> You can not understand the anger about HE until you understand that Marxists desperately need humans to not behave "slightly irrationally under some circumstances" (the real scenario) but need humans to be profoundly irrational, so they can justify their handing over all sorts of power to the government so they can save everyone from themselves.
You had me until that sentence. I don't think the Marxists need humans to be profoundly irrational, they need humans to be profoundly exploited, and for the exploiters to be rational. That means that you can't appeal to the exploiters to stop, because continuing is in the exploiters' best interest; you can only stop them with force.
I agree with your overall conclusions (that the Marxists were/are the ones pushing the HE strawman). I just think that you're off in your next-to-last paragraph. In fact, I think that the psychopath claim (which you cite in the first paragraph) is in contradiction with your argument in the fourth paragraph.
You mean Marxist-Leninists, Marxism in and of itself doesn't require violent revolution.
The real irony is that if governments are rational actors, and power is in their best interest, then the Leninist insistence on the need for proletariat dictatorship as a step to true Communism (where the government isn't needed) is undermined by the rationale that the government won't give up power.
Which is of course what has happened with every state that has tried it. Marxist Communism on a state level has never been reached, merely various forms of socialist dictatorship that claim to be working towards it.
> You mean Marxist-Leninists, Marxism in and of itself doesn't require violent revolution.
Well, maybe not require, but
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Permitting large-scale "exploitation" requires large-scale irrationality, wouldn't you think? It's not rational to be exploited, and it's really not rational to be in an exploited minority.
One of the reasons the Marxists see this is that they see a trade in which one side benefits "more" than the other according to one scale, and scream "exploitation!" But... it's still a trade that benefited both sides. It may indeed still be a bit exploitative (and our laws have cases to cover this) if for instance one side is a monopoly or something; capitalism does not begin and end with microecon 101, after all [1]. But it's a different character of exploitation than one in which one side fails to benefit, and Marxist theory has a major hole in it where it has a really hard time explaining why an agent would enter into a trade in which it comes out behind by its own value system, when one can visibly see that no force is being applied. (Let me also forstall the fact that there are cases where force has been applied, but I'd say those are nowhere near sufficient to explain the modern economy.)
[1]: And let me underline that. Microecon is not the beginning and the end of capitalism, and it's not as if it has no problems. I'm interested in informed discussions of capitalism's problems, but one must start from a proper understanding of what it really is. In a more neutral context, one can argue about whether "real" numbers actually exist and whether they should be used mathematically, but this argument is not helped by getting wrong what "real" numbers are from the getgo.
> Permitting large-scale "exploitation" requires large-scale irrationality, wouldn't you think? It's not rational to be exploited...
That assumes that you have a better alternative. My alternative to being exploited by the greedy capitalists is revolution, but for that to work, a bunch of my fellow oppressed have to agree. My decision is (normally) whether to hopelessly revolt and get crushed, or to make the best of it and go along. In that context, going along is probably a rational choice.
> ... and it's really not rational to be in an exploited minority.
Marxism says that the exploited are the majority, not the minority.
Look, I'm not an apologist for Marxism. I don't want a Marxist revolution, and I don't want to live in the aftermath of one. But I think you're a bit mis-characterizing their position. (Once you characterize it accurately, then disagree as much and as eloquently as you please.)
You had me until that sentence. I don't think the Marxists need humans to be profoundly irrational, they need humans to be profoundly exploited, and for the exploiters to be rational. That means that you can't appeal to the exploiters to stop, because continuing is in the exploiters' best interest; you can only stop them with force.
I agree with your overall conclusions (that the Marxists were/are the ones pushing the HE strawman). I just think that you're off in your next-to-last paragraph. In fact, I think that the psychopath claim (which you cite in the first paragraph) is in contradiction with your argument in the fourth paragraph.