Not surprised in the slightest that he wouldn’t really bother to try to understand Marx. Reminds me of the Peterson-Zizek debate. People tend to embarrass themselves when they make half-assed attempts at dismissing Marx.

Great article! I learnt a lot, actually. Such as that I shouldn’t read Marx: A Very Short Introduction and that Peter Singer is a hack.

One thing - you double-posted the article. After the citations, starts again from the first paragraph.

I’d love to read more from you!

So far the most common criticism I’ve got is that I’m talking past Scott Alexander and that SA was talking about a different human nature. This different human nature seems to be greed, we’re all greedy, greedy, greedy, when we boil it all down all that “human nature” stuff is just greed, and communism can’t work because of greed.

Personally I don’t really think that’s what SA was trying to say, and I don’t want to misrepresent his arguments or be seen as debating a strawman.

But I’m also not above addressing this at length if this is what people are interested in? I’m interested in any reader feedback on this issue.

[removed]

The marxbro extended work!

Did you already try to post this at r/slatestarcodex and the themotte survivalist bunker site?

Hope people find it interesting. This is (with the unpublished upcoming parts) by far the longest thing I’ve ever written. I kind of dislike writing so if you see any mistakes please alert me here or in the substack comments.

Share this around on twitter or wherever if you like it because I don’t use any of that stuff.

Cheers!

Wow, the introduction of Alexander’s review is already fascinating (in the trainwreck kind of way).

I weighed the costs and benefits of reading primary sources versus
summaries and commentaries, and decided in favor of the latter.
The clincher was that the rare times I felt like I really understand
certain thinkers and philosophies on a deep level, it’s rarely been the
primary sources that did it for me, even when I’d read them.

The key word here is of course „felt“. Because what criterion for checking if you actually did understand them exists – other than, you know, the primary sources?

I’m not reading the rest of that. OP is pretty heroic for engaging with it in such depth.

Quality sneer.

I read this and your little argument below. I think you’re right, and I think SA is probably including and discluding things from “human nature” and assuming his audience gets it (or he hasn’t dissected what he means by “human nature”). I would also guess that his assumption that Marx thinking that human nature doesn’t exist is based on his own assumptions about “post-modern neo-marxists” and endless online arguments about whether powerful people deserve their power (esp. wrt race and wealth).

But maybe not. I’m just an internet hobo.

edit: If I were to come up with a succinct definition for “human nature”, I would say that it’s a behaviour that most, if not all, humans exhibit that most, if not all, other animals do not. Something like seeking out salty foods is not “human nature” as many other animals will seek out nutrients they have a deficit of. Something like “creatively adapting their environment to benefit their community” would be closer to “human nature”; most animals will fulfil at most two of the three parts of that statement. But that’s just me and a bottle of wine.

In my experience, when people refer to human nature in this context, they mean things like hardcoded or ingrained tendencies towards specific behaviors in specific situations (like feeling jealous when a woman you’re attracted to is affectionate to another man), which in the aggregate cause societies to act in certain ways regardless of social conditioning, economic incentives, etc. When it comes to discussing Marx specifically I have usually encountered formulations along the lines of “people are naturally hostile to others in the group not doing their fair share, so ‘to each according to his needs’ must collapse under the weight of resentment towards freeloaders.” Or something like that. The specifics vary but the claim made is always that our intellectual software will inevitably sabotage any Marxist project somehow. I don’t want to argue the merit of these arguments, but those are the arguments I have encountered.

I have not read Marx at any length–only brief snippets in college–but the supporting quotes used here seem to refer more to basic capacities, e.g. the ability to imagine, or tool/technology use. Or to the human condition as imposed by material circumstances, e.g. needing to work to live. In at least one case it appears to refer to the personality of the individual as expressed or realized through creative works, but the quotes do not (as I read them) refer to any complex behavioral tendencies which might be true of the species as a whole. This is not to say that Marx did not believe in complex human social instincts, only that these quotes do not support that conclusion. The author and Scott are talking about different things while using the same word.

Cards on the table: I’m not a rationalist, more of a vaguely-sympathetic-in-some-respects fellow-traveler who reads some rationalist stuff but tends to skim a lot when they get long-winded or talk about AI. I come here now and then because it feels healthy to get a different perspective.