Trotsky was a prescient predictor of many things it turns out
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/jewish.htm

It’s funny there are number of people who are mocked for idealism/lack of thought—Trotsky, Bakunin, the Cosmists, & various autonomists, anarchists, communists, social scientists & kooks —whose predictions turned out to be remarkably accurate for a long run

I’d add P Goodman, various Autonomists, many of those born in the anti authoritarian ferment of the 60s, and basically anyone whose leftism or social science was based in ecological and/or dynamic systems thinking.

For example, Club of Rome is mocked, but as the book ‘Collision Course’ points out, when their specific predictions are analyzed (as price, quantity vectors in a total system), they’re remarkably close to what actually happened.

Then there are others who *are* liked and appreciated for various parts of their thought, but a lot of it was wrong—like Keynes Or George—but actually got the substantive parts about them correct.

For ex, Keynes *quantitative* predictions in ‘Economic Possibilities’ were spot on, but the social were wrong. George’s predictions about land use, cycles etc have been borne out. Kondratieff is either a seer or madman. Goldman’s pessimistic coda to her life was quite realistic.

Bukharin wasn’t an idealist or a left communist by any means, but he also was pretty good at this kind of thing, once he let the wool fall from his eyes. Ditto Victor Serge.

To this we can add Fredy Perlman. And, as much as people hate them otherwise, Kaczynski & Zerzan’s predictions on the future of the left in the 90s were largely borne out. But just to piss all sides off, I’ll say Bookchin got a few future predictions correct as well.

https://twitter.com/yungneocon/status/1265505117115162625?s=21 https://twitter.com/yungneocon/status/1265505117115162625

The other group of people I notice that are good predictors of the future are those who began as optimistic idealists, scientists & teleologists who then realize the error of their ways at the end—Oppenheimer, Wiener, any number of ‘failed successful’ revolutionaries & scientists

Anyway, the key is to reconstruct those aspects of their thought that allowed them to make these predictions and determine if they were flukes (a broken Nostradamus is right twice a millennia, To brutalize a metaphor) or followed from their thought

If they can be shown to follow from their thought, or, at minimum, a rational reconstruction of the framework latent in their thought of which they may not have been aware, then i think it’s useful.

And, to the degree there are commonalities across predictors, they are potential indicators. For ex., 1 paper I quite like looks at models that successfully predicted the 2007 financial crisis across diff schools & found they all use stock flow consistent accounting modelling

Anyway, as much as many would like it to not be true, people from other ideologies, methods, and schools of thot than our own—including those directly opposed to us—can be very prescient, & not only that, but coherently prescient—i.e. not as the result of ad hoc hypos or a fluke

I wish twitter had an edit button so badly, so that I wouldn’t have to delete and repost when it is just one word that’s wrong aaah