GrittyLeftist

I don't think history really shows anything about actual Communism, because I don't think there has been a Communistic government, only those that claim to be Communist while ignoring those principles of Communism that they find inconvenient. I wasn't trying to sell you a revolution, as I said I really don't think Communism is workable at this point in humanity's evolution. Was just trying to explain why I think the only reason anyone would ask "is Canada becoming Communist" is because of misinformation about what "Communism" entails. I am curious, though, about "continual revolution." I've never heard that phrase used to describe any society or ideology before and would be interested in knowing more about it. Ran some googles, found this Permanent revolution - Wikipedia (Trotsky) and this Continuous revolution theory - Wikipedia (Mao), is one of those what you meant or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?

You make some solid points and I can tell you're speaking in good faith. Sorry for the giant essay, I can't say this briefly. I'm not trying to convince you that "Communism is good" (frankly, I'm not sure if it's even possible) or really anything else in particular, just trying to push back against generations of accumulated misinformation. Finally, I am mostly self-taught, so there will be gaps in my knowledge, but I do not know where they are ? There is a lot of confusion about what is and isn't a Communist government. This is caused by the fact that the two greatest (pre-24-hour-news) propaganda machines in history both referred to the Soviet Union as a "Communist" state (I'm referring here to America and Russia during the Cold War). As a result, many reasonable adults believe that "Communism" is authoritarian, totalitarian, and rules through state-sponsored terror (secret police, political officers, gulags, etc) like the Soviet Union did or like China does. Marx opposed such policies, and explicitly warned about the danger of a small group of intellectuals seizing power "on behalf of the worker" as happened in Russia under Lenin. Agreed that China is not, and never has been, a Communist state. IMO the Soviet Union wasn't either, both are/were brutal, authoritarian, antidemocratic regimes that ruled through state terror. FWIW Noam Chomsky agrees, as a general rule people either consider him nigh-infallible, total BS or they ask 'whodat?' Your mileage may vary. If you decide to check him out I'd recommend searching youtube as his writings can be very dense but his speeches are more accessible. While some states have called themselves "Communist", I don't think there ever has been a Communist state - actual Communism would require democratic control of resources and the means of production. I think Communism is basically a poorly defined utopian vision where people work as they please doing what they please when they please, society is democratic nearly to the point of absurdity, and citizens cooperate in better faith than any real-life citizenry I'm aware of. Frankly, I doubt Communism is possible for humans as we exist now. I don't think Canada is moving towards a more totalitarian state - IMO a totalitarian state would have seen COVID as a great opportunity to "temporarily" remove a bunch of freedoms such as freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly etc, whereas Canada has consistently placed great importance on the rights of the privileged few to infect the responsible many. I'm aware there is a small but noisy minority complaining about not getting haircuts, eating at restaurants or various other inconveniences. Mao killed 4 million people just for having degrees, Stalin executed almost 800k and 1.7 million died in the Gulag*. Kinda hard for me to see any kind of equivalence. Class warfare is happening, but is nearly one-sided in Canada. Every year the super wealthy get richer and the rest of us get poorer. We never use words like "class consciousness," "commodity fetishism" or "solidarity" - indeed, many of us don't even know what some or all of them mean. Unions have been declining for decades (partly self-inflicted due to corruption). Universities face great pressure to platform right wing speakers and, to the best of my knowledge, never platform actual leftists (defined here as people advocating for the abolishment of capitalism). With the sole exception of the CBC, all of our media outlets are owned by billionaires, which gives them a great deal of leverage over which information is available to us, which pictures we see and which claims we find credible. Capitalist-owned media empires are always pushing the narrative that the media (which they own), hollywood, universities and schools are "leftist" in spite of the fact that none of them are advocating for the abolishment of capitalism, and few of them are even advocating for using democracy to bring about more socialistic policies within the bounds of capitalism. The idea that "government is bad and wasteful" has been pushed hard ever since the 70s - when the power of government is reduced, the power vacuum is filled by oligarchs. Class warfare is happening, and if you aren't worth millions, you're on the losing side Canada does not, and never has had, an actual left-wing government anywhere, although we have had many left-of-centre provincial governments. Keep in mind that Liberals (the ideology, not the party) are centrist, and all of Canada's federal governments have fallen under the ideology of Liberal, Conservative or Neoliberal, including the current Liberal government which talks like a Social Democrat but walks like a Neoliberal. Left wingers want to replace capitalism. They include socialists, communists and anarchists, and the farther left you go the more they fragment and waste their time and effort infighting, which is part of why so few people are aware of them. The leftest electable party Canada has is the NDP, which until Mulcair was Social Democrat, which means that they want to work within the bounds of capitalism using democracy to bring in specific socialist policies, such as socialized health care. Contrast that with advocating for class warfare to seize control of the means of production. Right now there is great confusion as to where the NDP and the Liberals are because the NDP betrayed their principles when they ran under Mulcair basically trying to eat the Liberals' lunch and the Liberals then ran on an NDP platform, then welched on the promises they were "just kidding" about. This has blurred their positions on the spectrum in the eyes of many reasonable adults. FWIW Liberals tend to campaign from the left and govern from the right - we can expect JT to *sound* lefter than he actually *acts*, again, your mileage may vary. It's worth pointing out that the "Canadian left" (Social Democrats) are not very happy with JT or the Liberals. In the interest of providing context, here is the (oversimplified) International political spectrum to the best of my knowledge: anarchist->communist->socialist->social democrat->liberal->conservative->neoliberal->fascist here is the Canadian political spectrum: social democrat->liberal->conservative->neoliberal and the American political spectrum: liberal->conservative->neoliberal->fascist *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin

For sure, didn't mean to put words in your mouth there. Agreed that those topics are under-taught nowadays, IMO our democracy suffers for it. Yeah, I see the problem you're getting at. For me the problem isn't ideology itself, it's that a)Most of us don't know what an ideology is or what ours is, b)Most of us lack the context and... political maturity?... to be able to engage with people of different ideologies, and c)A tiny group of people is making huge money by polluting public discourse with falsifiable untruths, bad-faith arguments, misleading information and an emphasis on provoking emotional response, rather than intellectual response.

Just googled it, you are correct. Thanks for the fact-check!

*this comment scrubbed to avoid spreading misinformation. Thanks to Argus for the fact-check*

I think this touches on a ongoing and important debate - should we be discouraging people from going to university for things which will not increase their earning potential? There are reasonable arguments that can be made for both sides, but I have not read very many people arguing that non-STEM degrees have value as well, so I'll go ahead and make a brief argument in favour or things like philosophy, history, etc. Which skills do you need to be an informed, responsible voter? Do we try to give those skills to people in public education? Do we do a good job? If they don't get those skills in school, where will they get them? There will always be more disadvantaged people than there are advantaged ones, so in a democracy, the most informed voters will be "cancelled out" by the public at large. Are we risking accidentally creating a voting public that is not competent to elect a good government? Which skills do you need to bear and raise children who will be useful citizens? Same questions and problems follow.

Agreed that this Liberal government is error-prone - seems the only target they can reliably hit is their own foot, which is a neat trick considering how often it's in JT's mouth. IMO Trudeau is in the same place Harper was in before Trudeau came on the scene - most Canadians want to move away from him, but feel they lack a credible alternative. I completely understand anyone who doesn't see Trudeau as a serious adult, but at this point in time he is the status quo, and keeping the status quo is always the easiest thing to do, from a purely political standpoint. The NDP is in worse shape than maybe they think they are IMO. Having betrayed their principles electing Mulcair to try to eat the Liberals' lunch, their "leftist" credentials are seriously tarnished, and I don't think they've really addressed this crisis at any point in time. Singh seems likeable to most, and most of those who dislike him were never voting NDP anyway IMO, but hard for me to see them as very credible at this point in time. The CPC has a tough circle to square. They've been telling everyone ever since 2008 that carbon taxes are a terrible idea and that climate change either isn't real or isn't as serious as some think it is. At this point in time their base believes this to be true as near as I can tell. Gonna be real tough for them to put forward a climate plan that is credible to their base without alienating everyone who isn't in their base. Less specifically, I think members of their base are more likely, all other things being equal, to subscribe to "alternative facts" (no disrespect intended here). Very hard to lead a party when you can't even articulate premises that don't sound false to either your base or everyone else. I think Pierre Poilievre is their most credible candidate for PM at this time. It brings me no joy to say that, as I think PP is a more talented version of Jason Kenney - a person who gets by politically by using their superior grasp of rhetoric to befuddle the voting public into voting for things that are against their own interest. IMO if we taught rhetoric in public school our politics would be much better. Anyways, I am not a partisan - I vote for policies, not parties, so I don't really care what brand our PM is. For me, every election is a search for the least repulsive option, and there is plenty of room for reasonable adults to disagree about which option is the least bad.

Was astonished to see 6 pages of discussion about this question. FWIW, this would be a very simple, easy and uncontroversial question if people only knew that "Communist" is a word that actually has a specific definition. Unfortunately, it is rarely used correctly in mainstream media. To avoid controversy, I googled "communism definition". From Oxford languages: a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. There actually is a Communist party active in Canada. It is the second oldest active political party (after the Liberals). If anyone is interested, Communist Party of Canada - Wikipedia.

Solid point. For me, Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse! were both very informative and important reads. Highly recommended.

A few thoughts - as technology gets more advanced and more complicated, society does as well. As a result, the problems faced by society will continue to get more complicated as humanity progresses, and therefore our morality must also become more complicated. Put another way, the easy problems were solved a long time ago. Most of the people who go to university are there as an economic investment. Many degrees that will increase your earning potential will not contribute to your ability to be a better voter. I believe that the best voters would be those who are well versed in history, philosophy and political science. For most people, it is not reasonable to invest several years and several tens of thousands of dollars in going to university to learn these things, because they will not directly impact your earning potential. This leaves the public education system to pick up the slack. Those subjects are oversimplified or absent at best in the public education system. At worst, they are there but in willfully distorted forms, as in history curriculums that reduce history to a collection of names and dates to memorize without trying to give students an actual narrative that helps explain how the past lead to the present. An excellent example is the fact that rhetoric and logic are withheld from students in public education. This leaves everyone who doesn't go to university for philosophy, political science, law, or some business degrees at a severe disadvantage to those who have, because they are less able to spot fallacious arguments and less able to weed out the rhetoric and put arguments into formal logic for ease of assessment. "Being smart" does not protect one from fallacies as much as education and practice. IMO those who organized our society are aware of this. I think they know that teaching this stuff is expensive, makes a person harder for political and economic elites to manipulate, and doesn't directly add to their earning potential. As someone once asked me, "Are YOU going to foot the bill to teach everybody else's kids how to argue about whether tables exist or not?" To quote Milton, "They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness."

I would respectfully invite you to consider that civility is the lubricant that allows people who disagree with one another to have fruitful conversations. I worked for more than 3 hours on that post. I am not perfect and neither is it, but it's hard to have a useful conversation with a person who is as angry as you seem to be. I hope that, at some point in time, you will be able to calm down, and if that happens I'll be happy to engage with you about this or any other matter. In the meantime, I wish you all the best. Principle of charity - Wikipedia

Respectfully, taxation isn't theft. We vote on our politicians and our politicians set our taxes. Taxation is legal, theft is not. I am not aware of a nation anywhere that has no taxes. Canadians are free to give their money to whoever they want, and (I believe) the person who receives it declares it as "earnings" and is taxed on it as though it were any other form of income. This is in accordance with the law, and the laws are created by the politicians we vote for. Frustrating at times? You betcha. Theft? Sorry, "theft" is a word that already has a legal meaning. I had not heard that property rights were not part of the constitution but looks like you are correct. Thanks for pointing that out, I did not know that. Which forms of protection of property do you believe are missing? Canadian property law - Wikipedia Sorry friend, climate change isn't hypothetical, and there aren't various crises, there is one crisis - we are on a path that will someday render our biosphere uninhabitable to humans. We can have a reasonable discussion about when that date is and which actions are the best to take to prevent that outcome, but the rest is settled, except among industry - funded lobbyists and some political partisans. That said, I would respectfully invite you to consider the stakes of this debate. If it turns out that the environmentalists are wrong, we'll waste a bunch of money and several thousand people will lose good paying jobs. I'm not trying to gaslight you, this would be a blow to the country as a whole and those individuals in particular, and I fully acknowledge that that would be bad and unfair. However, if it turns out the industry-funded lobbyists are wrong, we're looking at the extinction of our species. Personally, I have always found it incredible that we have chosen to weigh the wealth of a privileged few on the same scales as the survival of our species.

I think most people would argue that states have the right to taxation - not sure if you consider that arbitrary or not. Agreed that being poor does not confer virtue. I would argue that "property law" is enforced in Canada - if you want to evict your tenant the state will help you (after making you jump through a bunch of hoops), if someone destroys your property the police will come and they will get a fine and/or some time (if they're caught), if your employees go on strike the state will legislate them back to work and if they defy that legislation the state will authorize police violence against them, if you are trying to develop a resource project on unceded land the state will literally deploy militarized RCMP officers with assault rifles, media blackout zones, drones, and snipers with orders to use lethal force if necessary. In some circumstances it is legal for citizens to use violence to defend their own property. I'm not sure which property protections Canada is lacking, but I would be interested in hearing about them. I tried, but failed, to find out how many people incarcerated in Canada are there for property crimes, would be very interested if anyone else can find those numbers. If money is inherited, a gift, or easily earned, you didn't need to "work hard" to get it, therefore, saying "taxation decreases the incentive to work hard" does not work in these cases. In fact, you could make a good case that taxing these things *increases* the incentive to work hard - if you can't coast through life on inheritances, gifts and easy money, it seems to me that you have a greater incentive to work hard. Finally, this rhetoric about "I worked hard for this money" ignores the fact that there is very little correlation between "working hard" and "having money". Does Jeff Bezos work as hard as all of his employees put together? If not, why does he have more money than all of them? You may reply, "because he's smart." Is he smarter than all of his employees put together? Maybe he has that money because he has ruthlessly exploited an unfair system without caring about the people who suffer so that he can have a grossly inflated standard of living. For most people, if they work hard their boss makes more money but nothing changes for them. The ruling class likes to blame those people for their circumstances - "if you hadn't made bad choices you wouldn't be working for Wal-Mart/Amazon/7-11/Whoever!" Problem is that we have chosen to structure society in such a way that, if the people working "McJobs" had made better choices, someone else would be working there in their stead. If our current crop of homeless people began making "better choices" and stopped being homeless, a new batch would replace them, because we have created artificial scarcity of shelter, deliberately. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Anyways, just a thought. Thanks for reading!

No offense taken I didn't mean any either. A lot of what I call "political literacy" is stuff I've only learned in the past few years, and nobody tried to teach it to me in school. Agreed the Liberals used to be much more fiscally responsible, and that they just got elected by running on an NDP platform then welching on the parts they were "just kidding" about. FWIW, I'm scared of China and the US too, I don't blame anyone in government for those emotions, but I do think they ought to have a plan of some kind, and if the Liberals have deviated from their "economic engagement will improve China's human rights because REASONS!" platform, I have seen no evidence. Solid points with your last paragraph, and the way you phrased it I don't disagree. I would, however, point out that one of the meanings of the word "earn" is *deserve* and I believe that many rich people nowadays do not deserve their money. If I inherit six figures and invest it in industries which harm society and become a millionaire, have I "earned" that money? If I were able to buy up every vacant house in Canada and then leverage my monopoly to charge exorbitant rents, have I "earned" money? If I spend millions of dollars lobbying congress for them to change copyright laws, like Disney did, then turn around and use those new laws to make billions, have I "earned" those billions? If I convince taxpayers to fund the research and development of a life-saving vaccine, then sell it for profit, have I "earned" that money? If you answer 'yes' to some or all of these, that's cool, I ain't here to tell you right from wrong. I have noticed that as soon as someone acquires money they defend their right to keep it by claiming that they "worked hard" for it. I have literally seen an actual street-level drug dealer make that claim, no lie. He sincerely believed it, too. Sometimes when a wealthy person claims they "worked hard" for the money they "earned," the truth is a little more complicated.

Stick-tap for the good sleuthing! Geez, it's getting to the point where you need a university education and thirty hours per week of research to really know what's going on in the news. I am so grateful for the internet, warts and all, because it reduces the ability of gigantic corporations to decide which information we need to know and which we don't.

You do have a point - I was overgeneralizing too much. That said, it's hard for me to see any privately owned, for-profit business as being any farther left than Social Democrat (those are the folks who think we should work within the bounds of capitalism using democracy to advocate for more socialism). Also, many things are not privately owned in Canada, from roads to schools to bridges to airports to hospitals to prisons to parliament. I think I might have misunderstood you on that one though, maybe you meant something else? Interesting point about CNN. I do what I can to avoid 24 hour news sources because I see them as misinformation, so I am not in a good position to agree or disagree with you... except about misinformation, which I totally agree with you about. If I had my druthers there would be financial and legal penalties for organizations claiming to be "news" who were spreading demonstrably false information. I would also like to see some version of the Fairness Doctrine brought back. FCC fairness doctrine - Wikipedia

Haha I've been that guy. Well, not literally, I just mean "sincerely believing that things I saw on TV about American law applied in Canada."

Solid points here. I would probably look to create a few Crown corporations and funnel taxpayer contributions to research and development to them. That way the taxpayer owns the IP of whatever techs they produce, as opposed to how things work now, where we give money to companies to fund their r&d, then they keep the profits.

Sorry, noticed this post after the other one ? I totally believe you when you say you've seen a changing platform on the web that claims to represent BLM. I have not yet been able to find any evidence that they are one group, I am totally not an expert (which you probably already knew :P). I think that there are multiple competing movements using the same 'BLM' brand, which makes dealing with them more difficult for sure. Like with Occupy, when 'The Man' finally got around to asking what their demands were, and all the Occupiers started shouting contradictory things at the same time. What a wasted opportunity That was interesting, thanks for sharing. I have no trouble believing that there are violent radicals involved with the BLM movement in various capacities. As far as the link between 'blm' and 'communists' goes, I would think it's kind of like how some people who support X political party, but not all, also support Y cause. Like two different oceans, and some fish swim freely between them? Dunno if that metaphor works or not. I do have some sympathy for cops - nobody really cares what happens until there is a problem, and that's gotta be frustrating. Thing is, the Police officer is the one with the badge, the gun, and the training, so for me, the onus is on them to be responsible for the violence they choose to use in fulfilling their duties. I very much agree that there have been people murdered by Police using "textbook examples of what not to do." For me, those officers need to be criminally prosecuted, and the people who signed off on them being "trained" ought to face some kind of consequences as well. I've heard people on the internet claim that police kill more white people than any other but I've never encountered a reputable source that claimed that. No idea whether you consider the Washington Post to be reputable (I haven't vetted them FWIW), but they claim to have been keeping a database of people killed by police. Police shootings database 2015-2021 - Washington Post Police officers have been complicit in the public, extralegal murder of various black people for a very long time. Wikipedia has an article on lynching (which, interestingly enough, happened mostly to white people until emancipation) if you're interested. At this point in time, I can't blame black americans for being afraid of cops. Frankly, I'm afraid of cops too (I'm a white guy who started smoking pot when he was a teenager and learned to see Cops as the people who want to put me in jail for doing something that isn't harming anyone. Am unlearning that, but it's a process). Anything that can be done to anyone can be done to anyone, and anyone includes me. If Police officers can get away with murdering other people, what's to stop them from getting away with murdering me? I'm not saying "all cops are bastards" or anything that extreme, just saying "the mechanisms we use to hold delinquent Police officers to account are not functioning properly." Which groups of people experienced genocide in those countries? I am aware of the Uighers in modern, "Communist" China, but I am not aware of Mao using genocide as a means to seize power (I'm totally not an expert on Mao though :P). I know about the "cultural revolution", which as I understand it was when ~4 million Chinese people were murdered by their government for having university degrees. Is that what you mean? FWIW, Marx explicitly warned against groups of intellectuals seizing power to "benefit" the proletariat, as happened in Soviet Russia. He seems to have wanted workers to band together and do it en masse, although, to my knowledge, he didn't leave any writings on how that should be done or what the next step should be. OK, I see where you are coming from. We still haven't established whether BLM has a centralized leadership or whether there are many different competing would-be leaders or whether the whole thing is a god-awful mess like Occupy was. Even if we had, there are many people who follow, say, Trudeau, or Harper, or whoever you like, who do not support everything he does blindly, but are "holding their nose" because they feel strongly about particular issues. So I guess I'm saying "maybe it's more complicated than that." This is a really good point. In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky talks about how media only has so much air time, so they have to decide which victims are "worthy" of media coverage, and which are not. The people who decide which stories make the news are the owners and editors of profit-driven multinational corporations. Why don't they want us to know that Police violence also affects white people? I agree there is a social cost to using those phrases. A 'strawman argument' works as follows: Person 1 makes a claim. Person 2 rephrases that claim in a distorted or inferior form. Person 2 then goes on to rebut their own, inferior version of person 1's claim as though it were their claim. Person 1: Black lives matter. Person 2:You're saying black lives are the only ones that matter! Person 2:All lives matter. Most people lack the formal education necessary to explain the flaw in this argument, but do know that their argument is not being addressed in good faith, so they get quite angry. A large part of their anger is IMO caused by their inability to say what I just said, your mileage may vary. When people who are upset because they believe Police officers are allowed to murder black people are told, "blue lives matter," many of them hear it as "cops should be allowed to murder black people." Not saying they are right to do so, IMO more political literacy on all sides would solve this problem. FWIW I think talking about white victims of police brutality is very important - as long as white people think of police violence as a "minority problem" they may be less inclined to do something about it. If there were people who sincerely believed that Police were being allowed to murder black people and get away with it, what should they do? I'm not sure what I could offer as anything more concrete than anecdotal evidence. Maybe I could invite you to consider the difference between how the mostly black BML protesters were treated, compared to the nearly all-white insurrectionists who literally stormed the capitol building in an attempted coup and actually killed a police officer? Thanks for clarifying, sorry I didn't read your argument more charitably. It seems to me that if we are concerned about police violence against anyone, be they white, black or purple with polka dots, we ought to see blm as a good thing because it will force police to be more accountable for the violence they choose to use. Right. Ok, I understand this and it has substance. That said, Trudeau *attempted* to force the AG to do his bidding, but it didn't exactly work out very well for him. Granted that we should be concerned, but I don't see this as proof that Trudeau has overruled the judicial branch, I see this as proof that privately owned corporations have their tendrils through all levels of our government and are routinely telling our politicians "you better get rid of this tax or regulation or let us break this law or else we'll just have to get rid of these jobs." You are right that SNC's criminal past was greatly under-reported. Keep in mind that most big media players are privately owned, for-profit companies. Maybe they were pressured/coerced by SNC not to cover that? I actually can't name someone who SNC bribed, nor do I know who Dr. Ford is in this context. *sigh* there are too many things to know. That said, you don't need to convince me that a privately owned corporation did something wrong, you would need to convince me of the opposite I consider the Dems to be a far right political party. If I had to slot Camerican political parties, I would say they go Greens->NDP->Liberals->Conservatives->Democrats->People's Choice->Republicans. For sure there are reasonable adults who would disagree with me. Not at all, what kind of useless lumps would we be if we didn't occasionally have passionate reactions to emotionally charged events? Nobody tries to teach us how to have civil, respectful political conversations with people who disagree with us. Maybe, those in power don't want us to respectfully converse. Maybe they are afraid that we will discover that we share a lot of the same problems. Maybe they are afraid that we will discover that our problems have a lot of the same political solutions. Maybe they want us to sit down and shut up so that our betters can run the country. Haha or maybe I'm some random crank on the internet saying, "Th guvmint done stole m'teefs!" Cheers to you as well WCM! I have a policy of not following the news on the weekends (helps avoid depression) but I'll be back here on Monday to pick this conversation up. I'm learning a lot more than I normally do - too often political conversation is either everybody agreeing with everybody else, or everybody screaming insults at everyone else.

Thanks for reading the link keep in mind that was one group out of many. Much like today, there were many competing voices with many competing opinions and many different agendas. Much like today, it takes a lot of background education to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. I avoid all 24 hour "news" stations as much as possible, I consider them to be privately owned propaganda empires. I don't know who CNN's favourite author is, but I can think of many reasonable adults who would say some pretty uncomplimentary things about Trump, Republicans, Brett Kavanaugh and the Georgia election laws. The more "historical" piece offered was Pierre Berton's The Great Depression (granted he considered himself a journalist not a historian). I mentioned the other because it was so culturally influential, and because I personally found reading it to be very affecting. I had hoped to give you the chance to consider the context that Marxism evolved out of, and perhaps also the needless cruelties inherent in Capitalism, rather than to convince you of a particular fact. Regardless, thanks for your time, it says something that you took the time to read it.

Who are "the people?" Is it a club I can join? Are there meetings? Which changes are they making, specifically? Are they making those changes based on the best available, peer-reviewed science? Who are they accountable to? Do they release progress reports? I'm not trying to be a clever jerk, I get that government will always be imperfect and frustrating, but what is the alternative? If we weaken our government, it will leave a power vacuum. Who will fill that vacuum, if not profit-driven multinational corporations? What legal, nonviolent means does one individual have to oppose a multinational corporation? The problem with "personal responsibility" is that it pretends we are not affected by the actions of other people. Our current plague is a great example - most people did take "personal responsibility" to stop the spread of this virus, but their efforts were wasted by a few extremely selfish individuals, and now we are here.