Congratulations for completely missing and proving the point.

I don’t know about that. To admit to being french is to admit to being liberal at best. The two can’t be separated. Same as any imperialist nationality. If liberal was added to later comments, it’s because clarification was clearly needed because readers weren’t understanding what it means to be French and what it means to criticise the abstract ‘French’.

I wouldn’t generally want to be associated with an imperialist regime. Nationality is not ethnicity or race. It’s an ideological choice. For Anglo-European nations, it’s a damning choice. It’s a claim that someone is in this group, not that one. Claiming and defending being ‘French’ perpetuates what Fanon called the compartments of the colonial world.

Those who take offence at a rejection of ‘French’, ‘German’, ‘British’, ‘Australian’, etc, need to ask themselves what it is they are claiming allegiance to. Once you’ve decolonised and abolished the imperialism of imperialist nations, what remains? The witty ‘defederate’ is like the phrase, ‘French? Not even once’. It’s not a general rejection of the people. It’s a rejection of what France stands for.

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You’re forgetting the ‘liberal’ of ‘fr*nch liberals’.

Is she the one who didn’t know what ‘CIA cut out’ means?

The appeal to authority is you saying that you’re an engineer, implying that you know better and that non-engineers don’t have a say.

Never attribute malice when incompetence explains the event unless it’s reactionaries, in which case it’s both.

Just a minute—is your counterargument based on the idea that flying planes into buildings could be dangerous? I’m not American but I would need some evidence of this. I’ve seen planes in the air with my own eyes and when they’re up that high in the air, they get really, really small.

People take it so personally, don’t they

The electoral democracy theatre has perfected itself and distilled it’s own essence into it’s purest and most honest form.

Maybe think of it as more like engine than car. There are circumstances where you would add a qualifier to be more specific: jet engine, combustion engine, steam engine, etc.

I’m an ML but I’ll call myself ML, Marxist, or Leninist depending on the company and environment. Usually for emphasis and specificity. Marxist or Leninist aren’t quite accurate but they can be useful.

If I’m trying to bring someone along who might be converted, I’ll use Marxist. It’s softer. In some circles, Marx is only known as a generic philosophical thinker. The revolutionary aspect is forgotten or not known. It can be less threatening, which can get someone to listen. Engels can work like this, too. This also explains why ‘Marxist’ isn’t quite accurate – it includes too many revisionists, western Marxists, etc.

Leninist is good for conservatives who don’t know wtf they’re talking about but who are unrepentant libs. Putting the Leninist up front puts the revolutionary element right in their face. It can be a relatively hostile manoeuvre with those who will not give an inch even to progressive liberal reforms, nevermind revolution. Sometimes that’s needed and if there’s a crowd it can be fun to get onto it.

Leninist is also good for all types of libs who might hear the M of ML and think of tame western academic Marxism. Some people need to know that sensible people have read and respect Lenin. But then I’ll need to go back and explain the diamat and himat of Marx and Engels. I.e. ‘Leninist’ on it’s own feels incomplete because it only really refers to Lenin’s contributions to Marxism, rather than to the whole of Marxism.

With anyone, the full ML description must come at some point, when they’re ready for it and it’s subtleties. Lenin is still safer than Stalin and Mao despite the obvious connection to revolution. Lenin is slightly more rehabilitated because he didn’t live through the mid and late USSR. (Have a look at Tucker’s editorial comments in his Reader on Lenin to see how ‘Leninist’ might imply a distance from Stalin’s USSR.)

If you start with ML and have to talk about Stalin to explain the synthesis, you might just lose people. But if you can first explain some Marx and/or Lenin, you can get round to Stalin later and people might actually read all three – or promise to do so, anyway.

It does depend. I’ve had some luck starting with a critical defense of the purges but only after developing a relationship entirely without talking about politics until they already think I’m ‘normal’. That way they can’t dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist/extremist.

Deviating from the label ML is just a way of indoctrinating people with whatever rhetoric will be most useful. The deviation does mean implying a difference from ML as M and L are different to ML. For me, that might be to lure people into it with a false sense of security. Depends on how much you will interact with someone and how much you’re willing to work with them.

We’ve got the best crystal balls.

How else would we know who splits where, why, and when!?

I don’t think the OP disagrees.

Edit: that “Marxism is not complete without Lenin. Period.”

I want to read this novel tbh

That may be true. The problem is that neither Russia nor the DPRK seems to have considered the unintended consequences:

Adding thousands of North Korean soldiers to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II will pile more pressure on Ukraine’s weary and overstretched army.

That’s not very fair, is it?

Good advice. Not seen that book before. I might check it out.

Maybe Michael Parenti’s Democracy for the Few. Maybe this is more ‘political science’ than political philosophy (I’ve not read it in depth).

The other thing to note is that the distinction between primary and secondary sources in political philosophy is a little different to that in e.g. history. Philosophy often develops through a critique and synthesis of other authors. Which means that a primary source of one author may also be a secondary source for another.

Consider Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, for example. It is a primary source for Marx and a secondary source for Proudhon.

There are still guide-type textbooks that are more like secondary sources, with everything simplified and predigested. I’m not a huge fan of these.

Then there are works by people like Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams. These are good at introducing philosophy because they’re largely aimed at undergraduates. But they also criticise others and tell you what they think; i.e. they present their own philosophy at the same time. In e.g. Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy or his book on Descartes, you can see how he arrives at his own philosophy. These kinds of books are far more interesting, in my view.

Personally, I’d read something by Williams or MacIntyre and see how you get on. Have a look at their bibliographies and see if anything looks interesting. It doesn’t have to be these two. Many modern academic philosophers will have similar books, chapters, articles. There are these kinds of compilations, too: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781405177245 (I assume you’ll be sailing the high seas as these books are expensive).

Or read some of these: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=Political+philosophy

As for primary works, JS Mill is easier to read than Bentham. Hayek is quite clear. Aristotle isn’t as difficult as you might think (depending on the translation). Machiavelli’s Prince is quite short. Just search for the major political philosophers, read whatever comes up, and see how you get on. Or read something that I’ve linked and keep a note of people whose ideas sound interesting, and search for them. It will be a challenge but it becomes manageable if you stick with it.

Not sure if Communists should be sharing their home address or email address over the internet.

Happy birthday!