treats are the luxuries marx talked about ending the production of, but back then there wasnt really a consumer class that we have now, most of the luxuries were consumed by the upper classes, and what little luxuries the lower classes consumed, mainly alcohol, didnt account for much production.
so the problem is now, we got a large proletarian base enjoying nice thing, ie treats, as well as the still small upper class buying a shitlload of treats, so much treats they can never uses, yachts, jets, mcmansions, ferraris, while those are treats, treat discourse is entirely aimed at reducing the consumption of the proletariat consumers because we are a bunch of bourgeoisie communists living in brooklyn brownstones off our daddys allowances making podcasts with a alleged sex offender.
we want to abolish treats because treat production is literally killing the planet, but we want to consume the treats and will justify our consumption as being necessary because we are very important communist thinkers, we are massive hypocrites and do not do what we preach. we often bring up the concept of malthusianism, which we think is total bunk, with communism resources can be distributed to everyone evenly and a small portion can be siphoned off by high ranking party members to do blow on a private island.
the earth has a carrying capacity of 40 billion people if if we force 39,999,999,000 of them to live in giant archologies, basically massive buildings that can support millions of people inside through green energy and recycling without needing outside resources. basically we want people to like eat recycled poop to save the environment. we want them to live without even a toothbrush, no medical care, clothing, they all sleep on the floor in a communal sleeping room, and the vocal police kill anyone who has sex because nice things are treats, except when i consume them, because i am the ceo of communism.
some cool people even say breathing air is a treat, living is a treat. we think even basic necessities for human survival are treats because we are fucking insane and we created an entire political theory by doing a revisionism on a single paragraph in the communist manifesto.
and that, our federated comrades, is treat theory, please donate all your money to hasan piker and feel bad about that coffee you bought this morning you are literally hitler and satan combined for buying a cup of coffee. but you know im not. you would understand why if you read this whole fucking post, why would you read this instead of doing praxis? YOU ARENT DOING COMMUNISM HARD ENOUGH.
i largely teach blossoming activists that consumer-side activism is an ineffective liberal ploy
the bud light boycott says youre wrong, chuds killed a brand of beer because trans people exist. people individually need to make the decision not to consume things if we wish to see a collective change in society. for example, a meat ban, something i do unironcially support despite all the irony poisoning itt. we do it now without changing peoples behavior, theres just going to be a huge black market. i unironcially think we should still do it, but there are times when a more moderate and gradual approach is a more viable option than the radical one.
we should start with education, ban meat on mondays in schools, then make meat friday only, we need to start introducing plant-based meat into the general food supply, start requiring burger joints to sell their burgers with a percentage of tofu in it, tax the fuck out of meat, make it harder to obtain and make vegan alternatives just easier, over time meat consumption will drop. eventually we will need to cull the huge amount of farm animals because they cant be released into the wild, its going to take a generation to ban high sea fishing and hunting in the west ideally, probably several generations bare minimum. but eventually through enough perservance we could outlaw it globally.
and say we leftists did a jan 6, we stormed the whitehouse and declared bernie the president, that would result in a bunch of reactionaries fighting us and we literally are not in a position to win a war. so we got to use the baby gloves, but trust me, when we no longer have to, we gotta punch the nazis in the fucking face and implement leftist policies quickly. until we have like actual political power, we got do change through electoralism and radical reform.
so yeah, shaming consumers even for little things is necessary because we cant just issue a mandate. just dont shame comrades because we should expect the nonpolitically aligned people to change their ways first. but what do i know, im just some person on the internet yelling at people for liking things and being blatantly obvious about how im not doing the things i tell them to do. maybe satire is a better form of criticism.
to quote star trek, pay attention to everything i say, especially the lies.
We could all just go out in one great big bbq!
Budlight not hitting target profit margins doesn't do shit for our material conditions.
your whole second paragraph is literally not consumer-side activism. that's top-down.
you can embarrass the consumer out of Coke. they'll just buy Pepsi.
Consumer-side activism is a liberal ploy.
im not talking about material conditions, im simply stating boycotts work if people have the will power to enforce them.