Share this page!

Enter Twitter Thread URL to Unroll

Needs to be the full URL like: https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on Twitter App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Phil Magness Profile picture
@PhilWMagness
May 27 • 4 tweets • 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Synthetic Karl Marx returns for another round!

In this new working paper, we investigate our critics' claim that the SPD popularized Marxism in Germany with its 1891 Erfurt Program, long before Lenin came along.

Turns out our critics were wrong.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Our main finding may be seen here. The Erfurt Program appears to give Marx's citations a very modest boost in 1891.

Except (1) it isn't statistically significant, and (2) it's dwarfed by 1917, which does past muster for significance. Image
Some of our critics also claimed that Ngram isn't suitable for this test (although they never offered any compelling reason why). So we ran the same test using an independent database of scanned German newspapers. The result? Not even a visible boost from the SPD or Erfurt. Image
Together, these findings lend even more support to our original paper. It finds clear empirical evidence that the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 took Marx, a relatively obscure figure in his lifetime and the decades after his death, and made him mainstream.

journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/72…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Phil Magness

Phil Magness Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @PhilWMagness

Phil Magness Profile picture
May 25
Synthetic Karl Marx is returning for another round.

Preview: John Ganz and all the other twitter warriors who claimed that the SPD popularized Marx before 1917 are simply wrong and don't know what they're talking about. Image
For reference, here's Ganz's claim from back in November about the SPD.

We tested it by using the 1891 Erfurt Program as a treatment, and he's simply wrong.

Our findings using German Ngram reveal only a tiny visual increase in Marx's citations from Erfurt, and we're unable to establish statistical significance. Meanwhile the 1917 boost from the Bolsheviks is huge and statistically significant. Image
Read 5 tweets
Phil Magness Profile picture
May 1
One of the stranger myths of the Brown v. Board aftermath is that Arlington County, VA bucked the "Massive Resistance" movement of the state and permitted integration. Not true! In 1956, the Arlington school board voted 3-0 to fight court-ordered desegregation in appellate court Image
The Arlington school board consistently affirmed this position in the desegregation era, adopting resolutions that pursued every available avenue. The language of these resolutions clearly sided with preserving segregation. Image
In 1958 the NAACP sued the Arlington school board after it systematically rejected 30 out of 30 African-American applicants for transfer into all-white schools.

This strategy was intentional and relied on zoning, enrollment caps, and even IQ tests to block the transferees. Image
Read 5 tweets
Phil Magness Profile picture
Apr 30
In today's NY Times, @jonathanmahler tries to smear Milton Friedman's 1955 school voucher proposal by invoking an outright fraudulent working paper Nancy MacLean.

In reality, Friedman explicitly argued for using vouchers as a tool to undermine segregation. Image
I documented this history a few years ago at the WSJ, including presenting evidence of how segregationists in Virginia teamed up with the teachers unions to oppose vouchers, which they claimed would lead to the "negro engulfment" of white schools.

wsj.com/articles/schoo…
For reference, here is a 1959 memo by the head of the Virginia Education Association teachers' union promoting a plan by John S. Battle, Jr. to address the "grave problem" of court-ordered school desegregation. Image
Read 8 tweets
Phil Magness Profile picture
Mar 30
Gordon Tullock enjoyed military history, often studying scenarios of decisionmaking by different commanders.

It would be a mistake to use this hobby as a basis for projecting the politics of a given war onto him.
Strange: Kuehn's now stalker-responding to tweets of mine that aren't even addressed at him.

Even stranger: I am easily the object of a large plurality of Kuehn's attention on this site even though he also plays a bizarre ding-dong-ditch game of block/reply/block with my account
Same thing happens whenever I post an update on the Marx project. Within minutes he swoops in to have a multi-tweet meltdown, all of which appears as ghost-comments under my post due to his game of Twitter ding-dong-ditch.
Read 4 tweets
Phil Magness Profile picture
Mar 30
Imagine building your entire research agenda around having an adversarial obsession with whatever I happen to be working on at the moment...
Also note: Tullock did not "change his view" to support Dred Scott in the 1980s. Here are examples from 1984 and 1980 where he reiterates his belief that the decision was in error.
Related: philmagness.com/2019/05/the-at…
Read 4 tweets
Phil Magness Profile picture
Mar 27
Given that he's been ranting for 4+ months based on his own erroneous assumptions about our paper when in fact they were addressed in its text from the get-go, this certainly is awkward.
And now he's backtracking by way of denying the linearity of time.

Hint: If the Russians hadn't put Marx on the map in a big way in 1917, subsequent interest in Marx would likely be much more of a niche topic, as Copleston and dozens of others have explained.
Even Daniel's own favorite "alternative" theory - Frankfurt school critical theory - follows this path.

The founding of the Frankfurt School in 1923 came from students of Karl Korsch, a Marxist theorist who openly admitted that Lenin reinvigorated Marxism from the doldrums.
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(