Disclaimers

tl;dr at the end

My perspective comes from living in part of Burgerland (aka the US) and will be focused on the left "movement" in this country. I'm not going to do the typical American thing of assuming my experiences and perspectives are the only ones that matter, so please let me know in the comments how other countries handle what I'm about to cover.

Also this post has been kicking around my head for a while, so apologies if it ends up long-winded or hard to read. The way I think is all over the place, so I have lots of headers and sections to keep things organized.

Intro: Messaging from the left = Capitalist Realism

Mark Fisher (RIP) wrote a very important book about a phenomenon he called Capitalist Realism.

I highly recommend every leftist reads at least the opening chapter to this book.

In this piece Fisher describes a widespread cultural attitude that Capitalism is inevitable, the only system that can exist in this "end of history". No alternatives are possible, so don't bother trying. And if you do try, you will be made an example of, another reason on a long list of reasons not to try again, so don't even bother. Or worse, your criticisms of Capitalism are used to help keep Capitalism going! Your efforts co-opted and integrated seamlessly into the machine. "Sorry To Bother You", but I doubt "Don't Look Up" got throngs of people who never heard of Socialism to sign up with PSL

The left, unknowingly(?), contributes to Capitalist Realism

Look at the news feeds, the posts on here, all of the updates on all of your favorite Reddit subs, left Twitter, etc. Overwhelmingly negative stories about how Capitalism is screwing us, how this week a company is caught poisoning food, or how capitalist governments are suppressing speech, or some shitty Conservative politician pushing the latest woman-hating bill. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Capitalism sucks. No one here needs convincing of that.

What I want you to focus on is how this deluge of negative stories affects activists and organizers. More in comments.

  • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    We should build our own audience, not try to win over the Democratic targets

    I hope I never get another canvassing turf that puts me in the middle of a upper-middle-class cul-de-sac. That's prime lib territory, and I'm afraid as long as leftists work with the Democratic party's infrastructure, voter files, etc. we will continue knocking on doors that are targets for Democrats, not us. I support electoralism as a way to get messages out more efficiently through a candidate's increased access to the press, but not by running people under the Democratic Party.

    One way one could explain why electoralism gets a bad rap... talking to the wrong audience! Bernie tried to mobilize everyone at once. Winning over a population doesn't work that way. We need to adopt a more gradual, long term approach. Changing minds doesn't happen over a single election cycle.

    We need to find our own audience of people who are going to be the most receptive to a radical movement away from the status-quo Capitalist parties. To me that means we should target:

    • Non-voters, checked out of the system, not targeted by Dem/Rep messaging. This group is very large and unorganized, not yet radicalized, but more potential to be radicalized than Democratic audiences.
    • Anyone who is disenfranchized under Capitalism. People who have more than one job, people with any sort of disability, people in LGBT communities facing persecution, unemployed people. I am proud to be a Marxist because we lift up people society wants to keep down. Thanks to the wonders of modern consumer data and other creepy data collection things, we can find these people easier than ever before.
    • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Let's do a better job of actively recruiting new leftists

      I believe our movement does a terrible job of this, with Trot orgs being one major exception. It sounds icky to say, but I believe we should invest some time and funds into things like Facebook ads, acquisition ads, maybe a billboard or two, a targeted mail series, etc. It works for literally every other political organization in the country, but we don't do it or not enough of it. OK, actually fuck Facebook, don't spend a dime on that company.

      There's no ethical consumption under Capitalism, but there are less unethical ways to get ads out. Lots of cities have an "alternative" paper with local concert listings, event guides, etc. Those would be great places to place an ad instead of with the legacy newspapers.

      Mailers do not have to be fancy. In fact, Marchow (see a couple comments above) shares data collected by Democratic analysts showing that the most effective mailers were ones coming from a neutral-sounding source, on plain paper, with no fancy graphics and just plain text about the candidates. I believe we could do a similar thing to promote Socialism and see good results.

      • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        7 months ago

        Misc thoughts

        • Be bold, raw, tough. Don't sound like Pete Buttegieg. The Chapo/crass style works and I think it will continue to work.
        • Dunking works. Bullying works. The House didn't pass an anti-Palestine chant resolution because they felt like it. Politicians, especially Democrats, hate being called out for being the slime balls that they are. The public laps this up. We should do more to promote disruptions of political speeches.
        • Our potential audience is hard to reach because of Capitalism i.e. working two jobs, dealing with inefficient public transit, child care, etc. Mutual aid is a good strategy to not only help people in a very real way but also to free them to be able to organize.
        • I believe a lot of how American society works is designed specifically to make organizing left movements as hard as possible. Ex: suburban design, no "third places", popular communities such as those around sports and gaming are all corporate-dominated.
        • Creating ads is something all of us can do from home with a bit of time. No org nearby? Learn to make memes, or do some research to help others make memes, graphics, flyers, etc.
        • I wish we had the ability to fund a left-wing "think tank". The right has infinite money to throw at things like PragerU. Gravel Institute is not enough. We need orgs that can function as content mills of sorts, put out policy papers, and test talking points.
        • Advertising is attractive because it is measurable. We currently don't do a good job measuring who supports us, who is against us, etc. I mean we have membership lists but do we know how many people, who will never join an org officially, we can count on to not join the enemy in a revolutionary situation?
        • Data is king, and we don't collect it.
        • Looking at Occupy Comics as a short-lived project that had a lot of potential. Worth looking into emulating in a different form. If someone has to pay for your propaganda, then it's not going to reach the people that need to read it most.
        • Elections are attractive to people because progress is measurable (how many people did we get in office? How many votes did we get?) and there's an end goal (win the election).
        • We gotta get away from focusing on the "shitty politician of the day" and focus on the people who fund them.