The Communist Manifesto? Is that a video game?

Leon Trotsky? What’s his Twitter handle?

Antonio Gramsci? Did he invent Instagram?

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The average non-Marxist has heard of the Communist Manifesto and thinks that is the extent of the philosophical canon. The average Liberal has not even read any Liberal philosophy, like Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Paine, etc.

    • macabrett@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The average non-marxist doesn’t know that “Capital” and “The Communist Manifesto” are different things, much less that the latter is a pamphlet and not a book.

      • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        100%

        I remember reading the communist manifesto in university twice because I was sure I must have missed something. (This was extra curricular, I was in engineering) Like it was fine, but it didn’t really live up to my expectations of reframing history by analyzing it through the lens of class.

        I only recently figured out that it wasn’t Capital. (It was before I read your post but probably within the last year, so ~15 years from when I read the manifesto).

        I haven’t gotten around to reading Capital, would it work as an audio book?

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      They are way more likely to have read Voltaire or even Montaigne than they are Montesquieu unless he substantially overlaps with their field of study, at least to the best of my memory. Swift is another.