the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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I'll just mention it is not even about reading Marx's actual works; it is not really necessary to read all the volumes of Capital. It is about the method of inquiry and intellectual honesty.
If you want to know Marx, then reading any modern Marxist economic text is sufficient (for example, Michael Roberts' Marx 200); other texts like the Communist Manifesto are not even that long, and I'm sure Lenin's Imperialism has already been distilled down by other Marxists somewhere. There are also YT etc...
The point, though, is intellectual honesty, and as you said, you don't learn a theory by first going to read what the critics have to say. Sure, that may be, and arguably even should be, part of the inquiry, but they make no effort to actually understand the Marxist point of view; they don't seek Marxist sources. They take the conclusion as granted to them on a silver platter.