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As good as Tim Keller's take on generosity & common grace is, what he's saying has little to no relevance to "Marxism"
Marx wrote not about "free stuff"* or government programs** but ownership & decision making in the workplace. 1/8 https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1296500510728560645?s=19
Marx wrote not about "free stuff"* or government programs** but ownership & decision making in the workplace. 1/8 https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1296500510728560645?s=19
Marx (correctly) identified poverty as a result of capitalists underpaying their workers & hoarding revenue, but his focus was not on alleviating poverty via charity or something like welfare, it was on the power dynamics producing the poverty & inequity in the first place
2/8
2/8
Keller correctly identified that Marxist ideas would not fix society's problems outright. Addressing economic power dynamics only mitigates opportunities for oppression & abuse, it does not eliminate them
3/8 https://twitter.com/CJG_dbc/status/1296453046784974852?s=19
3/8 https://twitter.com/CJG_dbc/status/1296453046784974852?s=19
* Marx did write about "free stuff" & a society which had moved beyond money, but this utopian idea was rooted in an analysis of how the Industrial Revolution & machinery was resulting in unprecedented production. His ideas of "free stuff" is akin to replicators in Star Trek 4/8
* Marx envisioned a utopia in which money would not be necessary because scarcity was no longer an issue. Food, water, & shelter would abundant & commodities would be available to meet additional needs & even wants. 5/8
* This is a similar energy to pushes for "free healthcare" or "free college," but by no means the same.
Those claim such services can be made into public goods like the fire department or postal service b/c we have the means to do so, while acknowledging the reality of cost
6/8
Those claim such services can be made into public goods like the fire department or postal service b/c we have the means to do so, while acknowledging the reality of cost
6/8
* But anyways, the point is that reducing Marx's ideas to "free stuff" is disingenuous & frequently intentional, b/c capitalists have little interest in workers questioning why they don't receive the profits or get to make decisions in the workplace.
The strawman is useful
7/8
The strawman is useful
7/8
** While the topic of Marx's utopia is up, he also advocated for a stateless society, so equating "Marxism" with "government control" is quite silly. A state is required for a capitalist system, b/c it protects (private) property rights. Marx did not like that
8/8
8/8
This was supposed to be 2 tweets but now it's a whole essay.
It's too easy to spread misconceptions vs correcting them
It's too easy to spread misconceptions vs correcting them
