Like ok. When I was a lib, I had a lot of communist values already. I was already socdem leaning (though an Obama supporter because I foolishly believed he stood for those values). The vast majority of times I moved left involved some sort of confrontation with a person to my left on an issue. Sometimes there was resistance on my part, but that usually involved just like, a single argument, me realizing they were right, and moving left on the issue. Other times it was just... receiving information I didnt previously know. The closer to ML I got, the harder the struggles were, as some of the current geopolticial issues and also historical issues involved in that were the hardest to deprogram and the most hard coded. But I still got there.
Even simply openly calling myself as a communist was as simple as seeing someone else on Tumblr openly do so and realizing "oh wait thats an option?"
Oddly, "lesser evilism is not actually the correct way to approach electorally" was kind of my final gate? Despite being a poster here I sort of secretly still was a lesser evilist up until the recent stuff with Gaza. So it wasnt a straight line admittedly, but what it did do was give me a certain line of thinking about what the mindset of people who vote Democrat were.
In the midst of autistic myopia, I sort of for a long time believed that most libs were "communists in waiting" too. I sort of assumed you just had to spread the word, and they'd get there. Maybe they'd struggle on some of the same points I did, like not automatically believing a protest movement is good because its a protest movement, or that "America bad" isnt actually a bad way of thinking and critically supporting anti-American forces in the world is in fact the correct thing to do, and of course as I mentioned lesser evilism. But for the most part, you just had to give them permission to be communist. You just had to normalize it.
So seeing liberals like, be presented with the option to move left and slamming the door closed violently. Even on the most basic and obvious things. It was disheartening. I really thought it would be easier than that!
Theres this recent awful trend on TikTok (one Ive mostly only just heard of, because I'm not on that platform) of people "turning in their leftist card" over real leftists not flocking to support Harris and being principled about opposing genocide. One particular one, the only one I've seen with my own eyes, was a guy saying he "just found out he's not a leftist, he's a liberal, and [he's] turning in [his] leftist card". Like, whats happening there is a liberal is learning for the first time that he's a liberal. But like, my experience with that realization was to go "oh, so THATS what leftism is? OK. let me travel there" (yaknow, like I said, on average lol, it wasnt always that easy). So seeing the door slam for me is kinda weird? Still to this day despite being somewhat used to it now?
An insightful question. A comparison of the conditions of the western working class (as we've observed in our lives and studies) to those of the English proletariat in Engels' and Marx's time would be illustrative as to "how much worse must be the conditions" before the liberals stop liberalling so successfully among the workers.
Mostly from Engels, Conditions of the Working Class in England. I'll type up some highlights in addition to the full images.
Living conditions: Literally bailing the river water out of your dwelling every morning
20 people to a 2room+attic+basement residence. 120 people to a sometimes nonfunctional privy. Ireland was even more crowded.
food in stores: Old, rancid, rotting meat. Rotting vegetables. Mouldy cheese.
Soap-refuse mixed in with sugar. Dirt and sheep fat mixed with cocoa.
From Capital; cobwebs, cockroaches, sand and alum in bread.
Vagrants, tramps, homeless, beggars and the like Poor rounded up and thrown into workhouses with conditions similar to or worse than prisons. Families broken up. Hard labour (harder than regular wage labour) but useless (so as not to distort the market). No visitors, gifts, leaving, etc without permission from the inspector.
Some choice examples of conditions in the workhouses include children being locked in dark rooms with corpses as a punishment for bedwetting
Such punishments were common, and the rooms crowded, cold, filthy, and the punished youths often stripped naked
As for treatment of the old and the dead?
As for working conditions, I'll just post one screenshot from working class bc this is getting long