“Am I a stupid socialist?”

A READER WRITES: “I once read a quote somewhere to this effect: ‘If one is not a Socialist in his twenties, then one has no heart. However if one is still a Socialist in his thirties, then one has no brain’. I have recently turned thirty and find myself still adhering to a 'quasi' Socialist ideology. Does this mean that I am stoop-id?? Yours worriedly

PS: I read your article on Schopenhauer’s Pessimism. I liked it, but find it slightly irksome that what I consider to be Realism, is constantly rebranded as Pessimism by others.”

BB SAYS: No, it means you are smart. You see through the free-market propaganda and ideology that has facilitated a bunch of greedy scumbags to wreak havoc on the world economy. People who have given up on social justice and progress have no heart – they are missing something. Ultimately people should find a Golden Mean between the head and the heart. We must be realistic idealists, or idealistic realists. Socialism and Progressivism are about to become hot again.

Even, Karl Marx, a philosopher who has been out of fashion for the last couple of decades, is due a Renaissance:

"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalised and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism." Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867