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My horticulture degree taught me how to do The Grapes of Wrath. It's one of the most dialectical sciences out there, you can make a big socioecological impact, and it's so radicalising that it made me a Double Communist. Not only was there absolutely no radical content, but they let a cattle industry contractor with a vineyard background teach the only agroecology class that might contain something radical. Not only was there nothing philosophical, but they used Malthusian bullshit to explain why industrial agriculture is actually cool+good. My job is doing eco-Marxism but there wasn't even an environmentalist angle to the degree, let alone any mention that radical environmentalism exists.

I hate STEM as an academic culture. It produces redditors. It only teaches you how to be a redditor with some technical niche. If I had started my degree at 18 without some existing societal critique it would have lobotomised me.

I just feel increasingly disillusioned about my ability to ever write a Marxist dissertation in Western academia, one that would actually pass.

Write one anyway, fuck 'em

The best you will find in western academia is trotskyists who, in their talking points and views on AES, are indiscernable from feds.

Trying to do science in Free Country but getting accused of Doublespeak

Conservatives are pretty dumb but there are not fully blind

There's a reason anti intellectualism is a big thing in the usa ,and I am not gonna say becoming big because I feel that it already has

western academia has a lot of bs ,people can be and are very stupid but when it goes to the degree of "don't believe you lying eyes" its when you reach the point of no return

Another one from today that was a real banger was an article by a Finnish professor on whether Marx is still useful for theories of social work.

In his article he smuggly asserts that the reason why radical Marxist social work never got traction here is because "Finnish Marxist theory was more sophisticated compared to for example the radical tradition in the USA" and how the tradition in the US and Britain was too old-fashioned and political.

Why is that though? Why is that!

He goes on to state how the tradition here definitely did not find inspiration in the Soviet Union but instead looked up to Swedish, Danish and German traditions with "extremely sophisticated Marx-exegetics"

It also mourns the "murder of Trotsky" by Stalin and just states, with no citations whatsoever, the following: "The Marx studies of Stalin and his contemporaries did not produce historically sustainable results."

That is because they, demonstratively, haven't read any actual Marx or Engels. Or Lenin or really anyone who had a real impact on political power. For them Marxism is purely arguing about philosophical terms between the dialectic of materialism and idealism, usually argueing against a vulgar materialist Marxism that the ideological founders and nobody of any consequence outside of the academy ever actually advocated for.

This is in the same way that I have met people with PhDs who supposedly focused in Freud, who clearly have only read summaries of his works or at best skimmed quotes that supported the things that they wrote about. Instead of attempting to understand how radical and influential these thinkers are, and how far we have strayed or Flanderized their insights, these academics attempt to subsume them into the larger and more moderate theoretical fields and histories.

Real.

Honestly I feel like most of my time studying and reading Marxist stuff these past 5-6 years has been about eventually realising 99% of the modern western literature and "schools" and thinkers are useless and wrong. And that NOBODY FUCKING READS MARX AND ENGELS.

Like please give me back the time I wasted reading Debord. PLEASE.

It probably means nothing, but when I was applying for grad school, there was a requirement to submit a previous work, and basically the only piece of writing I had at the time that I didn't feel revolted by was a nearly-exhaustive critique Popper's lecture Science: Conjectures and Refutations as pertains to Marxism. I think there were a few points that I forgot to address, but really the only difficulties I had were finding ways of deconstructing his sophistic, ironically anti-science rhetoric and also following his knot of self-reference to other works so that I could actually work with a complete argument that didn't use "well, I proved this point in a book I wrote" as axioms. Looking back on it now, I don't think it was a great essay, but it was fine.

Anyway, I gave this essay to very anticommunist academics and they thought I did a good job, so I was accepted. I agree with you that the vast majority of academics don't have any substantial familiarity with Marxism, sometimes really none at all, and yet many still feel that they can speak authoritatively on it and don't hesitate to do so. I nonetheless believe, and this was my purpose in writing this comment, that for most of these people you can present good arguments to them and they will accept them as being good arguments. You aren't going to change their mind on almost anything, but they will simultaneously not just thwart you for being a communist (depending on the person). I guess that's what happens when someone really believes in liberal pluralism.

I also encountered people who understood that liberalism stands against democracy and therefore explicitly adopted the position of opposing democracy. They ultimately were so tied up in spewing fatuous nonsense that I just couldn't deal with them because I lacked whatever elements of personal character would be required to deal with someone who almost never speaks in good faith.

Anyway, I think it's unlikely that you'll find some kind of model Marxist mentor, but I believe that especially for writing a PhD, you should be more oriented toward educating yourself with constructive feedback given from your advisors on a conversational basis rather than seeking an ideal mentor. It sucks that they don't have the knowledge we would hope for to direct you to pertinent information you didn't already know about Marxism, but just having people who can follow and critique arguments on a deductive basis and have knowledge about adjacent topics (you can't defend Marxism without attacking liberal paradigms, which they usually will be familiar with and strenuously defend) should be enough.

At least he is a Frankfurt school guy and not a french theory guy

Around two thirds of social science academics are basically hucksters.