you are so sexy. thank you for hitting post. i will keep it in minde

i am not meaning to be a dick but i’m not sure you are recalling his book correctly or are inferring these takes based on what you read rather than take Parenti for what he’s actually writing which is mostly plainly about the period he’s talking about. like i dont think he’s implying Rome is analogous to a capitalist society, but rather he’s implying all throughout that the existence of wealth dialectically points to the existence of poverty, and that this dialectic then points to all these shared political issues and shared contradictory class interests between Roman society and modern society

from there you can see he’s not actually interested in what Caesar /is/ but what he /did/ and why that was treated as autocratic and treasonous and punishable by death to his extremely wealthy peers of the higher class

that is to say i don’t really see how Parenti was wrong about Caesar, and that Caesar’s death shouldn’t be some weird celebration of a defeat of tyranny

and about him being a genuine force for good for (some of) the lower classes of Roman society, you’re saying this is unsupported and that what Parenti explicitly claims he did (such as wiping debts, preventing people from selling themselves into slavery, bypassing the senate to pass measures that would go against their class interests, among many other things Parenti lists) either didnt happen or can’t be attributed to him? this is mainly what i thought you were going to disprove

clarifying: i have read the book but he basically summarises himself in this speech https://youtu.be/_IO_Ldn2H4o at 23:39 he lists these accomplishments of Caesar - if these are true then the thrust of Parenti’s arguments is entirely acceptable to me

I have

what was parenti wrong about?

historical and dialectical materialism. or in layman’s terms, actually fucking remembering things and why they’re important

I guess I mean, the OP is more about why Mao was so dead set on his conception of education being correct that he refused to consolidate or endorse Deng’s ideals to the point of saying he betrayed the revolution (and the other way around) and looking at that and wondering… why ? I understand your explanation, it’s good at bringing context to Deng’s reform but yea, what’s up with Mao’s rationale?

that really grounds Deng’s rationale. interesting :) I’m curious, what were Mao’s thoughts on how this played out? and if they were along the lines of “child labour is bad, correct that of course but keep education practical” why did Deng go for the hardline shift rather than this? or was Mao literally just like “this is fine”