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[–] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

Im being tongue in cheek. She is an ultraliberal, but she also understands communism and materialism and the like. In my mind it is incredibly rare that someone actually understands marxism, yet reject it still.
Understanding marxism makes you a marxist. If you then decide to still act at the behest of neoliberalism, then you're truly evil, you're going against your own rationality and what you understand to be for the best for society.
I know that's just me being a word fucker, but I hope it makes sense.

The way i see it its nearly impossible to understand communism and not be a communist. Its like that guy in the matrix who chooses to go back - he knows its all fake. I sort of figure Joyce is the same way.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago* (6 children)

    A lot of very wealthy people understand dialectical materialism somewhat instinctively, because it is important to understand the way money works to keep it and make more of it.

    They might not even know Marx, but their lived experience has taught them what is already apparent in Capital.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It's not instinctive (in general), it's an important element of their "job" besides owning things. They need to know how to defuse or redirect (and then defuse) populist movements.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    I mean instinctive because it is not structured the same way that studying dialectical materialism from a Marxist framework would be. You kind of just pick it up by owning shit and being halfway competent at it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I think that you might be impressed by the level of detailed instruction higher-level managers and the like sometimes get in terms of undermining organizing, promoting false consciousness, etc. There are silly franchisees, careless nepo babies, and nouveau riche rentiers who don't get the same level of education on the topic, but I don't think the machine could maintain itself if everyone was like them (even to the degree that it does, as it bleeds slowly to death before our eyes in part because of those incompetent subgroups).

    I agree that, for petty bourgeois people who succeed, there's probably a large element of tacit knowledge and such rather than explicit knowledge (though they too are capable of research).

    Anyway, I just wanted to present some points to consider.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Sure, but the super wealthy don't. In part because large amounts of money changes your brain. Look at the billionaires that are politically engaged, even Peter Thiel, scary as he is, doesn't really understand how the world works.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    She was born in Revachol and probably studied economy.

    I know a economic major, her curriculum included Das Kapital and she still became an Ultralib. Really into Hayek. Might be a Europe thing.

    I also set next to a table of some Spanish economists (one of them literally said "we are all economists" to the group. I guess they weren't actually all Spanish because then they wouldn't have been speaking English) in a Korean restaurant a few days ago. They were talking shit about the Sandinistas and about how corrupt African countries are because the company one of them worked for bribed some officials and made a project bigger than necessary. Sort of Joyce vibes too.

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