This is particularly concerning to me because leftists are supposed to be able to bridge the gap between the (presumably) uneducated or ignorant working masses and the fairly esoteric intellectualism of leftist theory.
I have never been able to do that before, ever. I can understand all these Marxist concepts myself, about workers democratically owning MOP, about what socialism or barbarism means, about the purpose of the state, about anti imperialism, but if Im talking to someone who’s totally apolitical or even just a woke liberal I have no idea where to begin bridging the gap and radicalizing.
Im sure a large part about getting regular people on your side relies on community building and mutual aid projects that demonstrates to average people that an alternative is possible and that the party is better at working with and meeting the needs of the people than the state/market is.
But lets say your just talking casually to your average non-redpilled friends. Im not trying to sound edgy but whenever the conversation switches to something inane, superficial, or material (particularly when it comes to consuming something or engaging in consumerism, which dont get me wrong I enjoy partaking in all the time) I just feel like cutting my head off. The world is fucking dying and burning all around us, we’re already past several “points of no return”, injustices are being perpetrated at all times everywhere, and the most important thing we find to talk about is some material shit that doesnt even matter?
At the same time though, thats what makes normies the normies they are, and I cant help but feel envious of their carefreeness. And its up to us to introduce them concepts within leftist theory. So how do you do that?
I had a really interesting time talking to some left-leaning normie friends recently, whom I’m trying to introduce more leftists concepts to, about pornography. Idk who the comrade was but there was a post here not that long ago talking about pornography being basically rape because the conditions in which someone sells their body under capitalism is coercive, and coercive sex is rape. Basically that if we as people under capitalism were to not sell our labor, we would starve and become homeless and not be able to afford water or basic needs or anything. And that applies to all jobs, that we have this gun to our head of selling our time and labor to someone else who just happens to own something in order for us to survive. So when it comes to selling your body in order to do that, it’s sex under the conditions of coercion. And coercive sex is effectively rape. I mean it’s a little bit semantic there but I think it mostly holds up. And since porn is something everyone knows about, putting it into those terms lit up some lightbulbs for them about capitalism in general. All work under capitalism is coercive, so what does that mean for the ethics of different sorts of ways people make money? Even if let’s say sex workers made a choice to do pornography, it doesn’t matter because anything else they could “choose” to do is also coercive. Anyway, that was a pretty positive conversation and could be a good route if the opportunity presents itself.
"Porn bad" seems like a very questionable angle to approach normies with, imho.
Yeah that’s true haha in my case my friend I was talking to is like really against it from a certain feminist perspective and they had already been talking about it and asked my thoughts. I think because it’s a really surprising take though that can break down certain defenses that otherwise prevent normies from analyzing labor systems