Since I hate to leave such things unanswered...
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Such movements need people to be willing to sacrifice all for that future, including themselves and others.
Hoffer is clearly bullshitting. I don't remember the old Social Democracy demanding that workers lay down their lives in order to establish a socialist society, in fact the SPD used to have a saying along the lines of “not one man nor one penny for this system”. And IIRC my AS history correctly party members could be involved in sports and such like with their 'comrades'. I don't see an army of spartan socialist warrior-fanatics growing out of that, thanks.
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glorious, yet imaginary, future to compensate for the frustrations of his present.
Which is why socialists maintain that a communist society could be brought about immediately if only the majority of people wanted it is it? Cause that doesn't sound like a glorious imaginary future, but a real future within our grasp. If such a criticism is to be brought about then it would be necessary to prove that socialism is unrealisable and thus imaginary. Socialists claim that a post scarcity society will be superior to the present one, in order to prove socialism impossible then they need only prove that scarcity is inevitable (and it would be necessary to do so without relying on assumptions or childish arguments, because no matter how much you dislike socialism, the fact remains that if you eat or drink too much
you die).
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they claim to represent a universal truth which explains everything and can cure every ill
How so?
Marxist socialism may have been formulated with addressing the problems of industrial capitalism in mind, but this does not necessarily mean that it claims to 'cure every ill'. Nor do I think that any socialist would make that claim if you directly asked them, instead we envision a system in which it will be possible to address such ills, where we are not limited by artificial scarcity, or any of the other problems inflicted upon us by for-profit production and private ownership. Huge difference.
And what is meant by 'they claim to represent a universal truth'? I seriously cannot think of reading or hearing any socialist make such a claim, beyond the fact that socialism promotes a materialist outlook, in other words, that events have real world causes. Saying that this implies claiming to 'represent a universal truth' is complete bollocks since it could equally be applied to a scientist who refuses to believe that an illness is caused by demons. It promotes a way of looking at the past as any halfway decent historian would.
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they can automatically process and reinterpret all potentially damaging data by methods of casuistry which are emotionally appealing and beyond common logic
I am unaware of any instance where this has been done by socialists, where such thinking has been encouraged by socialists, or that this is something caused by an ideology rather than it being the reaction of an
individual to a set of data that disagrees with their views. It is very difficult to defend yourself from such charges since they are so generic that they could be applied to everyone, this statement could be applied to a socialist who offers an alternative explanation for an event. A good thing (in this case thinking for yourself and not accepting everything you are told on faith) can be construed as a bad thing by changing the language used (as I have just demonstrated).
Another example would be calling someone's politics predictable. Change predictable to consistent and the tone of the whole thing is altered
As a socialist I largely get my history from non socialist books etc. especially since socialists are in the minority, not once have I felt it necessary to deny that events played out in the way that they are irrefutably demonstrated to have done. I may not agree with the conclusion of an individual historian, but that is my right as an individual with what you may like to call 'critical thinking', just as it is my right to agree with them if I consider their conclusion to be correct.
As far as I am concerned the last two points have involved twisting the reality through choosing an unflattering set of words to describe traits that should exist in the intellectual life of any healthy human society.
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they can invalidate criticisms by deducing what the subjective motivation of the critic must be, and by presenting this motivation as a counterargument.
Which is perfectly valid, and I am sure that when a history student studies sources they are encouraged to look at who was behind them and what their motivations are. Time and time again it is impossible to refute criticism because they are irrelevant or invented. It is impossible to refute the claim that we are all in the pocket of an international Jewish conspiracy, so it is legitimate point out that only an anti-Semite would make such a claim (Just as only a rapid anti-communist would use 'holodomor' as an argument against communism). It is as impossible to refute that an event happened when you are provided with no evidence that it did, just as it is impossible for you to refute the existence of the intangible monkey currently sitting on your shoulder.
Of course I do not agree with doing such a thing when the criticism is perfectly legitimate and is not based on anything which is possible to demonstrate as totally false. When this occurs it is once again a problem of the individual not the ideology.
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Marx's version of the labor theory of value is a major pillar of traditional Marxian economics.[8] This theory, including Marx's version, is rejected for various reasons by the vast majority of economists today in favor of marginalism.
Of course this makes no difference at all to whether or not socialism, that is, a post-scarcity society can function.
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many of Marx's predictions have failed.
Socialism and a materialist view of the world is not dependent on the ability of an otherwise unremarkable bloke from the 19th century to predict the future. Nor are the failure of such predictions a sufficient reason to abandon Marxist socialism.
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The socialist revolution would occur first in the most advanced capitalist nations. Once collective ownership had been established then all sources of class conflict would disappear
What are these sentences are they just there for show? IF they are meant to be wrong predictions then:
1.A socialist regime has never been established, nor has a socialist revolution taken place.
2.Following on from that the second sentence is irrelevant. However, taken in context it seeks to imply (as far as I can see) that collective ownership is the same as nationalisation.
Nationalisation is not collective ownership and state capitalism is not socialism