Socialism, communism and marxism pt: 1, on trust and trust surveys

Abstract

This post explains a surprising result from a trust survey that showed that communists are closer to the alt-right than to the mainline left in levels of distrust. The author argues that this result is unsurprising and can be explained by the conflict theory of politics, which is generally more popular on the hard left and right than in the center. According to the conflict theory, political disagreements reflect differences in irreconcilable interests, and politics is full of zero-sum games. The author concludes that accepting the conflict theory tends to make people hardnosed and cynical about politics. – AI-generated abstract.