Once I was riding a train, and the conductor announced that only some cars would open their doors at the upcoming station, because the train was longer than the platform.
"I wonder why?" A stranger mused.
"I know," her companion sneered, "it's because some engineer designed it."
She wasn't wrong per say, an engineer had designed the platform - a hundred years ago, for a different train. The train we were riding had squeeked through the legislature on a shoestring budget, reusing the existing tracks and with only a few new platforms slated to be built. And many of those were axed along the way due to budget overruns and such. It was a political miracle the train existed at all.
But this passenger wasn't really looking for context. She had stereotypes and narratives that explained the situation to her satisfaction.
Are you quite sure that you are engaging your faculties of critical thinking here, rather than relying on narratives and stereotypes? Does it really seem likely to you that the people doing the work you're most familiar with are the only people capable of thinking critically? Or that the feedback loops that you've had in your career are the only ones available?
Let me put it this way. Marxism doesn't fly, and nobody has yet found an example of it flying. But academics continue to push Marxism.
That's a massive failure of critical thinking by the people who teach it.
As for engineers, they make mistakes all the time. And the mistakes are very hard to talk one's way out of. Our society is built by engineers making things that work. Your car doesn't move by talking it into moving.
If humans could be engineered, you might be right.
You're also implicitly right that Marxists believe they can alter fundamental human nature, aka the "Soviet Man". No Marxist organization has ever altered human nature one iota.
Even the most committed Marxists remain, fundamentally, selfish humans subject to their base emotions.
In the words of Ursula Le Guin: "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings"
Fundamental social and economic system change can, and has, happened. The fact that we can't yet see exactly what the other side looks like from where we are now is not contraindicative of that fact.
Okay, I'm sorry, but you can't talk about critical thinking and then reject Le Guin's historical observation because she's a fiction author. That's a bridge too far for me to respond to seriously. That's the complete absence of critical thinking, that is a shallow dismissal based on rote categories.
We might as well conclude that your views on Marxism aren't valid because you're an engineer rather than a political scientist or historian, or that your views on teaching critical thinking aren't valid because you aren't an educator. Which would make this entire conversation meaningless.
> you can't talk about critical thinking and then reject Le Guin's historical observation because she's a fiction author.
I do because her left wing theories only work in her imagination. At least Tolkien was honest in calling TLotR a mythology, not a workable system.
Isn't it kinda sad that supporters of Marxism regularly bring up novels, instead of historical examples? Of what value is critical thinking when that's the result?
My views on Marxism are based on historical fact, not my imagination.
Candidly, your views on Marxism are ahistorical. By your own admission you define Marxism as either utopianism or criticism of the free market. You're welcome to define words however you wish in your idiolect, but that is not what the historical the intellectual movement called Marxism is.
Take this comment for example. Can you tell me what work of fiction has been cited? I'd be surprised if you could, because no one has mentioned one. Someone brought up Le Guin, who offered an observation of history. Le Guin writes fiction, but that doesn't mean everything she remarks on is fictional.
With that in mind, ask yourself, have you offered a historical analysis? Is the opinion you've stated based on history? If it didn't come from history, where did it come from?
Also, since you seem to be implying you're debating Marxists presently, I can't speak for anyone else but let me make it clear that I'm neither a Marxist nor a Communist, and I'm not arguing in favor of either of these ideas (and I have not at any time in our discussion).
Le Guin's most famous novel is "The Left Hand of Darkness" where the society is based on communal cooperation. I've seen her characterized as a leftist.
> If it didn't come from history, where did it come from?
It comes from history. As I keep repeating, the failure of every effort to implement Marxism. I don't know why this is hard to get across. It doesn't matter what Le Guin thinks, what matters is does it work or not. It does not.
If it does work, you ought to be able to find a historical example. I can't find one, and nobody else has pointed one out, either.
What does that say about "critical thinkers" who push Marxism? I'd say critical thinking has been an abject failure for them.
> Let me put it this way. Marxism doesn't fly, and nobody has yet found an example of it flying
The best example of it "flying" is the evolution of the economic systems of the industrialized world in the direction Marx laid out and away from the system he described as "capitalism" since his time, and particularly from the early-mid-20th Century. Far from a perfect example, but there it is.
Lots of people say "Marxism can't work" because Leninism, which, viewed cynically, is a thin veneer of Marxist rhetoric around naked authoritarianism or, viewed generously in its own overt terms, is an adaptation of Marxism to bypass the extensive period of the development of market capitalism and proletarian class consciousness under it, has had pretty poor results in the real world. But Leninism's failures can tell something about Leninism, but very little about Marxism.
Voluntary Marxism doesn't work, either. See the 20,000 American communes, which all failed, and the Israel kibbutzen, which cannot survive without generous subsidy from the government.
It's legal to start a commune in the US. You can always start one, and prove voluntary Marxism works.
> See the 20,000 American communes, which all failed, and the Israel kibbutzen, which cannot survive without generous subsidy from the government.
Its false to say all American communes have failed (in fact, recent counts have many more with a much larger total population than when they were getting lots of attention, they just aren't an interesting novelty anymore), but there is nothing in Marxist theory that involves small voluntary communities doing their own thing separate from the state they are embedded in. Some communes may have been started by people who were personally Marxist in ideology, but communes in the sense that you are referring to have little to do with Marxism (I suppose that some Marxist might adopt a praxis in which they are seen as a means
to advance a broader revolution which is Marxist, but that's still doesn't make their success or failure relevant to Marxism as a system.)
The list is right there, answer your own question. At least 89 years, though maybe there is something older.
> Come on. You think Marxism works, find one that works.
Again, communes aren't Marxist in the first place (though some small minority of communes may be composed of Marxists), but there are several on that list decades older and significantly larger than that one.
Also, I provided upthread what I described as the best example of Marxism working, this whole discussion of communes is you trying to beat a strawman that you set up, but failing even at that.
> Jamestown and Plymouth were (failed) communes
Neither Jamestown nor Plymouth were remotely communes at any point, including in their planning and founding. (While it was merged with a number of other colonies in a later colonial reorganization, I also don't understand what your criteria is for Plymouth failing, unless you mean failing as a commune, which is unsurprising since it never tried to be a commune, being closer to a capitalist republic with a very strong state church, from its founding to when it ceased to be a separate entity.)
> Just because they predated Marxism doesn't mean they aren't Marxist.
No, institutions which predate the existence of Marxism were not Marxist, but I guess this illustrates your commitment to seeing the world as a duality of things which are Marxism and things which are opposed to it, even where not only does that conflict not exist, but also it is logically impossible for it to exist.
Because my interest in your shifting criteria on whether American communes have “failed”—a subtopic that is itself irrelevant to the point it in turn is supposed to support about Marxism because, again, American communes aren't Marxism in the first place—is limited.
> > I provided upthread what I described as the best example of Marxism working
The best example of it "flying" is the evolution of the economic systems of the industrialized world in the direction Marx laid out and away from the system he described as "capitalism" since his time, and particularly from the early-mid-20th Century. Far from a perfect example, but there it is.
> Why is it so hard for you to be specific?
Why is it so hard for you to read the posts you respond to?
Critical thinking isn't just realizing that Marxism has problems, it's also realizing whatever you've bought into whole hog has problems that will lead to the collapse if not remediated.
Is the free market working? Why can't we seem to make progress on income inequality and climate change? What happened to the 15 hour work week Keynes predicted? If free markets have no "deep or fundamental" problems, and free markets are our modus operandi, why aren't we in living in some kind of Jetsons utopia?
Is it really critical thinking to score ideas pass/fail like that? When I think of critical thinking I think of something synthetic - improving ideas, rather than binning them into narrow categories. Deciding that an idea is worthless and doesn't need any further consideration - that would seem to me to be the death of critical thinking.
> Why can't we seem to make progress on income inequality
Income inequality is a fake problem, invented by Marxists because the poor in America are actually rather well off (note that the poor from other countries are desperate to get in to the US). It's largely driven by envy.
> What happened to the 15 hour work week
Start a company and work 15 hours a week if you like.
> climate change
We'd be a lot better off if the leftists would stop blocking the most pragmatic solution - nuclear power. Besides, communists have a very sorry environmental record.
> why aren't we in living in some kind of Jetsons utopia?
We are. Have you noticed that we have quite a few of the Jetsons' futuristic gadgets?
> Deciding that an idea is worthless and doesn't need any further consideration - that would seem to me to be the death of critical thinking.
You're welcome to think all you like about how great Marxism is. If you try to implement it here, I'll vote against you.
I've definitely met annoying Marxists who say things that you just don't know how to respond to because they're disconnected from reality. But I've also met Marxists who weren't weird tankies, who regarded eg the Societ Union as a failure which demanded their ideas be revised.
I've heard the complaint that Marxist academics are corrupting the youth many times but I just don't see any evidence for it. No one I met in school was a Marxist. And not to Godwin the conversation but it's uncomfortably close to the literal Nazi conspiracy theory/propaganda of Cultural Marxism, close enough that I suspect this is the original source of the idea (which is, to be clear, a comment on the heritage of the idea, and not a comment about you or anyone else who holds the idea), so I just can't really give much credence to it. And it feels like we're discussing politics rather than critical thinking here.
I think it's valuable to have your ideas challenged and to respond to some kind of feedback loop. Reality provides pretty good feedback loops, we're in agreement there. But there are plenty of times when you can talk your way into a bad engineering decision. Not to touch a nerve, but Boeing talked the FAA into approving various bad decisions about pilot training and tolerating a single point of failure around introducing MCAS to the 737 MAX. You might say this is an exception that proves the rules because they did result in an accident, but then why shouldn't we extend that same grace to the Marxists who aren't weird tankies?
I think you're discounting other forms of feedback. In the social sciences you often have limited empirical feedback because you can only analyze natural experiments, and because it's very difficult to infer a cause from statistics alone. But I think you overstate the extent to which rhetoric dominates and reason is subordinate. Sophistry doesn't have an infinite hold across space and across time. Maybe you are able to talk someone into believing a bad theory; that doesn't mean you can convince everyone or that they'll stay fooled forever.
You clearly have ideas about topics in the social sciences, at a minimum that Marxism is a failure. And I believe I've seen you comment about monetary theory. So you think that these things are epistemologically tractable, right? That it's possible to know these things? So why shouldn't it be possible to organize a field of inquiry into these topics? And if it's so vague and vulnerable to sophistry, how can you be sure you haven't been taken in yourself?
There have been many variations on Soviet Marxism. They all failed, too.
> I've heard the complaint that Marxist academics are corrupting the youth many times but I just don't see any evidence for it.
Ask any of them how the free market works. They have no idea. The latest generation of youth have leaned quite a bit left.
> And it feels like we're discussing politics rather than critical thinking here.
Sort of. My thesis is that if someone actually applied critical thinking, they'd reject Marxism. I cannot fathom how someone can claim to be educated in critical thinking yet embrace Marxism, a system that fails every time it has been tried History is full of examples. Did you know that the US has had over 20,000 communes tried? With a 100% failure rate.
> why shouldn't we extend that same grace to the Marxists who aren't weird tankies?
Because they've had the grace. It still doesn't work.
> how can you be sure you haven't been taken in yourself?
Tens of thousands of attempts to implement Marxism, with a 100% failure rate.
> No one I met in school was a Marxist.
Most Marxists deny they are Marxist, but when you listen to their philosophy, it's Marxism.
BTW, there is one sphere where Marxism works. Hollywood. Hollywood loves to crank out shows where Marxism works. One of them is Star Trek. Before you all jump on me, I'm a Trekkie myself! But come on. The Enterprise is the perfect Marxist society, presided over by the incorruptible benevolent dictator. His loyal comrades are all selfless, also incorruptible, and utterly lack any ambition whatsoever other than serving the ship. Everyone selflessly shares equally. There's no money, and no crime.
The bad guys, the Ferengi, are (naturally) capitalists, with their ugly faces and pointed teeth. They are always wrong about everything.
There's no debate... words have defined meanings. Aligning with those meanings helps ensure mutual understanding between you and whoever you're communicating with.
> Tens of thousands of attempts to implement Marxism, with a 100% failure rate.
Ten thousand attempts but you didn't seem to feel that the specifics of a single one would illustrate your point? It doesn't seem to me like you're making an evidentiary claim, it seems like an ideological one. And that's not an invalid thing to do but I do think we're increasingly debating politics and ideology and not discussing critical thinking.
The closest you come to a specific example is here:
> Did you know that the US has had over 20,000 communes tried? With a 100% failure rate.
But come on, you must know that there are communes which are successful (eg Israel is well known for it's kibutzes, which are their mode of commune) and that Marxists don't have a monopoly on the concept of a commune. Eg, libertarian seasteading (which also has a rough track record) is a similar concept, but libertarians are seldom Marxists. Intentional communities usually fail, for more or less the same reason startups usually fail; it's a difficult, risky endeavor.
> The latest generation of youth have leaned quite a bit left.
> My thesis is that if someone actually applied critical thinking, they'd reject Marxism. I cannot fathom how someone can claim to be educated in critical thinking yet embrace Marxism[.]
> Most Marxists deny they are Marxist, but when you listen to their philosophy, it's Marxism.
To be completely honest, it seems to me like "Marxist" to you means, "someone who is young, politically left of center, and who's ideas I disagree with." Frankly I don't think you have a good grasp on what Marxism is? You're mostly using generalities and when you do get specific, it's usually weird stuff like "the crew of the Enterprise are loyal and selfless" that's entirely tangential. (The notable exception being where you mentioned Marx's prediction that capitalism would implode.)
The Hollywood stuff is really reaching. Star Trek is utopian, but utopianism isn't Marxism, and the Ferengi aren't the villains (except in a handful of TNG episodes and one Voyager episode - and I haven't watched the newer stuff like Picard, so perhaps I'm missing some here and there). They're mostly in Deep Space Nine (where they're in nearly every episode), where they are protagonists. The workers do not own the means of production in Star Trek, there is no class struggle, there's nothing about historical materialism, there's nothing I can think of (also a lifelong Trekkie) remotely Marxist about it.
If you lump Communism together with Marxism (they're not identical concepts but they're close enough, sure), and take the definition of Communism as "a stateless, classless, moneyless society where workers own the means of production," then there are some surface level similarities. The Federation is moneyless, and while they aren't classless (they're a meritocracy, so class still exists), they are egalitarian. That's pretty thin as far as it being Marxist or Communist. It's techno-utopianism, something I'd associate more with Libertarianism (in that I mostly hear it from people of that persuasion, eg Elon Musk [an avowed anti-Marxist], though I wouldn't call Star Trek Libertarian either).
To respond more specifically:
> The Enterprise is the perfect Marxist society, presided over by the incorruptible benevolent dictator. His loyal comrades are all selfless, also incorruptible, and utterly lack any ambition whatsoever other than serving the ship. Everyone selflessly shares equally. There's no money, and no crime.
None of these things are related to Marxism (except money as discussed earlier), and there's tons of episodes about flaws in their society or crimes that happen. You're objecting to utopianism.
> The bad guys, the Ferengi, are (naturally) capitalists, with their ugly faces and pointed teeth. They are always wrong about everything.
They're regularly the heroes of the story in DS9, where their negotiating skill or enlightened self interest saves the day. (An arbitrary example from the top of my mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s - in which the Ferengi Quark convinces someone to pursue diplomacy over violence because the "price of peace" is at all at time low)
> Ten thousand attempts but you didn't seem to feel that the specifics of a single one would illustrate your point?
Do I need to? The Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Venezuela, Chile's regular dips into Marxism, the Summer of Love in Seattle, the Summer of Love in San Francisco, Woodstock, and the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements.
The kibbutzen require state subsidy to operate, funded by taxes levied on capitalist businesses. Otherwise they'd all starve.
> except in a handful of TNG episodes
Those are the only ones I saw. I stopped watching STTNG after it became less about scifi and mostly about pushing a narrative. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Marxism is the opposite of free markets.
> remotely Marxist about it
The capitalist Ferengi with their ugly faces and sharp nasty teeth said it all. The Enterprise community was the post-Marxist world where everybody was equal and everybody shared and pulled together.
I've been reading a book I saw recommended on HN called The Chuang Tzu. I'm reminded of a story in there, where the author character berates someone who smashed all of the gourds they had grown because they couldn't fit them neatly into the categories of gourd they imagined useful.
"Clearly," chides Chuang Zhou, "your head is full of underbrush."
I thought if I pointed out the underbrush you'd see it was obscuring your vision. But now I wonder if maybe you regard what's beyond as an eyesore, and the underbrush as a tool to keep it from your view.
Maybe you're right, maybe it's more important to be happy than to see clearly. I wish you the best.
> Maybe you're right, maybe it's more important to be happy than to see clearly.
The historical record of Marxism/Communism is quite clear.
I'm curious what you'd think of "critical thinking experts" who theorize that the Earth is flat, write Nebula award-winning novels about flat Earths, etc.?
Hey unrelated but check out Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I think you'll enjoy it. It's sort of a criticism of the utopianism in previous Star Treks. It's gritty and the characters have to make hard choices, where "everybody wins because it's a utopia" isn't an option. Some characters are literal terrorists and the show does a pretty good job of letting that be morally gray. It asks the question, "what happens when a utopian society must go to war? Is the benevolence a facade masking a core which is authoritarian or fascistic?"
If you only watch one episode, make it "The Siege of AR-558." You once told me in Memphis Belle you could see the "fear in their faces, the bravery, the hurt, the relief." Actors of course can't do what documentary subjects can, but that is what this episode aims for.
Also check of Andromeda. It's similarly critical, it's like Star Trek if it was a dystopia where the federation had collapsed because their utopianism had made them vulnerable to betrayal by their closest allies (who are literal nihilists). My understanding is Roddenberry came up with the idea but passed away before it could be realized. It asks the question, "okay, we have this techno-utopian concept, but how does that grapple with the existence of evil in the world?"
Don't sleep on TNG either. Did you watch until the Borg were introduced? The Borg are a foil for the Federation I think you'd enjoy, a dystopia of enforced uniformity, a grotesque socialism. Each receives according to their need and gives according to their ability, but through means sickening and unconscionable. Skipping around to just the Borg episodes might be interesting.
That reminds me of Animal Farm, a novel I bet we've both enjoyed. I'm due for a reread.
I'm sorry if I said anything hurtful or frustrating. I hope next time we see each other around HN there won't be hard feelings. I consider your commentary on the intersection of aviation and software development to be must-read, and I have a lot of respect for you.
Ironically I think Marxism itself is probably a good driver of critical thinking with all the materialist analysis and whatnot. Lots of paths to trace and effects to consider.
"I wonder why?" A stranger mused.
"I know," her companion sneered, "it's because some engineer designed it."
She wasn't wrong per say, an engineer had designed the platform - a hundred years ago, for a different train. The train we were riding had squeeked through the legislature on a shoestring budget, reusing the existing tracks and with only a few new platforms slated to be built. And many of those were axed along the way due to budget overruns and such. It was a political miracle the train existed at all.
But this passenger wasn't really looking for context. She had stereotypes and narratives that explained the situation to her satisfaction.
Are you quite sure that you are engaging your faculties of critical thinking here, rather than relying on narratives and stereotypes? Does it really seem likely to you that the people doing the work you're most familiar with are the only people capable of thinking critically? Or that the feedback loops that you've had in your career are the only ones available?