people who actually get shit on neoliberal policies are the kinds of people we should be reaching out, not some shithead named Dave Bavelhoff who owns a jetski repair shop.

  • TossedAccount [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Easily less than a third of the working class are Trump supporters, and among those maybe half are committed reactionaries. The core class interest of fascism is a petty-bourgeoisie (and to a lesser extent some lumpenproles) in crisis in the absence of effective socialist leadership. Among the Trump supporters we'll much more easily peel off many of the West Virginia coal miners and small Midwestern farmers/farm workers towards socialism before we win over the used car dealers, small business tyrants, and "beautiful boaters" most likely to have the disposable income to travel to DC.

    To build the basis for a workers' party and to eventually reach a dual power situation we'll need the participation and cooperation of a lot more of the former, whose class interests can readily align with Marxism if they can chuck out the racist culture war bullshit, than the latter who are more likely to stubbornly support a fascist program even as socialist politics are ascendant. We won't start off by winning over most of the Republican-voting workers since socialism tends to grow most readily in environments where workers are closely gathered in large numbers (i.e. usually in large cities, which Dems by and large control locally even in a lot of GOP-controlled states).

    But as the profile of socialism grows stronger its reach can extend into suburban and later exurban territory, and the red scare propaganda becomes less effective in the face of real material successes resulting from class struggle in the cities, the GOP-voting lesser-evilists will waver from that position and more confidently make demands for the shit they actually need and which socialist programs can or want to deliver, demands like medicare for all, increasing the minimum wage to a living wage and keeping it growing as the cost of living increases, and massive changes to the agriculture and energy sectors to make an ecosocialist green new deal possible.