Sorry, I know debatebro-ism is the 12th type of liberalism :denguin:
Disappointed by Wolff tbh. He's too moralizing, comes off as a Christian Socialist. He's also long winded, yeah I know it was a live debate but he should've been able to make his points more focused. He also hangs on to dead ends (Socialism's definition isn't amorphous, Mondragon is good, etc.) which he doesn't need to. He basically rolls over to Destiny's weird hostility to using history and class relations to explain modes of production, doesn't put enough emphasis in them as processes instead of things that people just enact one day.
This is why debates are pointless and not worth watching beyond their entertainment value. It doesn't matter one little bit who is actually correct. It's just a battle of rhetoric and charisma. Hopefully no one was watching it with the intent of trying to figure out whether capitalism or socialism is better.
I thought it was useful to see Wolff challenged by a guy who, although dumb (and obviously taking his talking points entirely from wikipedia), is still quite advanced compared to the average liberal on the street. Wolff has done other debates with exceptionally stupid people, but I don't think Steve is the dumbest. This guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj-zFgxCUnY) in particular is operating on an entirely different level of stupid. I couldn't actually finish that debate because the dude kept arguing that Hillary was a socialist. He also said that he hired people based on their birthdays.
Is the average Liberal on the street 300% bet into showboating for their audience so they can take in endless cash?
This online bollocks is for morons, it's not politics, its not useful
I imagine myself, one day in the future, being able to debate a prominent liberal in some kind of public context. I think that although these debates are stupid, they can make a difference when it comes to the audience, especially in times like these when a lot of people are looking for answers. If Marxists don't step up and talk, liberals and fascists will.
Childish, cathartic fantasy.
You don't stand on a podium and wax lyrical like big King nonce. You do politics, you appeal to the electorate, your community, you find out their wants and needs, you work. You do a hundred thousand difficult tasks.
Individualistic grandstanding is for earning twitch bucks and grooming teenagers.
All true, but socialists do sometimes have opportunities to speak to large numbers of people who may be relatively open to new ideas. If you become a substitute teacher, which is relatively easy in the USA, you will eventually find yourself discussing these things, sometimes with large groups of students who themselves are probably more open to socialism than the average USAer because school is so amazingly unbearable here. (As a sub, you also don't really have to worry about jeopardizing your career, since you have no career to speak of.) When I was in high school several local politicians—not all of them elected—were invited to speak in our classroom as well as in the auditorium. None of them were socialists but they nonetheless made quite an impression (one said that he believed that yoga was our path to the stars). Imagine having the chance to tell students that they should consider unionizing and striking to get what they want. I hated high school but never thought of these possibilities, and it might have made a difference if someone had actually mentioned them to me, which no one ever did.
There was an event at my school in which the 'ambassador to Venezuela (Guaido guy)' was speaking alongside some other imperialists on a panel. There was a q&a portion. Some fedora wearing marxist 'how dare you, sir'ed the dude for like 6 minutes. While he wasn't wrong, he was so unconvincing and such an ass that even I was cringing and looking down on the floor.
What he was saying was entirely correct, the way he said it was entirely fucking cringe and totally lacked any charisma or understanding of how to play to an audience.
So in the future, don't shoot yourself in the foot with diatribes of 'well actually...' debate broism. Make your points short, make your points obvious, make them incisive, make them in a way the audience will understand and keep up with. That definitely matters more than truth content in those contexts. Don't lie, of course. But because the ambassador looked somewhat normal in comparison, he came away looking like the better of the two in the exchange.
That's what matters the most for liberals, the herd wants to attach itself to people who look normal/are funny/seem informed. It's all a balancing act.
Edit: Buenaventura Durruti was described by others in the union as 'speaking like a woodcutter'. He would listen intently, quietly. He would rarely weigh in and speak until hearing from others. He would make his points like an axe through wood: cutting quickly, cleanly, clearly and then resting again before speaking the same way.
Holy shit was that me????????????????
During the protests last summer in my very liberal area I was able to grab a megaphone for a few minutes in front of several hundred people. I'm a local politician so this was not the first time I had spoken before a big crowd, but the difference here was that I was completely unprepared. I was just kind of angry after listening to speaker after speaker tell us to GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I went up there and talked for several minutes. I can't recall exactly what I said, except that we were standing on stolen land, the people there should read Marx, and genetically random individuals have much more in common than socially constructed races. The audience of white liberals was super not into it! Most of them just watched me in silence.
However, at the following protest the next week—same time and place, similar if not identical crowd—we were completely surrounded by cops. There were at least two cop infiltrators at the protest. No cops had been present, as far as I know, when I spoke during the previous protest. Also, open mic was no longer allowed by the organizers. As far as I can recall, I was the only radical who spoke. I was also quietly running in a low-level local political campaign at the time, and the local liberals went absolutely into overdrive trying to stop me. They had pretty much been ignoring me before then. Months later, when the election took place, they succeeded in stopping me. One even spread rumors that the handful of black people at the protest had asked me to be quiet, which absolutely never happened!
So although I pretty much blew it here, the powers-that-be take this shit seriously. We talk about how the internet isn't real or how debates between Wolff and Steve are stupid and pointless, but capitalists do not want socialists (even mediocre ones like myself) speaking in the media or in public spaces.
And also it's not entirely a bad thing that I lost the election. Had I won, I would have been one Marxist surrounded entirely by liberals and reactionaries. I would not have been able to get anything done, and my family certainly would have started receiving death threats. There is no organization where I live and no protection of any kind. So I'm pretty much over it and ready to move on to the next battle. I had only run for that particular position in the first place because the friend who asked me to said that I wouldn't have to campaign. Once Bernie lost the primary I went full ML and pretty much stopped caring about winning, but that was several months before my own election took place.