Say what you will about this extremely problematic community but some of them are figuring some things out.
Here's the song which is a mostly accurate critique of our neoliberal economy
He's wrong about how much of the national debt is owed to China. It is mostly owed to Americans.
He's fucking wrong as fuck to call this neoliberal nightmare "Market Socialism".
"Chocolate Rain, some stay dry but others feel the pain."
The new anthem of the international proletariate?
He’s fucking wrong as fuck to call this neoliberal nightmare “Market Socialism”.
Socialism is when big number go down.
Capitalism is when big number go up.
No, I will not explain. It's Econ 101.
I get the impression that it's not that WSB starting to "get it", it's just after the GME thing the sub has been flooded by general reddit populace which by nature of being young is generally open to succdem ideas. Most of the WSB old guard, the kind of people who thought Martin Shkreli was based are crying in their new exclusive subs about their community having been destroyed.
even if they do its definitely easier to change their mind than a chud imo focus on shared values is key thats what I do with libs anyway
It's disappointing but wholely expected. I'm not going to be holding out any hope for them or investing much effort there.
The only way that market socialism line makes any sense at all is if he's doing the lib thing of saying that the government giving money to corporations is socialism for the corporations. I was really digging the song until I hit that part, it was like getting rhetorically suplexed.
It's almost directly lifted from a common Chomsky talking point. Market discipline for the poor's but endless welfare for the wealthy. I haven't listened to the song yet but folks comments made me immediately think of that framing-- which I would argue is a pretty good one.
The rest of the song's okay, just if you know what market socialism actually is (it's socialism - with markets) that line kind of comes out of nowhere.
I'd lean towards a charitable interpretation that he just misused the term to mean socialism for the markets, if the context supports that take pretty well
It's "socialism is when the government does stuff" which is an obtuse take but also not entirely incorrect. The bourgeois government exists to socialize the costs of capitalism in a market context so in that sense it is "market socialism".
And unfortunately they seem to be in a much stronger position than the left
Even the comments are good. The sooner that these people realize that they too are workers, the better.
Yes, absolutely. I've been really disappointed with the response to the WSB episode. It's easy to dismiss them as a bunch of CHUDs, but the subreddit grew from one to ten million over the course of a month - whatever the board's culture was, it's not really relevant to the majority of the people who got involved.
I think we missed a huge chance to radicalize people, to be honest, and I'm still a little resentful about it.
I think we missed a huge chance to radicalize people, to be honest, and I’m still a little resentful about it.
I disagree strongly. It's easy to dismiss them as a bunch of chuds when they go on to defend apartheid and make posts about doing a neo-colonialism that gets 40 000 upvotes. And this is after the massive influx of new people. Just look at this racist post. Do you see any radicalisation potential here? I don't. I see a bunch of racist and ableist redditors gambling their parents money on the stock market.
How hard have you actually looked? I get why you wouldn't want to wade through all of the garbage, but again, there are 10,000,000 users. The Chapo sub was significantly smaller and explicitly leftist, and racist shit still got posted fairly regularly. Don't forget that /r/stupidpol was birthed from this very community.
Anyway, I'm not arguing that the potential is still there - I'm arguing that we squandered this opportunity, and if we continue to miss these moments then what are we even trying to accomplish? We need to keep an eye out for the next time something like this is bubbling up and be ready to offer a Marxist perspective from the start.
Even before the GME thing, people there were more receptive to explicitly Marxist class analysis than they were on any mainstream political sub.
Yeah the "let's try radicalise r/WSB" is by far the most cringe take this site has had. It's a sub filled with racists, ableists and sexists. Just look at this post. So much racism
Ah yes, truly it is impossible to radicalize people who are racist or sexist or ableist and for them to grow past it, only the purest most noble souls may swear the holy oath and join our Chapo Dot Chat revolution
There are some sound arguments against it but this isn't one of them
He's calling the wrong concept market socialism, but that's fine, he's not wrong in the idea at least. And this was in 2011, when it was mostly understood that our debt from China was a big deal. One of the parties talked about it a lot, I don't remember which. It's changed since then. Since O B A M A.
Great song though, basically nails it. Good on that guy for using meme status to get this out to a million people
