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?
When it comes to talking about regular shit I can't help you much there. Laugh when appropriate, ask questions even if you're not interested, and drugs are all good ways to get through that imo.
As for talking about politics, people don't like talking about politics with someone who knows a lot about it and is challenging the facade of ideology. No "normy" wants to be lectured about dialectical materialism. This is why we need a political party that builds political infrastructure. What this "political infrastructure" looks like takes three forms. The first is mutual aid and organizing where concentrated propaganda efforts are made. This doesn't introduce complicated ideas, but if people like some of the messages of a political party (especially if the party is helping them) they might support the party, join the party, or look into the basic ideas of the party. This might be mutual aid, union organizing, political organizing, or protests.
The second form is broad agitation efforts. This includes posting but also posting in the real world. Old fashioned soapboxing, leaflets, flyers, online efforts, and other stuff. This is probably the least effective but it makes the movement seem a lot bigger which can be useful and you might pick up a random stranger every now and then.
The third is an educational track which is where people actually learn things because they actually make an effort to. Book groups and later, if the infrastructure is there, schools training people in theory and praxis. Older communist movements had one big advantage over us in that they were in largely illiterate and uneducated societies so they would open public schools and teach people to read, write, and do math with an underlying left wing philosophy (imagine the first book you read being the manifesto, or learning math by solving for surplus value). We can't really utilize this method today because people are widely educated, but we should still have party schools and reading groups that teach people Marxist theory and how to organize (as well as other things). Of course we need a party for any of this which we are lacking for the most part.
Like I said you aren't going to be convincing "normies" that the immortal science of dialectical materialism says they should be communists because they're going to hear that or anything like it and think you're a lunatic. What you can do is try to suss out where there are political and economic tensions in their life and if you can help (whether that is linking them to a mutual aid network or telling them they should unionize) you do so. Then maybe they'll be interested and you can fill their head with ideas.