Hacker News Reader

Comment by aabhay | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to hear that the high school debate world is just like it was when I went to high school 20 years ago.

I became somewhat radical and left wing through my debate experience and then took action on it in college (participated in lots of illegal/anti-cap collective actions at Berkeley) and ultimately found that the entire revolutionary cause and “movement” are intellectually bankrupt. It all certainly sounds and feels very different when you can flit around the intellectual landscape in a debate versus having to settle on a real vindication and make your life out of it.

View on HN

Had a similar experience - I was exceedingly excited after reading the communist manifesto, some Jorge Luis Borges, and a number of other revolutionary texts as a kid. I searched high and low for people to talk seriously about this with. It wasn’t until well into my late twenties I finally realized all the pleasant, satisfying, productive conversations I’d had had been with moderates or what I may have once foolishly called “imperialists”.

I do love talking to bright young communists tho. It’s amazingly pleasing to introduce an ounce of doubt, or conversely an ounce of appreciation for the world we inhabit.

The problem is that people get sucked into communism due to its success and the fact that Capital is crucial reading. Capital is also difficult reading that requires pre-Marx prerequisites, and The Communist Manifesto is really short. So people read The Communist Manifesto, which is really all Engels, and pretend to have read or understood Capital.

No need to get hung up on Communism. We have wonderful traditions of class politics in the US, pre- and early-Soviet Russia, Spain, Italy, Germany, India. You can almost entirely avoid that century of cargo-culted Bolshevik word salad.

What texts by Jorge Luis Borges are you thinking of? Wikipedia quotes him calling himself a conservative, and none of the short stories I’ve read strike me as revolutionary. Perhaps something from his youth?

I guess I don’t really know why I put Borges in that list like that. His poetry to me, is highly idealistic and Utopian. It was all about a better way for the world to work, if only some key change could be made. He was smarter than actual communists, in that the argument for dramatic change was emotional and poetic and full of sadness and hope. The most compelling reasons for revolution.

I just read his Wikipedia and it’s quite nice that like me, he drifted so far back into the mainstream from his more idealistic youth.

I had a very similar path. One thing that turned me away from radical thought was noticing that critical theory operates in the same way as a conspiracy theory. Getting really sick of it all these days.

That's an interesting framing. Feels more god of the gaps to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com