Texan
23rd December 2013, 10:58
I was at family gathering recently and had a conversation with someone (that is supposed to be a political/history buff) about Marx, and found myself almost speechless at the arguments that this person made. I'd like this thread to serve as a place where we can discuss the worst/most heated discussions we've had with an individual, but I'm also curious what RevLeft's responses to the strawmen (highlighted in Red, for those who don't wish to read the entire bit) attacks made by my relative would be.
First of all, being a Texan leftist, I am used to debating the occasional right-winger here and there. However, the arguments usually don't go very far (that is, I've yet to really meet someone off-campus who has read, let alone formulated an opinion on the writings of Marx and Engels), and usually end in some strawman jab like "It's all about sharing, and that just doesn't work...people should be rewarded for hard work!" or the famous "It works on paper, but never in practice/real life" (with a touch of hubris, as if they came up with that on their own!). Frankly, I think we all know how to deal with these kinds of remarks.
Not that this conversation went any differently--however, some of the things my relative said and the way he handled our conversation in general were completely absurd. Nothing like this would arise from the typical Democrat-Republican (or more popular in Texas, Libertarian-Republican) debates.
Without trying to instigate anything, it started off with me mentioning historical materialism, and that, "despite what we've all been told growing up about Marx, he makes some valid points about history". Before I could finish saying "valid", I could already see his facial expression changing.
First, as stated above, he started off with the usual, "It only works on paper" point.
Rather than trying to expose how little he actually knew about Marx's writings, or even trying to be an instigator, I tried to focus on historical materialism, saying "I'm referring to historical materialism, it..." in hopes that he would genuinely be interested. However, I was cut off.
"Marx just pulled a bunch of stuff out of his ass. He literally made all that stuff up. He was a con man, and a psycho."
Hindsight being 20/20, this is probably where I should have just let it go. At this point it was apparent to me that he had no idea what he was talking about. However, I persisted, hoping he would at least listen to what I had to say. I knew he had the attention span for it--just a moment before he was talking about ancient Greece with a few other family members (although about what I cannot recall, I was not part of this conversation).
From here, I tried to explain that in order to understand Marx, a basic understanding of history, materialism, and Hegel were needed. From here, I tried to explain how Marx would not have been able to come up with his theories without a background in philosophy, economics, history, psychology, and how he expanded on Hegel's dialectics to apply it to history, as well as expanding on Adam Smith's idea in his labor theory of value. He tried to accuse me of using "buzzwords" without understanding them, to which I replied with "Would Isaac Newton have come up with calculus without a background in mathematics? Would the Wright brothers have flown the first plane without first having the tools, materials, and the thousands of years of mathematics before them? Of course not. Marx did not come up with the ideas outlined in "Capital" by pulling them out of his ass--it was released twenty years after the manifesto! It's an accumulation of his observations of social relations that come forth in a material world..."
Rather than confronting my analogy, he side-stepped me here, and was, at this point, becoming irate.
"CALCULUS IS A FACT. IT'S PROVEN WITH MATH. MARX HAS BEEN DIS-PROVEN AGAIN AND AGAIN--LOOK AT THE SOVIET UNION! 30 MILLION PEOPLE!"
Flabbergasted, I responded promptly with "Please, a brutal assault on the proletariat was the last thing that Marx would have wanted--he's spinning so fast in his grave that he should have his own gravitational field by now."
Again, rather than confronting my point--that is that Marx was not the psychopath that he had postulated, he side-stepped me again.
"I doubt it. He was a psycho. Plus, Marx was against work. How is a country supposed to work if you're against work?"
Again, at a loss for words, I said "This simply isn't true. He was against workers earning only wages and not profits."
"Well if capitalism is so evil, then why do you buy anything at all? How do you plan to survive?"
This is when the conversation dissolved into my opponent shouting over me.
"MARX IGNORED ALL THE RULES! HE IGNORED ALL OF THEM, AND YOU KNOW IT! COMMUNISM WILL NEVER WORK, AND IF YOU'RE STUDYING TO SEE WHY IT FAILS, THAT'S FINE, BUT YOU WILL NEVER MAKE IT WORK."
It was clear to me, at this point, what he was trying to do. In Texas, the echoes of Joe McCarthy can still be heard within the political climate. In a last attempt, he was trying to call it to everyone's attention--that one of their own was a Marxist. I'm sure many of you on here have experienced this before, however it seems very intensified in Texas.
Within about 15 seconds of him trying to rally everyone in the room up, another family member approached him, and asked him to keep his voice down. He avoided me for the rest of the gathering.
So what would you say to these points, RevLeft? Did I respond well?
What are some trainwrecks you've had?
First of all, being a Texan leftist, I am used to debating the occasional right-winger here and there. However, the arguments usually don't go very far (that is, I've yet to really meet someone off-campus who has read, let alone formulated an opinion on the writings of Marx and Engels), and usually end in some strawman jab like "It's all about sharing, and that just doesn't work...people should be rewarded for hard work!" or the famous "It works on paper, but never in practice/real life" (with a touch of hubris, as if they came up with that on their own!). Frankly, I think we all know how to deal with these kinds of remarks.
Not that this conversation went any differently--however, some of the things my relative said and the way he handled our conversation in general were completely absurd. Nothing like this would arise from the typical Democrat-Republican (or more popular in Texas, Libertarian-Republican) debates.
Without trying to instigate anything, it started off with me mentioning historical materialism, and that, "despite what we've all been told growing up about Marx, he makes some valid points about history". Before I could finish saying "valid", I could already see his facial expression changing.
First, as stated above, he started off with the usual, "It only works on paper" point.
Rather than trying to expose how little he actually knew about Marx's writings, or even trying to be an instigator, I tried to focus on historical materialism, saying "I'm referring to historical materialism, it..." in hopes that he would genuinely be interested. However, I was cut off.
"Marx just pulled a bunch of stuff out of his ass. He literally made all that stuff up. He was a con man, and a psycho."
Hindsight being 20/20, this is probably where I should have just let it go. At this point it was apparent to me that he had no idea what he was talking about. However, I persisted, hoping he would at least listen to what I had to say. I knew he had the attention span for it--just a moment before he was talking about ancient Greece with a few other family members (although about what I cannot recall, I was not part of this conversation).
From here, I tried to explain that in order to understand Marx, a basic understanding of history, materialism, and Hegel were needed. From here, I tried to explain how Marx would not have been able to come up with his theories without a background in philosophy, economics, history, psychology, and how he expanded on Hegel's dialectics to apply it to history, as well as expanding on Adam Smith's idea in his labor theory of value. He tried to accuse me of using "buzzwords" without understanding them, to which I replied with "Would Isaac Newton have come up with calculus without a background in mathematics? Would the Wright brothers have flown the first plane without first having the tools, materials, and the thousands of years of mathematics before them? Of course not. Marx did not come up with the ideas outlined in "Capital" by pulling them out of his ass--it was released twenty years after the manifesto! It's an accumulation of his observations of social relations that come forth in a material world..."
Rather than confronting my analogy, he side-stepped me here, and was, at this point, becoming irate.
"CALCULUS IS A FACT. IT'S PROVEN WITH MATH. MARX HAS BEEN DIS-PROVEN AGAIN AND AGAIN--LOOK AT THE SOVIET UNION! 30 MILLION PEOPLE!"
Flabbergasted, I responded promptly with "Please, a brutal assault on the proletariat was the last thing that Marx would have wanted--he's spinning so fast in his grave that he should have his own gravitational field by now."
Again, rather than confronting my point--that is that Marx was not the psychopath that he had postulated, he side-stepped me again.
"I doubt it. He was a psycho. Plus, Marx was against work. How is a country supposed to work if you're against work?"
Again, at a loss for words, I said "This simply isn't true. He was against workers earning only wages and not profits."
"Well if capitalism is so evil, then why do you buy anything at all? How do you plan to survive?"
This is when the conversation dissolved into my opponent shouting over me.
"MARX IGNORED ALL THE RULES! HE IGNORED ALL OF THEM, AND YOU KNOW IT! COMMUNISM WILL NEVER WORK, AND IF YOU'RE STUDYING TO SEE WHY IT FAILS, THAT'S FINE, BUT YOU WILL NEVER MAKE IT WORK."
It was clear to me, at this point, what he was trying to do. In Texas, the echoes of Joe McCarthy can still be heard within the political climate. In a last attempt, he was trying to call it to everyone's attention--that one of their own was a Marxist. I'm sure many of you on here have experienced this before, however it seems very intensified in Texas.
Within about 15 seconds of him trying to rally everyone in the room up, another family member approached him, and asked him to keep his voice down. He avoided me for the rest of the gathering.
So what would you say to these points, RevLeft? Did I respond well?
What are some trainwrecks you've had?