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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.
This was not happening, and this shows that this forum is really elite discussion forum not like any other. Nearly everyone here recognizes JCC as idealist devoted to cause of liberation of working class of the world, and his case as more tragic than comic.
Just few people argued that Marxist activism of JCC is just excuse to gain fame and sex, but these arguments fail flat.
250M is lots of money. With such cash, you could build replica of Nero's palace in all of its ancient glory (yea, in less prestigious location and not up to ancient craftsmanship standards), then fill it with harem of catgirls and catboys and livestream the orgies.
This way, you could become one of the most famous people of the world (and also undermine capitalism by several magnitudes more than anything JCC was doing).
But this is not what JCC wanted.
Thread is over, the time for grading is now.
And the winner is ... anyone who mentioned human capital.
Old time communists won over one third of humanity because they were Elite Human Capital of the time.
This is not the case any more, EHC lost interest long ago, modern self identified communists are rather sorry bunch.
Could this situation be reversed? Could Elite Communist Human Capital be rebuilt out of nothing? Probably not, this historical moment really passed for good.
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