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Yet as a Marxist my contributions to conversations are shrugged off as liberals for being “too idealistic.”
Arguably that’s because they don’t understand the meaning of the word. Just like they don’t understand the term “democracy”, “authoritarian”, “labor”, “value”, etc
People around me tell me I’m innocent and idealistic in a positive way because as a Marxist I have a positive view of a possible future, but it’s kind of annoying because I’m a materialist with “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.”
Actually that’s one thing I never had thrown my way. But I usually stick tie everything to class and production, which is material and which they don’t understand. It’s also too ‘technical’ for them to label as idealistic. I also rarely talk about future revolutionary goals, but criticism of the status quo and fairly immediate causes of action.
But their view of ‘realism’ is messed up anyway. Like this acquaintance has always been super against the military, because bourgeois pacifism and they alway saw it as a breeding ground for nazis. Yet somehow, now, we need to pump it full with blood money, swarm Ukraine with weapons, because some hundreds of thousands dying now is somehow a more realistic path towards peace than negotiations.