Yesterday had a long conversation with a labor aristrocratic family member, age millenial and working in tech.
He announced things like: -China is a horrible Orvellian surveillance state, you (talks to me) have no idea how horrible it is there. Haven't you seen the videos?
I try to cautiously reply that surveillance capitalism is pretty intense in the West as well and that we don't really get good or balanced information from China. He goes:
-So you sayig something like Zero Covid was the right choice?
I am hesitant to reply with a yes as this person is clearly already very fired up and confrontational. But I try to point out things about how nobody in 2020 knew how bad it might and how many will die, how people in the West are still dying, how the virus isn't in any way bening even now and how it's pretty dystopian too that here we are just sacrificing people for capitalism now and choose to ignore it.
I did say I think it was better to save people to which he said that I am a nihilist.
I also tried to explain the State outside the capitalist project and protecting multitudes not individuals, individualism and such, but he was not receiving it.
He then told me how bad the country is as he saw in the Grand Tour how they have built a highway over a rainforest that nobody uses.
I asked him where does he think all the roads and buildings in the West are built if not on top of nature. The argument as critizism of China made no sense to me whatsoever.
Later this same person said to me that we as a society have no hope and there is no point in protesting, no point in doing anything but riding out the rest of our time to climate disaster. I tried to point out to him that a socialist state can be born from capitalism, but only if we the people develop initiative for it and understand our current condition.
Same guy also did admit that voting no longer works, the EU was a mistake and it's grim how all our state systems have been privatized and are now in the hands of corpotations like Microsoft.
Now, I don't even know where to start with this one. He very much represents his part of the population here and the deep apathy and negative thought that they harbor.
He still understands and thinks that the regulated capitalism of the 70-80s here (keynesian) was the best part of our history, but when I told him that it still was always going to lead to fascism and monopolies (told him to read Marx) he ignored this. Very much the "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" mindset.
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people? These people actually have power (capital), but the petty bourge status has made them like this. However climate chance does not discriminate so I feel this part of society is facing a new conflict from a historical standpoint where nature says no to exploitation. And this seems to lead to apathy.
Thank you for this response, it gave me a lot to think about. I am approaching this from Europe, the socdem north where the conflicts aren't very clear to many and people are detached from the global struggle and also our part in it.
This was a park bench discussion with someone who has already made genuine progress in thinking in my view so I would not probably leave it unagitated even though that would be easier for me.
In the last year I have been able to secure work in the social sector with similar benefits as he has always had and I have been able to show by lived experience the difference in material conditions that happens when you become less poor. I always use words like class and remind him that we are all working class, this has stuck with him.
He on average has left the cryptostuff and Musk stuff and many other things behind over the years because of our somewhat often occuring struggle sessions and this gives me hope. But it puzzles me how he tends to always opt for the most reactionary option first and ask questions later. This seems common in guys like him.
What would you recommend as first reading of Marxist theory that relatively easily explains especially the cumulative nature of capital and class? I know he isn't ever going to read something like Capital, it's too much effort. I have thrown things like Secind Thought videos and the Deprogram and Blowback podcasts at him, but he enjoys living in the RadioLab bubble of social justice without class concsiousness. Not sure if he had ever really watched them.
I have myself started from the progressive "voting is key" social democratic view and not even that long ago, but am neurodivergent and have always been an agitator and very political, so diving straight into this was never difficult for me, more like "where had this stuff been all my life". And I was already seeing myself as socialist, just had the Soviet bad and other red scare brainworms like pretty much everyone here has. But this guy and a lot of people like him prefer to be "apolitical" and disengage from all the things they see as negative or ruining their vibes. How would we counter that?
Hey, sorry for the no response, life is busy but I can dm you sometime this weekend.