• LaughingLion [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    imagine being a student of history and not being a materialist

    “huh, these are all events that are completely independent of each other and isolated without any influence on each other whatsoever. history is so interesting because things just happen at random”

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      15·
      3 days ago

      “No it’s because the MORAL STRENGHT”

      Funnily enough while the part of his book about Rome is garbage now, the part about christianity is actually written with a good dose of historical materialism. It’s also why the modern history hacks praise the former and deny the latter.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    3 days ago

    I think there’s a bias that happens in the history field where people perceive history teachers to all be marxists because the really really fucking good history teachers are marxists and those ones leave an extremely memorable impression on everyone they come into contact with while the lib ones just kinda fade into the background as people who regurgitate history facts devoid of any understanding of how they relate to each other in a timeline and impact peoples and civilisations in a materialist way.

    There is a difference between a person that knows historic events and a person who understands history as a meandering river where each rock, ripple and turn impacts the destination the river carves out.

  • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    3 days ago

    I guess we all know the answer here, but what must people consider correct historical methodology — considering material and social forces, cause and effect etc — is Marxism. There’s just no getting away from it.

  • DasRav [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    3 days ago

    I remember my political science teacher in 7th grade very doggedly defend that bosses and owners should make 99% of all the money in a company with the argument that ‘the just deserve it, because capitalism’.

    At the time it flew over my head and I had a low opinion of her because I thought it was unfair (yes, I was a lib even before it was cool ;) ), but now I realize that she was probably doing it on purpose to drill the moment into the classes brains as something to remember and think about. I certainly still think about it decades later as you can see.

    • Juice@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      If true, thats interesting pedagogy. Defend the indefensible in a system that could literally cost a teacher their job for defending anything other than capitalism.

    • QuietCupcake [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      201·
      3 days ago

      Looks like they’re mostly libs, at least according to this study on the topic:

      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228380360_The_Social_and_Political_Views_of_American_Professors

      (The above link actually blocked me, so here’s another one):

      https://not-equal.org/content/pdf/misc/Gross2014.pdf

      ~80% of history professors identified as Democrats (vs. ~13–14% Republican nationally across all fields).

      Self-identified Marxists are rare in academe overall. The highest concentration was in sociology (~2.6%); in the humanities (where history is), the rate was even lower. While ~25% of humanities/social-science professors consider themselves “radicals or activists,” explicitly Marxist identification is a small fraction of that.

      Not surprising, sadly. Most universities are shaped to produce graduates who are compliant with the social hierarchy and capitalist system. The administration will tamp down radicalism, very blatantly in their students (see the handling of protests in support of Palestine), but also in the faculty. Marxists like Richard Wolff tend to get edged out. Liberalism reigns. At least in US universities.

      @ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml Does that align with your experience?

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        13·
        3 days ago

        For most professors in the humanities (especially anthropology and history) I have seen a radical tendency. Anarchism is more common than marxist socialism for sure but I have brought up my explicit marxism to multiple professor and not been directly challenged on it. The response has typically been, “marxism is a valid analytical perspective but limited in certain capacities” at worst. There has only been one professor I would describe as anti-marxist.

        I have only had one professor who was explicitly marxist but he was a trot and would regularly visit mexico to mourn him. Interesting guy

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          9·
          3 days ago

          would regularly visit mexico to mourn him

          That is… Uhh. Dude I don’t even mourn Lenin he died a really long ass time ago.

          Really thinking about it I have to wonder what kind of brainworms it takes to make someone go on a regular trip to mourn Trotsky and not on a regular trip to mourn someone more important like Lenin or Marx?

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              2·
              3 days ago

              Oh I guess that does mitigate weirdness factor but still I’m not driving 4 hours to visit Marx once a year and I live in the country with his grave. Maybe I would if it was within 2 hours?

      • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Respectfully, most self-respecting Marxists would know better than to ever identify as such on a sample, let alone even take such a thing. Such surveys have huge self-sampling bias.

        That said, yeah the vast majority are just going to be liberals lol.

  • LanyrdSkynrd [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    My high school history teacher was the only conservative teacher. He told us a story about how some other teacher made a joke about killing Ronald Reagan and he called secret service to report them.