Given that we're all susceptible to bias, wishful thinking, being inspired, being utopian, being cynical, being pragmatic and having an intuitive sense of the reality external to us...how do you read political theory? How do you safeguard yourself against being swept away by a great idea that doesn't really map onto reality (I assume the vast majority of people here are materialists and accept that reality is external and prior to our perception).
The reason I ask is because I tend to like to examine my theoretical errors. To find out what took me down a false path. More often than not I think I can locate my error to the following: Political theory is pretty advanced stuff. More often that not wherever you start you're reading above your level. This means you don't understand all of it. Their initial premise may hook you, it may make intuitive sense to you. It may solve a riddle you were already wrestling with. It may convince you with rhetoric. It may inspire you. The main body of the work will be a bunch of stuff you barely understand, their proofs and what not, that you have to take largely on faith and then the conclusion will generally be an elaborated form of the introduction/initial premise which banishes the doubts you felt through the middle of the work. As an example how many people can read Capital and say they understood it to a degree that they could defend it from a theoretical point of view, could say in all honesty that they have submitted it to a ruthless scrutiny? No enough people I would venture, certainly not myself.
Welcome to Proletarian problems: Too savy to accept Capitalism, not academic enough to do Socialism.
As an addendum, I am a damning indictment of the Leninist cadre model. Educated in party, yes. Educated in Marxism? Don't be daft.