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Comment by ptah | Hacker News Reader

nice whataboutism. fact remains peterson is clueless about marxism

Most of Peterson's experience with Marxism is through reading about it's effects (Gulag Archipelago, collecting soviet era propoganda), not reading about it's philosophy. The philosophy can be understood pretty easily from social context without having read the Manifesto.

The Communist Manifesto doesn't explain the philosophy of marxism in any meaningful way, it's about the goals of what we would today call a socialdemocratic party, with the important difference that back then such parties were actually intending to implement socialism after reaching said goals.

To have a bare minimum of an idea of what was Marx talking about, I'd recommend reading at least "Wage Labour and Capital". Judging from how many strawmans of Marx's take on Labour Theory of Value are out there, I'm fairly sure it can't be guessed from context.

What is the point of this kind of comment? Can you not see that its information content is zilch. How about telling us why you take this view and then we might not have wasted seconds reading something to no purpose.

the point is that just stating the opinion that some marxists don't know much about marx does not excuse peterson's ignorance

fact: marxism is a steaming pile of horseshit.

Source: lived in the USSR

(disclosure: born and living in Poland)

Dunno, with all the awful things that your rulers have done, I think that if the impotent Tsarist Russia has survived into the WWII, I'd be speaking German at the very best.

without communist revolution and Stalin's pact with Hitler, I don't think there would've been a WWII

Last time I checked, it was common knowledge that Hitler invaded Poland because we wouldn't agree to an ex-territorial corridor to Danzig. Of course that's simplifying a lot, but still, I don't see how a revolution in Russia factors into this. Auschwitz is also on Lenin? The mass grave of victims of German soldiers near my parents' house too?

yes, that's simplifying a lot, definitely. First, the whole landscape would've been different. And then, Hitler invaded Poland because he could, and because he had additional reassurance from Molotov-Ribbentrop. Also, you are conveniently skipping the part where USSR invaded the remaining part of Poland two weeks later. (Need I remind you about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre ?)

As for Auschwitz, nice strawman. Stalin and Lenin have blood of millions on their hands, no need to bring up something unrelated.

I meant that while my country was quite fucked because of USSR, it would be completely wiped out without it. [1] I brought up Auschwitz specifically because it was the Red Army that finally kicked Germans out of there (only when it was convenient, but still).

[1] I know people IRL who claim Poland should have teamed up with Hitler against USSR and then double-crossed him, but I have doubts it would work.

EDIT: I re-read the above conversation, and I'm still not sure how did I end up defending USSR in the name of a discussion boiling down to "do you prefer plague or leprosy?" I don't think we really disagree all that much, so I'm out, thanks for conversation.

Accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing. The demise of marxism (at least in the Western world) started when clueless people like Marcuse started riding on its wave without having any idea what they were talking about.

And on the back of clueless intellectuals like Marcuse you have today's pseudo-intellectuals (including people like Peterson) who ignore the big marxist elephant in the room: the fact that poor people are being exploited by the rich to this very day, instead they are focusing their intellectual "fights" on irrelevant things (like being a feminist or an anti-feminist).

To point back to the article, we have no Zola of our times.

It seems like if you're going to engage in a public debate in favour of or opposing X, the bare minimum expectation should be that you do enough background research to be able to speak in an informed manner about X.

To be fair to Peterson knowing about the downsides may be sufficient knowledge to oppose it. I don't need to know the tripe about Nazi racial theory and Lebenstraum to know they are horrible people to be opposed and even neutral acceptance is an unacceptable position - their lengthy list of travesties and failures is good enough to say "it is not only a horrible evil but an ineffective one". Even if ignoring morality they aren't an effective model.

Not that Nazism and Communism are equivalent. The later at least has some non-evil implementations - there is a wide difference between unironic Stalinists who see murdering anyone slightly better off as a solution and those who think "Hey we can try to provide a good standard of living with worker owned cooperatives". Even if the latter is doomed to failure it is in no way equivalent to Nazis or even Stalinist "cousins".

Care to give an example of where do you think I'm wrong? What does "X" mean? Do you contest the influence of guys like Marcuse on today's public intellectuals and academia? What do you mean by "background research"? I did read a lot of Marx (his youth works, Capital I, half of Grundrisse) and I did read some Marcuse (couldn't make that much out of it, but I can certainly say that his works had no direct relation to Marx's works).

I also really do believe that today's public intellectuals are ignoring the blight of the majority of the people inhabiting this planet, being they men or women (like I said, we have no Zola of our time). I'd be happy to be proven wrong in which with case I'm eager for book recommendations.

Honestly, I'm pretty taken down by comments such as yours, with general statements that point at nothing in particular (again, what does "X" mean?) in response to a comment like mine that directly mentions two or three things included in TFA (Peterson, Zola, Marx and public intellectuals generally speaking). I expect better from the HN public.

It seems he's talking about Peterson, not you.

> What does "X" mean?

Literally any topic that one might try to have an intellectual debate about.

In this case, you're choosing "Marxism", but my point is far more general than that. If you're going to stand up and publicly make arguments about feminism, dark energy, protecting endangered species, the rise of China, post-impressionism... the very least you can do is enough background reading to not make a fool of yourself.

Contrary to your assertion that "accusing a non-marxist that he is clueless about marxism is not that big of a thing", I am saying that being clueless about the very thing you've arrogantly stood up to talk about in public is a big deal and should be humiliating.

I don't think you and I actually disagree that Peterson is an embarrassment.

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