“Communism bad”
“Why?”
200 year old tropes so ancient they were debunked by Marx himself
Of course, you go through the motions of explaining the most basic political concepts that could be grasped by skimming the cliff notes for literally any Marxist works
“Friedrich Engels? Is he like the president of Germany or something?”
It’s like a kindergartener trying to teach you calculus.
It worked for
who claims to have studied communism for over 20 years and by study he meant be really mad at the Manifesto.Which he didn’t actually read until circa 2020.
I believe he said he read it once in his earlier days.
(Maybe his youth? I feel like it was in his livestream where he responded to a question asking what he’s doing to prepare for the debate and he told on himself because he said “well, there’s a lot you can do in 24 hours” and proceeded to say that he’s going to do a “close re-reading” of the manifesto, which he reported to have read many years prior, but I could be getting confused here.)
Bruh.
You don’t read The Communist Manifesto because you’re a fraud and a charlatan.
I don’t read The Communist Manifesto because it’s a rushed pamphlet drafted with the intent to inform the demands of the European masses during the revolutions of 1848 and as such it holds very little value as theory.
We are not the same.
It’s clear he didn’t particularly understand it either. He took the manifesto as a call to make paradise on Earth. His opening statement was saying that paradise cannot exist on earth, because living as a human means existing within brutal, uncaring nature.
He brought up that the manifesto doesn’t mention nature like this, which is true, it’s a political manifesto for organizing factory workers. If he had read Capital he’d know Marx defines labor as transformation of natural resources through human ingenuity.
I don’t think Peterson ever cared about history or theory as much as vibes. I don’t think he even regards facts as important. He likes little anecdotes that signal things with metaphorical truths.
100% agree.
I don’t think he actually read the whole Manifesto through tbh and if he did, he was too busy coming up with his own personal objections to each sentence that he was clearly unable to see the forest for the trees.
I’m not saying that he would have come out of the reading as a freshly-minted Marxist but he was really grandiose and slimy about his refuting of the communist manifesto in a way that was obvious he thought he had this list of epic gotchas but it just showed that he didn’t go into reading it with the intent of understanding it or refuting it from its own internal logic.
I’d tolerate his approach to the manifesto better if he made asides to how it didn’t address this or that issue before proceeding to critique the actual content and arguments of the manifesto itself but to expect that someone would provide an account of human nature in a 30 page pamphlet while expounding upon their entire political philosophy is, frankly, ridiculous (and even moreso when you’re expecting Marx of all people to do that.)
Peterson is such a pseud.
I bring this up a lot and I’m sorry if people here have to read it over and over, but I’m always gonna bring it up since it’s central to who Peterson is. During that debate Zizek asked Peterson to specifically name any alleged Marxist professors. Peterson had no names, probably because he wanted to say Foucault or Marcuse, guys who’ve been dead for decades. Zizek offered the name David Harvey, the British scholar who’s an expert on Marx’s Capital. Peterson didn’t recognize the name.
I still can’t believe that this wasn’t the big “Emperor has no clothes” moment that, by rights, it should have been to the Peterson fanboys.
It was super funny how before the debate Jorp was all
”I’ve studied communism”, but during the debate he was more like 
”Oh shit oh fuck I haven’t done the reading and the teacher’s asking me questions”
I think he’s read Solzhenitsyn too haha
I’ve read the Gulag Archipelago that Peterson recommends.
It’s the most propaganda ridden book I’ve read about the USSR, so many factual inaccuracies and lies.
Dude’s own ex wife said in an interview that it’s all nonsense
Western “communism studies” invariably consists of undergrad classes taught by either cold warrior professors or miserable academics, and the “study” consists entirely of regurgitating passages from whatever pseudointellectual anticommunist steaming drivel Anne Applebaum shat out this year.
how did this fascism end up in my anticommunism??!?!?!?!?!?
200 year old tropes so ancient they were debunked by Marx himself
In the very first lecture of my Macro 101 course in undergrad, my libertarian econ professor talked about how if the LTV was correct then an inedible mud pie would have as much value as a real pie. I was delighted when I first read Capital and I saw that Marx debunked this very myth like on page 4. Marx is great at anticipating objections and then thoroughly responding, it’s just the libs don’t bother to read him.
Are these dumbasses aware that they’re not the first people in the world to think of the most basic and simple objections?
“socially necessary labor time” is a phrase to liberals like garlic to vampires
It’s lovely to hear people say that Marx has been debunked. Have they read Marx? No, of course not. The debunkers who they DID read hadnt either so this conversation is always pleasant
They aren’t interested in the truth. They’re interested in “debunking” Marxism by any means necessary. It’s the political version of the gamer thing where you don’t need to actually play the game to decide it’s bad because professional opinion havers already told you what to think.
What is the debunking, for those of us who are unread savages.
value is produced not by “any labor time that i imagine” but by “socially necessary labor time.” mud pies are not socially necessary in any context, and it would be an absurd counterfactual to attempt to defend. the hypothetical society too stupid to realize that mud pies are worthless.
mud pies are not socially necessary in any context
It’s not funny. It should be terrifying. Because confidence works. Because that’s how millions of people have been convinced in the holiness of capitalism and will fight you, literally fight you with guns and bombs, to prevent even a ghost of communism from echoing meekly anywhere in their bubble.
And they back it all up with decades upon decades of propaganda, media, shite pushed endlessly since the creation of USSR at least. Which feeds the confidence. “Oh yeah, if gommunism so good why did this random bloke who ran away from Russia in 1992 as his country burned and boiled around him says he lives okay in USA?! Checkmate, tankie!”.
It’s not funny, it’s not fun. It’s horrifying and gutwrenching
Liberals keep saying history is written by the winners while simulatenously believing everything Westerners wrote about communism after the Cold War.
You also get libs from ex-socialist countries that go
"You wouldn’t like communism like I lived it in x Warsaw pact country "
Then they follow that with the most racist, fascistic thing possible. Happens everytime
Don’t forget born in 1992
Pfff. More like 2003
Communism is when PiS (or Platforma, depending on who you ask) is in power.
realizing this has actually helped my mental health so much. liberals are fundamentally unserious about politics, so I simply don’t have to care what they think, in the same way I don’t care about childrens opinion on topics they dont understand. it’s very liberating, I’ve found
Death to America
That is why they always side with the fascists, like clockwork. They keep doubling down in their anti-communism that eventually they’re indistinguishable from actual fascists.
Also you nailed the Engels thing 😂 they have no clue who he is.
the way libs talk about communism is on the same level of sophistication as evangelicals explaining how evolution is bunk
“This story I really like that I interpret in a crude and narratively literal way says that I am the chosen one of epic destiny and everyone outside of my special group is stupid and wrong and fundamentally evil.”
Liberals
Fundies
