Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“Conflict theory is the belief that political disagreements come from material conflict. So for example, if rich people support capitalism, and poor people support socialism, this isn’t because one side doesn’t understand economics. It’s because rich people correctly believe capitalism is good for the rich, and poor people correctly believe socialism is good for the poor. Or if white people are racist, it’s not because they have some kind of mistaken stereotypes that need to be corrected — it’s because they correctly believe racism is good for white people. … I think simple versions of conflict theory are clearly wrong. This doesn’t mean that simple versions of mistake theory (the idea that people disagree because of reasoning errors, like not understanding Economics 101) are automatically right.” (02/26/25)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-i-am-not-a-conflict-theorist