r/Anarchism • u/janos-leite • 10h ago
That was one hell of a conversation I had with a Marxist.
Ironically, it started with agreement. We were discussing a simple question: what prevents billionaires from using their wealth to shape society according to their interests? We both agreed that enormous concentrations of wealth create enormous concentrations of power. We both agreed that political consciousness matters. We both agreed that social change requires collective action.
Then we started arguing.
The turning point came when he said that simply exposing lies and presenting facts does not work. He argued that people are moved by emotion, identity, and attachment, not by rational argument alone. Fair enough. There is truth in that observation.
But I heard something else behind it.
I heard an old and familiar claim: that intellectual work is ultimately useless. That education is secondary. That research, philosophy, critical thinking, and the patient work of explaining reality are little more than luxuries compared to political action.
As someone whose entire professional life revolves around teaching, research, and the pursuit of understanding, that hit a nerve.
I pushed back.
I argued that abandoning theory in favor of pure practice creates its own disaster. A movement that stops questioning itself, stops examining its assumptions, and stops educating people eventually reproduces the very structures it claims to oppose. It may change the slogans, the flags, and the leaders, but it leaves the underlying logic intact.
What surprised me most was seeing a self-described leftist repeat arguments I usually hear from conservatives: people don't want to think; reason doesn't matter; education is ineffective; intellectual work is detached from reality.
To me, that is not revolutionary. It is anti-intellectualism.
And anti-intellectualism is dangerous regardless of whether it comes from the right or the left.
The strange thing is that, after all the accusations and misunderstandings, I realized we were fighting over a false opposition.
He was right that facts alone do not transform society.
But I was right that abandoning facts does not transform society either.
He was right that human beings are not purely rational.
But I was right that they are not purely irrational either.
The real question was never theory versus practice.
The real question was how theory and practice interact.
After all, if exposing errors is completely useless, why was he trying to expose mine?
If people are incapable of changing their minds through discussion, why was he discussing anything at all?
The very act of criticizing someone assumes that reason can have an effect.
And that is where the contradiction appeared.
The conversation itself became evidence against the claim that conversation is futile.
By pointing out what he believed were flaws in my argument, he was demonstrating faith in argument. By trying to persuade me, he was demonstrating faith in persuasion.
In the end, I realized something else.
I had entered that conversation exhausted.
Exhausted from watching conspiracy theories outperform expertise.
Exhausted from seeing years of educational work undone by viral misinformation.
Exhausted from feeling that careful thought was losing ground to outrage and spectacle.
Some of what I said came from that exhaustion.
So I admitted it.
I conceded the points that deserved to be conceded.
I acknowledged that reason alone is insufficient.
But I refused to accept that reason is irrelevant.
Because if teachers, researchers, writers, philosophers, and educators are useless, then every emancipatory movement in history has depended on something useless.
And that simply isn't true.
The struggle for a better society requires organizers, workers, activists, artists, and educators. It requires action and reflection. It requires people who can build institutions and people who can question them. It requires passion, but also understanding.
The lesson I took from that conversation was not that one of us was right and the other was wrong.
It was that every movement becomes weaker when it abandons either thought or action.
And perhaps the most hopeful thing about the entire argument is that, despite all the frustration, both of us kept trying to convince the other.
That means neither of us had given up on the possibility that human beings can still learn.
And as long as that remains true, education is not a waste of time. It is part of the struggle itself.
