I have an embarraßing confeßion to proclaim. As a Marxist-Leninist, one of the most streßed points of the political development of good cadres is the practise of self-criticism. Here I shall ruthleßly engage in such. I did not really read until I was in Eighth Grade, before then harbouring a grave dislike of any form of textual obligation. I am ashamed to admit that the two men who propelled me into reading were not Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, or Kant and Hegel. No, these two were an odd sort, to be sure, both of them outcast from their respective revolutions. I had purchased Common Sense by Thomas Paine, and The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky. Undergoing my own student-led revolution against a wildly unpopular teacher, and uncognizant of the theoretical histories which animated these two revolutionaries, I combined Paine's more radicalism US liberalism with Trotsky's iron-fisted commitment to the people into my blurry pre-ideological conception. These two would guide me in the student revolution.
When the revolt inevitably ended in failure, it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that the Constitution was a tyrannical document, veiled by the prettier coloured toilet paper Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. I for the first time realised that there must be a connexion between the revolutionary defeat of Thomas Paine (his bleaching from US history) and his liberal prescription for society. At this junxion I turned heavily towards Trotsky and the tenets of the Bolshevik Revolution. I made a decision to join the Reds for good, although I remained hesitant to outright call myself a Communist (even if I did use hammers, sickles, Lenin, Guevara, and Trotsky on my presentations), I adopted to my needs the glorious title of 'Active (videlicet revolutionary) Socialist'. I recall a tense encounter with my history teacher. She asked what my views were, and my friend Gavin helped me by saying 'you stand for socialism, workers' power, right Daniel? My teacher interjected ' that's CoMmUnIsMMMM' in a condescending demeanour. So of course I went right to studying theory like a good comrade!...
Not then a model Marxist, I did not begin a great leap forward into reading philosophy and history. It would not be for another year, when I at last sought to explore thoroughly the many currents of political philosophy and political economy; I became determined to achieve one objective, mastering Bolshevism. Looking back upon this escapade, I failed miserably in its planning, but I was slightly of luck in its implementation. I had finally picked up some real Marx, Engels, and Lenin, that is until I could no longer reconcile the contradictions between their thought and Trotskyism. I launched a five month read of Stalin's and Mao's works, which brought me to a break with Trotsky.
Now to the present confeßion, the good self-slandering you have been awaiting patiently for. I have become recalcitrantly lax in my studies of the liberal and pre-liberal philosophers. I can boast of having read a good bit of Communist claßics, as well as some more modern works by Soviet philosophers and political economists, but the great philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Thucydides, Hume, Mill, Locke, Hobbes, Adorno, Freud, Kant, all of these milestones are scarce bekennst to me regarding their important contributions. And the US college system is too utterly conceited, steeped in Burgerican exceptionalism to even entertain the idea of teaching these Greeks, Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen et cetera within their claßes when self-involved Außie arm-chairs like Peter Singer, and clueleß Yanks like BillyBob McBurgerski are spewing inacceßible, and frankly oft times irrelevant pseudo-superscientific 'philosophy'! A homeleß person pondering the value of human existence is more profound than these bumbling bureaucrats of 'wisdom' (of which there can be no philo intruding). For all of my lack of commanding philosophical kennage, I kenna for a fact that I will be more faithful to the spirit of philosophy and education than these rotten institutions and modern shamans of thinking ever can be. To-day, I will be reading my Machiavelli, Luther, and the ABC of Dialectical and Historical Materialism. The road to enlightenment must be constructed but one brick at a time.
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