Seriously. I have no clue why these takes have been cropping up lately, and I don't know what kind of galaxy brain first came up with this brilliant strategy, but it is the most horrible idea I've ever encountered here in a long, long time. Probably ever.

It seems like the source of this is the appraisal that the democrats have become the party of elites and republicans are working class or some shit now. This is moronic and simply not factual. Not because the Democrats aren't the party of the elites. Just because the republicans are even more so. Why don't you look up who minorities overwhelmingly vote for? Why don't you look up the average income of republican voters compared to the dems?

What is true is that the republicans are doing well at rural areas. For this the blame seems to be solely on libs being annoying on twitter, or the dems ignoring rural areas. Both have some truth, especially the second, and it should be avoided at all costs. But no, this is not the only reason, there is also the fact that rural areas pretty much everywhere in the world and especially the developed world are conservative. Again, not just the US, this is EVERYWHERE and it's been like that for ages. The same thing was the case even when Marx was writing. There are reasons for that, and I'm not gonna go into them right now, but it is stupid to ignore that this always happens and to pretend like this is something unique and only because the dems aren't helping them much (and the republicans ostensibly are lol).

All this is to say that it is a good idea to not talk down to people there and to work to get them on our side, but it WILL be harder than it is in the cities, and most of the people there that vote red don't do so because they are secretly progressive but they just don't like dems looking down on them, but because they really are more conservative compared to people in cities, which - again- is true in most countries for rural areas, and these people would never, ever, EVER vote for some "socialist" trying to be elected as a republican. Even worse, everyone who is progressive would never, ever, EVER vote for you either because they wouldn't vote republican either, and the party itself would never, ever, ever, EVER let any kind of socialist run for office with them.

Like, there is also this silly idea that it would somehow be easier to get into the republicans than it is to get into the democrats. Yeah, lol, the party that is fervently and extremely vocally (and in a way that is integral to its function) anti-literally everything the left advocates for, is gonna give you an easy time "infiltrating". Um, no. Just no. It seems to hinge on a childish perception of politics that republicans are just really dumb and super clueless. They are not. When someone in politics does something bad, it's usually not because they are dumb.

The only result this could ever have is stain the left and alienate the only people who remotely care. At least 80% of the people who would ever care about the goals of the left are people who vote democrats. It is super important to reach out to the other 20%, but the worst possible way to do that is to go with the republicans, because not only will you lose 80% of the people who already might care, you will also have to pretend to be something that is much, much different to what you really are and you will end up just making a mockery of the left.

Please please please purge these ideas from your mind, they are so genuinely terrible that even considering them is destructive. It's like people on this sub (who according to the last survey were like, what, 90% liberal before they were radicalised?) are so pissed at their former liberal selves, at Biden and at the democrats that their political instincts are completely blinded and they end up having some genuinely shitty ideas that only lead to embarrassment. The republicans are not turning working class, they can't be pushed to the left. They're doing nothing that almost every conservative party ever hasn't done a million times before. The dems dropping the ball big time with Biden thus making a tiny percentage of minorities and working class people turn to republicans does not fucking mean anything, it just means Biden is even worse than Clinton at convincing these communities, a "shift" won't happen in the foreseeable future. The only way it ever could in the coming few years is if there was a world historic, unprecedented event that is just not foreseeable. Please reconsider your opinions if you are persuaded by these ideas, think why you are being persuaded by that.

  • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    But no, this is not the only reason, there is also the fact that rural areas pretty much everywhere in the world and especially the developed world are conservative. Again, not just the US, this is EVERYWHERE and it’s been like that for ages. The same thing was the case even when Marx was writing. There are reasons for that, and I’m not gonna go into them right now

    Actually though could you? Because I'm curious...

    • T_Doug [he/him]
      1·
      4 years ago

      The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France’s poor means of communication and the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient, directly produces most of its consumer needs, and thus acquires its means of life more through an exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A small holding, the peasant and his family; beside it another small holding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these constitute a village, and a few score villages constitute a department. Thus the great mass of the French nation is formed by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.

      Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.

      But let us not misunderstand. The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant who strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather one who wants to consolidate his holding; not the countryfolk who in alliance with the towns want to overthrow the old order through their own energies, but on the contrary those who, in solid seclusion within this old order, want to see themselves and their small holdings saved and favored by the ghost of the Empire It represents not the enlightenment but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment but his prejudice; not his future but his past

      Here's Marx's take from The Eigtheenth Brumaire

      I know Matt Christman used this text to analyze Trump specifically.

      I think your gonna have a bad time if you view it as a univeral rule, and leftists should never write off rural areas entirely. But, I can see why some Marxists might argue that rural areas have a conservative tendency. Though, I only think it holds true as a general rule in the Global North. Mao didn't even pretend that the Proleterian was the base of the Chinese Revolution, and the same is true for many other cases the Global South.

      • Bedandsofa [he/him]
        1·
        4 years ago

        That quote is Marx talking about the peasantry in early 19th century France. In the 200 years after that, the peasant class has been dispossessed and wiped out in all of the advanced capitalist nations. The people who live in the rural areas of the US are not peasants in the Marxist sense, they’re not like subsistence farmers. They are overwhelmingly wage laborers in the working class.

        The historical memory/ideal of self sufficient living might play a role in rural conservatism in the US, but at this point capitalism produces its own gravediggers in both the town and country.

        • T_Doug [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The argument made by guys like Matt is less that 19th century French peasants and 21st Century American rural/suburban workers do the same sort of labour, and more that both environments create the same barriers to class consciousness forming via alienation.

          It goes back to that William Levitt quote about how no man in Levittown could be a Communist, and how that is true, albeit not in the way that Levitt imagined.

          People become members of a particular Class only when they perceive themselves to be one, before that they are just individuals. Proletarians come to view themselves as a member of the working class via mutual intercourse with other Proles (typically in contexts other than labour): by walking to work with them, going to the same social clubs, etc. Through mutual intercourse people eventually realize that their interests, which they previously viewed as individual to them, are in fact common to those who live like them, ie: their class. Thus, Class Consciousness is formed when individuals recognize that their interests overlap. From this they are able to stop viewing their perceived problems in life as them v.s the world, but rather their class v.s another class.

          19th Century French Peasants were mostly halted in this process because they almost never experienced mutual intercourse with other peasants, their days were spent on their own small holds, or in the Church (whose propaganda was overwhelmingly a barrier to the formation of Class Consciousness). This is the cause of their conservative outlook, they were alienated from their fellow Peasants.

          Matt's argument is that 21st century Americans in the Suburbs, Rural areas, and most of the cities, are also prevented from mutual intercourse with members of their class, albeit in different ways. They drive to work instead of walking with coworkers, watch T.V instead of going to a Pub with other workers, and consume T.V/media which serves the same propagandist function as the Church did. In fact the scenarios of mutual intercourse you do are typically guided by an outside force; for example when attending a Football game with friends you are all orientated around the game, and intentionally exposed to propaganda there. Sure they may do mutual intercourse freely in certain scenarios for example in online communities (hey Chapo.Chat maybe counts) but such cases are the exception.

          In both cases a lack of mutual intercourse prevents the recognition of a commonality of class interests, and thus they are alienated from one another, and more likely to adopt a Conservative outlook for the reasons which Marx discussed.

        • ChudlyMcChubbyPants [he/him]
          1·
          4 years ago

          It's almost as if Marxism were not just a system of political-economic analysis, but also the basis of a millenarian religion too.

        • deadbergeron [he/him,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          In the same way Marx and Engels saw the working class in Europe as the main revolutionary class. and for Mao, Castro and Guevara the peasantry was seen as the main revolutionary class in their respective struggles, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale saw the lumpenproletariat as the main revolutionary class in the US.

          That’s at least my understanding and is probably mostly accurate

      • p_sharikov [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Smallholders were also a big part of the Nazi's base of support, iirc.

      • The_word_of_dog [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        This doesn't really account for the leftist rural miners of the early 20th century.

        • SteveHasBunker [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Miners are a bit different than farmers. Despite being in rural areas they work in conditions similar to that of the urban proletariat. They work under the same yoke as each other and so can form class consciousness more easily. They are atomized and in competition with each other like small land holding farmers are.

          • The_word_of_dog [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Right but because of this I think it's a bit off comparing rural people to the peasant class, which were largely farmers.

            I'm just saying this passage probably isn't the best one to use when comparing to the current climate, like others in this thread have said, but I figured I'd give a specific example.

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
      1·
      4 years ago

      A number of reasons, usually. The main are more atomised labor, a much larger portion of the population is a petty bougie farmer (note, this doesn't mean "rich", they may not be rich but farmers tend to be more reactionary, convincing the peasants has been a significant difficulty for old communist movements that they had to try hard to overcome). Basically any degree of class consciousness is harder to achieve in rural areas. Additionally, communities are often more closely knit, which ends up reinforcing tradition, religion etc which are important factors. It is not universal but as a general rule they do tend to be difficult to move left. It might be easier in the US because both parties are failing people there, but it won't be easy or automatic to just flip everything on its head.