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.

  • THRILLHOU [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I imagine myself, one day in the future, being able to debate a prominent liberal in some kind of public context.

    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.

    • duderium [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      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.