Marx didn’t just right about economics, indeed he had an entire philosophy, which in fact influenced his economics and his politics.
Leftists have explicitly adopted Marxism in their economics, but whether they are aware of it or not, their anti free speech, anti discourse mentality comes directly from Marx as well. On social media like Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter leftists remove, block or ban anyone stating any opinion, rational or not, that doesn’t fit with their preconceived beliefs. Leftist cancel culture seeks to silence anyone they disagree with via intimidation. They try to shut down speaking events by showing up and violently protesting, and I am sure everyone can think of plenty more examples.
What most people don’t know, is that at the root of all this, is also Marx. You see Marx was an environmental determinist. He believed that a human’s mind and beliefs are determined by their environment.
“The human essence has no true reality, It is not the consciousness of men that determines their lives, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” – Karl Marx
According to Marx what we think is good and rational is determined by our environmental circumstances. We do not have free will to decide what we think the truth is, but we are rather conditioned to one set of truths.
Thus given that our thinking is conditioned, there is no way for individuals of different conditioning to communicate effectively with each other, to understand the other’s position, to change the other’s mind. Each side has been molded to hold a set of beliefs.
It follows then for Marxism that the process of debate is pointless. Debate/discourse presupposes the effectiveness of reason, that individuals can observe, think, and judge for themselves, that they can learn from experience, be open to argument, and change their minds. Marxism, however, rules that out on principle, knowledge is conditioning, not rational judgment.
Thus any conflict can be resolved only by force. For example, a socialist cannot argue a capitalist into socialism. So the only other option is to remove their social enemies by force.
