber… but not like how a Christian would read the Bible. Read them as one reads philosophers (and a biologist and anthropologist who also did philosophy). Read them critically and see what they got right, ask what they might have gotten wrong and why. Ask what you can learn from their ideas and the effects of different people’s approaches to building on their ideas. When we treat them as secular prophets we do a disservice to them, ourselves, and those who will come after us.
Also like, do more than just read them. You actually have to try to meet people where they are. Talk about the ideas in ways that people are receptive to then eventually drop in where you got them. Convince ordinary people about this stuff as you organize to make more of it happen. Not through smugness but by sympathizing with their actual problems and building a dialog. Practice what you preach, both because it enhances credibility and is the right thing to do, but also because what we on the left preach is difficult to do and we need the practice.
Trying to read that is what proved to me that I’m not really “open-minded” at all - and I’m perfectly fine with that.
That is perfectly fine… but there is a good reason why the working class rejects politics that is purely based on theory - it’s the reason why the status quo does not rely on political theory to shape it’s propaganda, but rather the lived experience of the working class.
Theory can enlighten you, but it can also constrain you - ask any leftist to ELI5 the relationship between liberal ideology, fascism, and the capitalist mode of production without resorting to “Marxist-speak” and you’ll see it for yourself. Very few can.