Just to clarify, Im talking about my face to face interactions with people. I know social democracy is imperialist, unworkable, and doomed to fail. But I have trouble articulating why socialism is the only way forward. I can point out all the problems with capitalism, though.
There’s too much baggage associated with the S word; people immediately point to 100 billion dead vuvuzela. If I had to think of the biggest stumbling block to convincing people, it’s the controversial history associated with socialism. And I just don’t know enough about each individual “atrocity” and “failure” that happened in order to debunk it all. I feel like in order to convince anyone, you have to know basically the entire history of every socialist country by memory. And if I cared enough I could probably learn, but then I give into my pessimism and think “what’s the point? The people are too propagandized to convert.”
Probably the wrong comm to post in, but I give up trying to think of the right one to mark this as.
I don’t know why you would feel the need to name it
Usually when someone you don’t know brings up politics it’s to complain, and you will always have something to complain about. What I do is complain but from a leftist perspective, eg:
:grillman: joe Biden is shit gas prices blah blah
:meow-tankie: the whole government is shit, they don’t give a fuck about working people, we don’t have decent wages or healthcare in the richest country in the world, it’s ridiculous. All we do is spend our money on weapons.
Blah blah blah, ultimately leading to “it seems like no matter how we vote nothing ever changes, the elite get richer and the working people who actually run this country get fucked”
the gas prices one is so easy to lead into a discussion about how the Ukraine war is stupid and it would be best for everyone if Russia won quickly though
I gotta disagree hard on this one. Going against the mainstream narrative of Russia and Ukraine immediately puts people on the defensive and justifying American hegemony.
I was talking to a couple of chuds who agreed with me on that point, felt so weird.
yeah left-liberals who normally love rifting with me about Democrats shenanigans suddenly get tight lipped and "well actually" whenever I start starting going talking about Russia or China. The propaganda is real.
Ehhh the russia issue is pretty much impossible to talk to people about. I mean, my opinion on the issue is of course no war but class war, but even talking about how NATO continually provoked Russia and crossed established red lines constantly and refused to take a step back is met with indignation. I mean, I tried it once, and never tried it again because it shut down the entire conversation. People also literally hate Russian people here, it's insanity.
I frame it as the long war is causeing food and gas prices to rise. I know very few people who care more about NATO and foreign treaties than they do their own family eating
it seems like no matter how we vote nothing ever changes, the elite get richer and the working people who actually run this country get fucked
This is how everyone in the country thinks here in Brazil. But for 50% of the population the conclusion is that, since voting doesn't work, we need a military dictatorship
the whole government is shit, they don’t give a fuck about working people, we don’t have decent wages or healthcare in the richest country in the world, it’s ridiculous. All we do is spend our money on weapons.
Blah blah blah, ultimately leading to “it seems like no matter how we vote nothing ever changes, the elite get richer and the working people who actually run this country get fucked”
Tons of Trumpers would agree with these sentiments.
It isn't bad to acknowledge that socialist countries did things that were failures. The important thing is that they aren't inherent to socialism like they are to capitalism. Socialism is objectively more democratic and beneficial for the worker. There's nothing immoral about wanting more of a say in the workplace
I just call myself a leftist/Marxist although I'm pretty sure I'm an ML. My friends think I'm an anarchist because they don't know what that word means, but it hasn't been a big deal. I simply defend all attempts at socialism when they come up
If you're afraid but really want to convince these people, you could call yourself a dem soc. Pretty sure Bernie neutered that term. That way you can explain why the soc dem position is bad, and that there's another way forward
How do I tell them it’s not inherent to socialism though? Sure capitalism has killed tons of people, but those deaths are spread out over a longer period and most of the people who are killed are exploited people in the imperial periphery who aren’t seen nor heard.
If you admittedly don't know much about the history of USSR or China, it's best not to focus on it. I'd recommend learning about Cuba, I think that's the easiest wedge to argue over. It's a small country, it was a US backed dictatorship before Communism, the Socialist government quickly raised the quality of life and education rate, and it's development has been directly harmed by the US embargo.
Still the difference between deaths in socialism vs capitalism is intent. In a socialist or communist system, the goal is to feed and house people. Whereas the intent of a capitalist system is to encourage scarcity. In capitalism, people cannot give away free food or land because that will eat into profits. Profit inherently comes from poor people being denied their needs. When capitalist systems are put in place, they lead to poor people losing land, healthcare, and food access while wealthy people get richer. That's the system working as intended.
This is a dense article about capitalist development in Africa via the World Bank and IMF that explains in detail how capitalism kills. Mass starvation is not a by-product of capitalism, it is the intent.
Now the person you're talking to might have too much brainworms to accept that the intent of a socialist government is to feed and house people, and those are mostly lost causes. But the people who say "communism only works on paper" you can drive a wedge into by showing how capitalism "on paper" is designed to make poor people poorer and rich people richer.
If you get this kind of stuff from chuds, you can hit back with "well, that's what the liberal mainstream media would have you believe".
Does not work on Trust The Process libs though.
Conservatives were (kinda) right about the liberal media (and guns) all along.
"Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is."
-- headline and first paragraph of column by New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent, July 25, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/weekinreview/25bott.html
is not participating in shaming someone with a shame kink, kinkshaming?
First of all, it's not usually necessary to bring up a label at all. If anything, I think going label-less has advantages in a conversation. Usually I omit any defense of China or Venezuela or USSR etc, because it's so much more touchy and difficult. Just focus on bread and butter issues, anti-democrat shit, militant unionism, universalist policy. I've swayed many chuds on these issues alone, and to be honest, that's really mostly all that matters IMO. Also, I noticed Americans are so individualism-brained that adhering to any kind of ideological dogma pushes people away. Just say what you believe, not the label!
It's also critical to listen more than you talk. People love to talk. Listen until you find a point you both agree on, like maybe anti-liberal-idpol stuff. Expand on it until you can sprinkle in some subtle Marxism. After all, Marxism truly is common sense.
Though if you do get to the step where someone explicitly asks about your political labels, that's great!! You have the opportunity to introduce them to your ideological basis without any perceived bible-thumping.
So you go for 'social democrat' to not scare people - but who the fuck even knows what a social democrat is in this country? What does that even mean to people? Is it even much better than just saying "socialist"? If you're trying to imply that you're in favor of nordic style free healthcare, then "social democrat" is an incomplete term too. Because soc-dem policy wasn't accomplished by soc-dems alone - it came about from a struggle of the working class, soc-dems, commies, "apolitical people".
All that said, your fear of the "S" word is still totally valid, and I've encountered many situations where it's best to just leave it out. So my favorite term is just "Lefty"
this is exactly how i roll in my chuddy community. no one's the wiser
It depends on the person.
If I feel like I’m in physical danger, I voted for Trump. I don’t give a fuck. An Uber driver literally told me last week that, “anyone who voted for that dumb son of a bitch [Biden] needs to be taken out back and shot”. I didn’t vote for Biden, but am visibly queer and apparently this was an appropriate escalation from complaining about gas prices.
If it’s someone you meet casually who isn’t involved in local politics or something, frankly, your stated politics are much more a centerpiece for discussion than they are a statement of intent. Liberalism, etc.
It it’s some who you feel may recur in your life and actually act based on your answer to the question, the further right they are, the more likely I am to play word games and state positions than use any words. For what it’s worth, this is a core tenant of early union organizing (don’t say the U word) so I don’t view it as incompatible with socialism in particular or with working class politics more generally. You can’t control what people associate with a word, but you can get better at stating your case issue by issue.
And then if this is someone you’re relatively close with, you can be up front and just try to be the person in their life who they associate with “socialism, but reasonable” and you can work on familiarizing them with the actual positions and history gradually over time. Real organizing and radicalization is about building strong social bonds through a mutual understanding of shared oppression.
the more likely I am to play word games and state positions than use any words
Yep. If you're an American like me, it's very possible that giving it a name like "socialism" is actually unhelpful. Americans have such absolute brainworms regarding that word, they seem to just completely shut down once it's mentioned. If it's someone you'll interact with more than once, if you start just talking positions they will in all likelihood think you have some good thoughts if they too are working class. Build up that trust and eventually if you decide to give it a name they may actually consider that this "socialism" thing isn't as scary as they were led to believe.
If I feel like I’m in physical danger, I voted for Trump. I don’t give a fuck. An Uber driver literally told me last week that, “anyone who voted for that dumb son of a bitch [Biden] needs to be taken out back and shot”. I didn’t vote for Biden, but am visibly queer and apparently this was an appropriate escalation from complaining about gas prices.
I’m sorry that you are put in that position. I sorta know what that’s like. Hopefully it isn’t too often.
Tell them you're a Stalinist and watch their faces explode
Jk it doesn't matter. You'll be ready when you're ready.
The other S word
The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Stalinists, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is what they have in mind. But, on the contrary, they glorify us with this epithet; it is an honor for us to be Stalinists for while we maintain such a stand the enemy cannot and will never force us to our knees
:hoxha-turt:
I feel like in order to convince anyone, you have to know basically the entire history of every socialist country by memory.
And yet you don't need the same to defend capitalism. Curious.
Don't defend socialist history, dismiss them as attacks and point towards the scientific fact that socialist countries provide a better quality of life than capitalist ones.
Thread with references: https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1528326657500758016
The entire point of attacking you with the entire history of socialism is to do gish gallop as a tactic of overwhelming you with things to refute. Don't bother even entertaining that behaviour.
I don't ever label what I'm saying as the names scare people.
You can get in lots of practice if you argue about this anonymously with libs online, making sure to use establishment sources to back your assertions. In the real world most people are not terminally online, so when you have these discussions in person it should be a lot easier to outmaneuver whoever you happen to be debating.
As for the trillion dead people claim, the black book was denounced by its own authors, Russia was recovering from like a decade of catastrophe, and famines have happened and continue to happen in capitalist countries all the time. No, socialist countries are not perfect, but given the abominable record of the USA, Americans have no right to criticize anyone.
As for the trillion dead people claim, the black book was denounced by its own authors, Russia was recovering from like a decade of catastrophe, and famines have happened and continue to happen in capitalist countries all the time. No, socialist countries are not perfect, but given the abominable record of the USA, Americans have no right to criticize anyone.
At this point if I'm having this discussion with someone, I would just shut up and hand them a copy of Blackshirts and Reds rather than trying to articulate those points myself. I just don't trust myself to be the one to change someone's mind.
This feels like a bad strategy as only someone primed to be receptive to leftist ideas would be willing to read Blackshirts and Reds
I know this gets brought up a lot but most americans are functionally illiterate when it comes to reading. Maybe share them parenti videos instead? Then maybe you can get through some finer points with them later.
Also don't be so hard on yourself. :meow-hug:
:meow-hug: thanks comrade, I just dont fancy myself much of a debater. Yeah, I'm well aware of the literacy problem in the US. BS&R was just the first thing that came to mind when thinking of things to break through the shroud of propaganda when it comes to the USSR.
It's helpful to say "oh you're quoting the Black Book? That's based on literal Nazi propaganda."
Gonna echo the others here and say that, usually when I'm not sure someone would be receptive to communist ideas if I explicitly say they're communist ideas, I just don't use the word communist or reference socialist states when I make those points.
For example, someone mentioned to me that lettuce was nearly 10 bucks a head at the grocery store, meat was getting prohibitively expensive, and overall they couldn't really afford it because their pay wasn't going up to match and if they wanted cheaper food the only other store was a 2 hour drive away and gas is through the roof, (about 6 and a half bucks per gallon for the Yanks here) so I brought up how over the past 2 years the company that owns that grocery store A: reduced their costs B: reduced the pay of the employees at that store C: saw record profits. Someone is taking in the cash, but it sure as hell isn't us, and in fact the ones who are getting paid are doing it at the expense of us getting paid less. Got them to the point that we were joking about eating billionaires when we couldn't buy groceries anymore, quite literally "eat the rich" rhetoric, and they consider themselves conservative.
If someone I'm talking to is at least receptive to the left, but no necessarily to communism, I usually just go with that study that showed socialist states under similar levels of development outperformed capitalist states of healthcare, housing, medicine, etc. or the CIA state department documents saying citizens of the USSR ate about the same amount of calories but had more nutritious food compared to Americans at the time. I bring up Cuba's lack of homelessness and thriving medical advancements all while under embargo, or Vietnam's early response to the pandemic. If they still do the whole "vuvuzela 100 quadrillion dead" thing, I usually find they aren't actually going to be receptive to any attempts to debunk it, and I also don't know all of the arguments so they're bound to find something I'm not aware of. In those cases, I usually just say something like "We don't have to do it in exactly the same way they did, in fact we can't or it won't work. We're not starting with a feudal empire or a country with swathes of rural peasants like in Russia and China. We have to adapt it to our current conditions, to meet our specific needs." It tends to A: shut down a lot of the talking points and B: shift the conversation to discussing what our material conditions are and what a possible solution could look like, which is far more productive than squabbling over a country that hasn't existed since the 20th century with someone who isn't willing to listen to what you have to say about it anyway.
TLDR: If they're conservative or vehemently against socialism, get them to complain about the current system and make your points without saying the S word. If they're at least receptive, but still anticommunist, shift the conversation to one discussing their material needs and what the solutions could be. This is just based on my experience though, YMMV
Hey great write up, I usually do the same thing as in not mention communism/socialism or usually even capitalism. Just talk about issues and get people hating the right people
Good points. debating is dumb and annoying but staying passive while people talk all kinds of shit feels worse
I just tell people I hate the US and let them come to their own conclusions
