I gave my self a brain aneurism reading the comment section of a COD video on YouTube. I came very close to replying to a bunch of people, but it just felt futile. You would have to unpack so much propaganda, cover so much history, explain dialectical materialism etc. to even get them to consider that maybe communism or the USSR weren't pure evil.
Maybe it would set one or two people down the road to questioning things, but it's just not worth that kind of effort. Starting to feel like the only way to convince people in a way that matters and is effective is to have socialist organizations in their lives that are positive and then the receptiveness of explaining those types of things to them will be much greater than just one comment on an internet thread.
youtube comments are the dumbest place on the internet and reading them is self-harm
When I write comments I make a conscious effort to be sure they can stand alone. "Here's something that could be of interest/ I want to share/ you might have overlooked etc, but it is not intended as a starting point of a discussion." It's still hard to walk away sometimes, but internet debates are never worth the effort.
And you are right: base > superstructure.
yeah, that's probably a good idea.
And you are right: base > superstructure.
can you explain this more?
You already said it yourself, I think. In marxism, the "base" is everything that has to with the material conditions of society, labour, production, wages, etc. "Superstructure" are all the formal, legal, cultural sides that follow from that. The relation between the two can obviously be complex, but in a marxist analysis the base will be dominant. And that's why political action is best rooted in real life, material problems - based, so to speak.
Youtube comment section, there's your problem.
Youtube has always had the worst comment section on the internet, period. Ask anyone who has been uploading videos going back to the late 2000s or early 2010s, I am sure they'll tell you it has always sucked.
Yeah for a long time I'd like going on YouTube with my ps3. The best thing about it was there was no way for my poor virgin eyes to accidentally see those horrible comments.
In popular vids the over flow of comments meant everyone was competing for attention so they would say the most bombastic things possible for the likes or whatever. Any good you can do commenting there would probably get sweeped in the tide of attention seeking comments.
I think your right about having a socialist organization in peeps lives. Off topic a bit but Richard Wolff talked the idea of everyone having at least one family member working in a workers co-operative, that way they can tell the rest of their family about how great working in one is.
Yeah, I’m getting bogged down rn because I commented on a TikTok video showing some beautiful DPRK scenery, “I hope I get to visit DPRK someday.” It’s been 48 hours of, “Enjoy your concentration camps!” “Good luck starving!” “Criticize their maniac leader and see how far you get!” It’s really exhausting lol
Lol I was arguing with some people under that horrible Animaniacs russophobic propaganda video, and there were a bunch of people saying shit like "HA, I WONDER WHEN THEY'LL HAVE THE BALLS TO TAKE ON CHINA!". I replied something to the effect of "yeah so brave to shit on the country everyone is already circlejerking against" and someone told me "Try to find any article in any major publication that is about China and calling them out that isn't about COVID, and then come back and say that". Like, wtf, I legit don't understand how someone could just post that so confidently. YouTube commenters are something else.
To debate someone, or argue in general, you need one thing to even begin with : open-mindedness. If the other isn't ready to challenge his own ideas, then the whole thing is absolutely sterile, and horrible for your mental health.
Starting to feel like the only way to convince people in a way that matters and is effective is to have socialist organizations in their lives that are positive and then the receptiveness of explaining those types of things to them will be much greater than just one comment on an internet thread.
Absolutely. I don’t think exclusively “convincing” people through argument is quite that productive. Meeting them where their problems are and reorienting them into solutions that highlight the true nature of the problem is what can reveal the necessity of class struggle to them, in a practical way. But it is a hard problem, always dynamic and highly contingent on real circumstances that have to be analyzed. And even then, it is entirely possible that your position is so vulnerable to various angles of subversion that whatever organizational form you’ve helped cook up is 99% doomed to being co-opted, de-fanged, exposed to such vulnerability that it is destined for collapse.
But most normal people will not adopt in any committed fashion some kind of -ism that suggests everything they know should be upended yesterday. But they are open to what they perceive as practical solutions, and once you’ve committed them to some project they think is reasonable if it were to come under attack by private and state interests then you’ve helped set the ground for a realization on the part of the members to the project, who suddenly have an avenue to directly experience who their enemies are.
I spent so long arguing on reddit with shitlibs who smugly know less than nothing, until one day I saw the little orange reply dot and something just snapped inside me me. In that moment I decided to ditch r*ddit and all it's Funko-people forever rather than read another variation of "communism no food."
