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From The (In)Effective Altruism Diaries: The Case Of Centi-Millionaire Marxist
You possibly already heard about James Cox Chambers Jr.
He is character that would be laughed at and rejected outright in any creative writing class as crude, primitive and unfunny caricature of leftist written by hate filled right wing bigot.
And he is real.
Descendant of long line of distinguished WASP's. As close to hereditary aristocracy as you can get in today's world. Wikipedia article of your own is now what noble title used to be.
(Yes, pure Anglo Saxon ancestry, no documented Jewish ancestors, if you are looking for this thing, you can be disappointed)
Who is, since early age, dedicated Marxist devoted to fighting for revolutionary cause.
Now, his means are not negligible. 250M hard bourgeois bucks is nothing to sneer at.
Distinguished revolutionaries in the past used cash with great efficiency as weapon to hasten the demise of capitalist world.
Comrade Cox-Chambers is not one of them. In 30 years of struggle, he really achieved nothing much worth showing. The Berkshire Communists, The Berkshire People's Gym, The Butterfly Collective etc. are not up there with The Sealed Train.
Neither are Dakota pipeline protests or Cop City protests.
At least the Georgia commune members had some fun, while it lasted.
This shows once again weakness of premise of effective altruism and 80,000 hours movement that money alone is sufficient to change the world. It is not specific to communism/leftism, many cases of right wing money wasted in even more pointless way.
Now, if you are inclined to laugh at the outgroup, show how would you do better. Your homework, your hypothetical scenario for today is:
You are given 250M in USD.
Your mission is to promote COMMUNISM. Not some petty bourgeois hippy nonsense, but real, scientific and authentic Marx-Lenin-Stalin thought.
How would you get the greatest bang for the buck, how would you most efficiently use capitalist cash to bring forward glorious communist future?
Show your work. Best entries will be rewarded with eternal revolutionary glory and virtual Stalin Golden Prize.
the first 10 million would be spent funding a group of young scholars and researchers wielding AI to determine precisely how Marxism originally won. The answer is some combination of (1) popular agitprop and (2) compelling status benefits for successful Marxist activists. An ideology does not need to be true or proven to successfully proliferate, it simply needs to be fun to express and exciting to believe at first pass; almost nobody, and certainly no young person, considers the consequences of their ideology beyond the first pass. The end result of this phase would not be some worthless boring thinktank paper that no one would ever read, but instead a dozen or so pages filled with bullet points on rules and recommendations for practical utilility. I would pay careful attention to the social ecosystem of Marxists prior to the Russian revolution and during Mao’s cultural Revolution. There were very concrete social rituals that were promulgated to increase the motivation and activity of Marxists, which are interesting to read about.
the next 10 million would be spent determining who to champion as primary social influencers. One passionate social influencer can create 1000 passionate social influencers organically in turn, so this is the place to start. Ideally you would form small teams of one charismatic leader and 6 to 11 assistants; the assistants research all the information and implementation details while the charismatic leader focuses on honing his visceral persuasion skills. 2016-Trump and Obama are examples of charismatic leaders; in online spaces, Nick Fuentes and Dean Withers. The heyday of SJW occurred when the beautiful young elites signaled their allegiance; the decline corresponds to the ugly and unwell signaling their allegiance, and then being counter signaled by “Libs of Tik Tok” type accounts. There was never any rationality involved in either the rise or the decline. Just signals.
the final 10 million would be spent funding the above groups so that they can spend all their time on persuasion and induction into the social ecosystem. The flowchart would be simple: someone comes across the attractive and compelling ideologue, and then are filtered into the social ecosystem, and later becomes an ideologue themselves. This is literally how Marxists grew originally, and how the Chinese cultural revolution became so energetic: there were thousands of “agitators” which would persuade new members to gradually become agitators too. Marxism et al is especially dangerous because it is such a primitively attractive ideology based on instinct: people have more than they need, so they should give it to those who need it. Hunter Gatherer tier feelings. This is how you would behave in a small group of friends, so why wouldn’t it apply generally and collectively? And it shifts the burden of (dis)proof to the capitalist, and it takes so much longer to explain why things are more complicated than Marxist ideology, meanwhile the Marxist can just repeat his slogans endlessly. (Today, we have the opposite problem where the capitalists lean into primitive feeling maxxing with their slogans revolving around the notion that “a person deserves what they can create”. Just as instinctive, and also a dangerous simplification, and again shifts the burden of proof to the opposition).
I would not need the remaining $220,000,000; I would donate the remainder to the poor.
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