Do you think the early Marxists were lying? I’m inclined to think they were telling the truth as they saw it. Later Marxists—after it was clear that Marxism was leading to poverty rather than prosperity—are a different story.
It doesn’t matter to me whether they were lying deliberately or not. The abstract question I’m trying to ask is whether a need to tell untruths is strong evidence against the worthiness of a cause. Whether the person telling the untruths knows they’re untrue is irrelevant.
If you’ll check the original post, you’ll see I phrased it in terms of the separate valuations of the individuals deciding whether to mislead people, and the individuals deciding whether to follow such people. It does not posit an objective “worthiness”. That was shorthand to try to avoid spending my life writing paragraphs like this re-writing the details of my post every time I reply to a comment about it.
Do you think the early Marxists were lying? I’m inclined to think they were telling the truth as they saw it. Later Marxists—after it was clear that Marxism was leading to poverty rather than prosperity—are a different story.
It doesn’t matter to me whether they were lying deliberately or not. The abstract question I’m trying to ask is whether a need to tell untruths is strong evidence against the worthiness of a cause. Whether the person telling the untruths knows they’re untrue is irrelevant.
Define “worthiness”.
If you’ll check the original post, you’ll see I phrased it in terms of the separate valuations of the individuals deciding whether to mislead people, and the individuals deciding whether to follow such people. It does not posit an objective “worthiness”. That was shorthand to try to avoid spending my life writing paragraphs like this re-writing the details of my post every time I reply to a comment about it.