The person in question was talking about capitalism and how it's not a sustainable system, wealth inequality, how corruption and wealth consolidation is a feature not a bug, etc.
Then:
"There's also no magical best system we can go to. Communism would be nice, but it's just as susceptible to the flaws that come from centralization of power as capitalism is so RIP to that idea. In the absence of a perfect solution, the best we can do is look at what we have, critique it as hard as we can and advocate for something better, even if it's just incrementally better. For my part, I'd like to see a hard cap on wealth be introduced. No more billionaires. After a certain point (Say, $5 million just to pull a number out of my ass) all wealth, whether its in the form of liquid assets such as cash or iliquid assets such as property, get smacked with a 100% tax. Sell those assets off and invest/donate them (naturally, this would come with stricter regulations on charitable organizations too. No opening a "charity" to use a slush fund, like a certain ex-president on trial) or they go straight to the government. Individual ownership of corporations would also be phased out in favor of large scale profit sharing co-ops that are themselves run democratically by the workers, which is to say, workers elect their managers and bosses. Stocks and stock markets would then, not be a thing. If you want to own a piece of a company, you better work for that company. This would allow for a much more even distribution of the profits generated by the companies. No stocks means no investors which means that the majority of investment money would then come from a combination of credit unions which are formed by business in the area (since business in an area would be invested in improving the quality of life for people living there because they're run by those people that live there, so they'd want to see other business open up) and a business development fund run by the government and paid for via taxes. Is this a perfect solution? Fucking no, of course not, but it's a few steps better than what we currently have."
I'm thinking, "Hey, this person kind of gets it. I could point them in the right direction." I told them about the dictatorship of the proletariat and how successful socialism exists and has existed in the world. How there was actually a viable solution to this problem...
Then you get hit with this garbage:
"My dude, get your tankie shit out of here. The soviet union and china are neither communist nor are they "good" by any definition of the word. They're both absolutely state capitalist. While we're at it, Stalin was a genocidal maniac and Mao was a clown who either didn't realize or didn't care that forcing his farmers to make pig iron instead of, you know, farming, would lead to mass starvation. I'm sure all the people that died during the cultural revolution in china felt really uplifted. Shit man, I'm sure all those koreans that were ethnically cleansed in the USSR felt really uplifted too. What I'm suggesting is a far more realistic way to achieve proletarian control over the means of production and it's likely never going to happen, at least not in our lifetimes, and despite that, it's still a hell of a lot closer to happening than the revolution tankies like to LARP about, which would be both devastating and almost assuredly lead to fascists immediately taking control in the aftermath."
What do you even say to a person like this...? What would you even call a person like this?
Reddit moment, I guess. I'm just confused by people like this. Would anyone offer an explanation?
That's a liberal. I would call them an incurious, ignorant, and condescending liberal and say they aren't worth my time. I might also make fun of them.
You can tell they're liberals especially 'cause they make sure to define "achievable socialism" as outside their lifetimes which is both not backed by any sort of analysis (especially the dialectical kind that understands simple, linear changes are rare in nature/society) but also because putting outside their own lifetimes means they get to emptily pontificate on how they'd totally like to be a communist while still in actuality supporting the liberal status quo.
Fuck I hate Vaushoid types like this so much. It's so dumb.
They have an understanding of socialism that is basically just the anticommunist and even anti-liberal propaganda that Americans pick up just growing up and being exposed to mass media. It has nothing to do with what socialists do or did or theory, it's just a cartoon to be poked and laughed at and, in the case of V*ushites, get smug about because they'd like to pretend they are on the left.
This is why they're allergic to reading. The ones that aren't leave this stuff behind pretty quickly.
This is not meant as an attack but just as some pointers to polish your approach.
Caveat here to say that if someone accused me of hiding my power level to the point that I'm a coward, I wouldn't have grounds to deny it but I'm a big fan of the soft approach. Wear them down like water erodes rock knowing that there will be other people doing the exact same thing and over time that ossified liberal indoctrination is going to eventually crumble under its own weight.
What I would do with a person like this is to assess their level of ideological development, including their understanding of history.
Currently they're approaching systemic problems from a Cenk Uyghur-tier solutions angle, which is that we just need to tinker with the way liberalism works in order to rectify the problems that have been identified. Ultimately this is idealism because it's a very naive MLK sorta "Once we bring our laws into alignment with my concept of justice, all ills will be rectified" approach.
This gives you direction for how to help develop their ideological growth.
I think instead of providing solutions in this sort of situation, it's better to get them to push beyond their current level and on to the next one which is "The system itself is inherently fucked and tinkering with the laws to bring about social change is about as useful as the UN passing resolutions on humanitarian law to curb the excesses of the US armed forces and its war crimes."
I don't really like the Socratic method at all but I could write essays about why it sucks and what is better but ultimately if you're trying to find and approach and you don't know where to start then it's a serviceable one imo.
So where to from here?
Bring in the historical literacy
Raise their understanding of the New Deal era and how much of what was brought into law from that period has been repealed or critically undermined in one way or another. Get them to gradually come to the understanding that it would be impossible to pass New Deal policy today and that, even if it did happen, it would get chipped away at until we arrived back at the point we're at right now.
Get them to look at the historical situation of US overthrows - Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, Gaddafi in Libya, Chavez in Venezuela, Sankara in Burkina Faso, Mossadegh in Iran, Bishop in Grenada, the countless attempts in Cuba...
Don't invite them to focus on the leaders or whether they were morally justified/whatever. Just get them to see what happens when leaders of countries bring about changes that directly benefit the masses and curb the excesses of capitalism.
If they are so inclined, you could blackpill them on the realistic end of conspiracy theories (e.g. JFK, the Business Plot) too.
Lean into the idealism
Get them to consider facts like how Americans overwhelmingly support socialised healthcare and what vested interests are opposed to this being passed into law.
What opposition would they put up to prevent this from happening? How much money can they funnel into preventing it from happening? What would happen if you posed a threat not just to the profits of the privatised healthcare system but to all billionaires and multimillionaires? Etc.
Get them to make a realistic assessment
Basically he's talking reformism and Fabianism.
For Fabianist thought, the best counter to it is asking them how progress is going? The answer is badly and backwards (at least in the intervening period after the gilded age.)
The US is passing laws to permit child labour again ffs. The concentration of wealth is off the charts. Blackrock controls a staggering amount of entire markets. Etc.
There's more that can be done and one of the more direct approaches is to tackle how "authoritarian" it is to take a gradual, reformist approach while condemning the developing world to decades or centuries more wars of imperialism, starvation, and abject destitution while we cushy first-worlders tinker around with laws and in the hopes that we will eventually find that perfect balance and everything will be put to right.
The world can't wait. The climate can't wait. If they're worried about millions of people dying then what about the millions of people who have died due to war, lack of clean water or food, access to healthcare and so on?
Don't worry about defending the legacy of Stalin or Mao. Don't pose a direct, overt threat to their ideological position and avoid diagnosing. Stay laser-focused on their current interest and get them to hash out the contradictions, the hypocrisy, and the limits of their current prescription for change by doing a lot of listening and giving them the right input - incisive questions, historical content, that sort of thing - at critical moments. Something like "This is very similar to the land reforms that Arbenz attempted to implement in Guatemala" or "That sounds exactly like the changes that Allende was implementing" sort of thing. You might not even have cause to needle them on it if they are engaged and self-motivated enough; they might just go away and study up on what happened. Cultivate open, curious, genuine dialogue with them which allows them to explore this stuff with you without feeling pressured or threatened. Ideally you want to get them to talk themselves out of their liberalism with little direct intervention on your behalf.
For a very small microcosm of the approach I'm describing here, there's this recent post of mine which sorta captures the spirit (although admittedly this is more direct and it's a one-off exchange but the essence is there.) I guess what I'm trying to say is that the right question posed at the right time can be far more effective at developing someone's critical awareness than delivering all of the best knowledge to them.
I hope this has been food for thought.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Believes in incrementalism yet they choose to jump to conclusions, curious
In my unfiltered opinion, your interlocutor is just a White supremacist (USA) or a racist (if not from the USA) who uses misanthropic myths about humanity (sustaining myths of the capitalist class) to justify their apathy.
I've encountered this type of person in different levels, none as explicit as whom you're talking about. If you're close with them, you can try deprogramming. If not, don't bother since the hours you have might spent on them will be wasted when they leave and consume the same reactionary sources.
They were explicitly talking about capitalism. I thought there were a genuine anti-capitalist at first, but then they just hit me with the "small and incremental change" bullshit.
I'm thinking they're more like a "Democratic" socialist who still has their brain rotted from red scare propaganda and can't take the next step. This comes about from a lack of education and theory.
For the record, this is just some random on reddit who I was disappointed in.
How sure are you that it's not a bit. What they are describing sounds like an internet but to confuse people into getting closer to communism. Like, without using words that scare people. I don't have all the context, but like, they're streets ahead of most incrementalist liberals
What I told them, for the record:
There is actually a solution to this problem; it is called proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Actual socialism.
And it's far from "magical". It's grounded in the science of Marxism-Leninism and the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Hundreds of millions of lives have been uplifted by this historically progressive system; it's been tried in the real world, and it's been successful.
These states were not idealistically perfect because after a successful revolution you actually have to deal the contradictions and material conditions that your country faces. China and the USSR were not "State-capitalist".
The nature of the state is authoritarian. But which class is it authoritarian to? It is only a mechanism of class domination. The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie (Most Western countries and European Social Democracies) has the Ruling capitalist class oppress and be "authoritarian" to the working proletariat because that's the way they maintain their rule. The goal is to flip the script; the proletariat becomes the ruling class and oppresses the small exploiting minority to maintain and defend the revolution. If they do not, the bourgeoisie will come back and destroy everything the workers have worked so hard to build. It's only one class dictatorship or the other.
As long as class contradictions exist so will the state, that is its reason for existing.
With enough time, these contradictions and classes will eventually wither away, and so will the proletarian state, as it's material base for existence is no longer there. However, for this to happen most of the entire world would have to adopt socialism. It will take a long, long time.
But once this goal in the far future is "achieved", this will be called the state of communism.
"Authoritarianism is not something to be desired, but it is a necessity in a world dominated by international capital and Reaction.
We are for the withering away of the state.
And yet we also believe in the proletarian dictatorship, which represents the tightest and mightiest form of state authority that has ever existed in history.
To keep on strengthening state power in order to prepare the conditions for the withering away of state power – that is the Marxist formula. Is it contradictory? Yes, contradictory. But the contradiction is vital and wholly reflective of the Marxist dialectic.”
--J.V. Stalin: Address to the 16th Congress of the Russian Communist Party
To finish this off with a quote from Michael Parenti:
"The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.”
― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
I don't know what more I can do at that point...
What do you even say to a person like this
Nothing. They've just informed you what a waste of time that is.
T.I.N.A.