The events of 2020 and likely 2021 are a significant opportunity to reach out to struggling lib friends pissed at Pelosi and Biden for not helping them and maybe even some struggling chud relatives who are disillusioned about Trump/Qanon/etc., the sort of proles/lumpen who could be facing evictions at the end of this month and willing to entertain drastic measures. The donald dot lose has a link to the suicide hotline on their front page.
We will have plenty of opportunities to grow the left if we take the correct positions, listen patiently to valid political complaints about either or both ruling parties or the ruling class (even if some of the phrasing might be problematic, in which case we latch on to the most truthful bits, pulling baby from bathwater), and help to point them gently in the correct direction if they're willing to listen.
Marxist organizations not tainted by the failures of DSA or other entryist/popular-frontist/opportunist tendencies have the opportunity to act, and need to act, as a candlelight shining in this period of darkness and sinking working-class morale now or soon, more so than any time since Occupy and the Arab Spring. Decades can happen in weeks. Workers in other parts of the world, for example Nigeria, Bolivia, and especially India, could be in a position to change the situation on the world stage for the better if guided by effective leadership, in ways that US workers won't be able to ignore as easily, the same way we can no longer ignore the gulf between the Chinese and Cuban responses to covid and the imperial core countries' responses to covid.
Yes and please remember that you can't expect them to agree with you on things like cuba or china or any of the things that even established leftists cant agree on right away. The most important thing is to get them on board with socialist ideas, then you can start to discuss more controversial things. Coming out guns blazing saying things like "stalin did nothing wrong" will only scare away people who may have gotten to understand those things over time once they are educated about history of socialist/communist/anarchist struggles.
As a Trot I tend to handle discussion of "existing socialism" very carefully, and always with caveats or qualifiers. The PRC and Cuban leadership are revisionists, but I don't dare throw the baby out with the bathwater. Despite objective limitations and relative lack of workers' democracy, their capacity for central planning is still quite impressive, which is why they sometimes stick out as positive counterexamples to compare against the unplanned chaos of western neoliberalism, especially this year. As terrible as Stalin might have been when it came to spreading revolution internationally outside of eastern Europe and Asia, the USSR still rapidly developed economically from late-feudal conditions for similar reasons.
The takeaway need not be "[socialist/communist leader] is based and worth following dogmatically", but could be "this is what's possible under socialism/a workers' state even when it's broken or mangled almost beyond recognition". Even bureaucratically-degenerated/deformed "socialism" as practiced by anti-imperialist states can be a better, saner economic system in certain ways than what we have now in late-stage capitalist McHellworld (although the 996 workweek sounds like a huge step backwards in a context where the hard-won 40-hour, 5-day workweek is constantly under attack - that shit makes my skin crawl and it probably makes Bloomberg and Bezos salivate).
Usually the "look at how much neoliberal capitalism sucks, we can do much better with workers' democracy and democratic central planning" argument is what I'd lead with. I agree that bringing up controversial existing cases is a bad idea unless someone else brings it up first.
With that being said, we should be able to defend Cuba/China at least somewhat. If the topic of socialism comes up, they've probably been brainwashed to immediately say 100 Gorillion dead/no food/authoritarian. Being able to explain that most socialist states came out of brutal, feudal regimes and that socialism immediately raised the standard of living helps deprogramming American propaganda. Seriously you can't concede too much ground on AES or else it dilutes your point because they can write capitalism off as "bad, but not as bad as gommunism."
yeah as long as its used to educate and not berate those conversations are super important to have
really good points, especially the point about vietnam, a lot of people sometimes forget about it, they don't have much hardcore propoganda like cuba, the ussr, and china does.