I was wondering why Marxism was still a thing and this placed seemed to be filled with Marxists. So, why? Didn’t the fall of USSR teach us anything? Do today’s Marxists think that USSR did something wrong? In other words, will they do anything different than the dictators of the soviet union? Also, some here seem to admire Stalin. I would really have to try hard to find a community that would admire Hitler but apparently admiring Stalin, another mass murder seems to be perfectly fine!
Read/watch these in order:
Socialism is just better, scientifically
Capitalism doesn’t work
“X socialist country has failed” is a stupid argument
Quick guide to debunking death toll claims
Socialism is Better Than Capitalism… Right?
Socialism faq
Explaining stuff about socialism that confuses you
Crash Course Socialism
Edit: I love the instantaneous downvote, fast enough that I know they didn’t properly go through a single resource.
Based on only the titles, the 3rd and 4th are the only ones that actually approach the given question. I think that’s why the comment isn’t well-received. Are the others really necessary, or optional additional reading/watching? The first just makes a horrible clickbait impression from the dumb mocking thumbnail and bragging title, it feels like self-assurance rather than convincing an audience. I don’t think it’s an effective way to introduce skeptical people.
The reason I’m saying only the titles is, quite frankly, I’m not motivated to go through that list if I’m the OP asking a question. I have limited time.
The main question was why is Marxism still a thing. I don’t see why posting information about why socialism/Marxism is preferred by many is unnecessary. You also need to know the cause of social problems under capitalism and how socialism would address them before tackling real world examples. Otherwise it’s like explaining why food that sit too long in the pan burns to someone that doesn’t know how heat works.
If you actually watched it, it’s a detailed overview and defense of a published and peer reviewed paper. Therefore, scientific.
Surprise surprise, the issue of capitalism vs socialism is extremely vast. It affects every single part of human life and society. People spend their entire lives researching it. So even the most basic explanation is bound to be kind of long.
If you’re serious about getting an answer to your questions, you need to spend time doing research. There is absolutely no way to trim down an answer to “why Marxism” into anything resembling bite sized. In the same sense of you can’t teach the theory of relativity in five minutes, you can’t teach the political theory of capitalism vs socialism in five minutes either.
Finally, a short answer leaves little to no room for supporting evidence or citations. I feel that if I had posted something like that, you’d be (rightfully) complaining that I just made claims and none of them are backed up.
And that’s the problem: I didn’t want to watch it. And I agree with it.
There’s more to rhetoric and convincing people than merely being correct and well-cited. Those are important, and I love those, but understanding your audience is critical if you want them to even begin reading, let alone continue.
I personally believe that a good approach is to post the shorter material that directly answers their written arguments in the body of the post (like the “USSR failed” and “mass murderer” points) and then say the rest, like “to understand the other reasons why people support Marxism, see these:”.
The image you posted in https://lemmy.ml/post/218208/comment/150132 gives an excellent counter-argument to this claim.
It doesn’t go into depth, it leaves that for later now that you have their interest. You’ve provided the introduction at the beginning of the book, a quick snippet of the benefits the USSR brought to its people and the impacts of taking it away. They didn’t need to read Capital Vol. 1-3 to understand that 0% unemployment was achieved. And now that they see that, you have their interest, and your links come into play with a more in-depth explanation of why Marxism was responsible for this and able to help achieve it.
I do get what you mean, so point taken there, even though I still believe in consuming a piece of media in its entirety before coming to a conclusion.
A huge part of this problem I think is also the culture surrounding informative pieces in general. I highly doubt “a review and defense of X paper on the economic effectiveness of socialism” will get even a fraction of the views. It’s so bad that even actual academic papers are making things like “visual abstracts” (infographics) and stuff because otherwise people, including other researchers don’t get interested in reading it. Apparently reading a one-paragraph text-only abstract is too much to ask now.
That post was also downvoted to hell, even more than the “link dump”. I suspect because people just assumed that it’s all BS even though sources are found at the bottom. I mention this because I see this happen every time, particularly on places like Reddit. Something like this:
This is why I’m hesitant to use this format.
Yeah, it’s a terrible thing how marketing techniques have found their way into research, especially when they should be the most motivated to tolerate dryiness.
+12 / -4 isn’t really down, but yes you’re right that the ‘link dump’ is being better received. Point taken, I was a bit quick to bite.
I am sorry, I haven’t been able to open lemmy for a long time. terrible things going on in real life. And thank you for all those resources, I haven’t read them yet but I will. And no I didn’t downvote you.