You don't need to go shouting it, but if someone starts talking politics at you, fucking own it. Some coworker is like "trump sucks", say "yeah I know, I'm a communist". Your grandpa says "trump rules", say "no he sucks ass, I'm a communist". You're on a date and they ask who you're voting for? Say "I'm a communist". Cashier asks would you like change? "Yes, I am a communist".

Be open about your politics and lay claim to the title. Be a communist.

  • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Good effort, but do you think they would know what you mean by "original Marx stuff"? You should be ready to explain any terms you're introducing. They would probably know Marx purely through the lens of propaganda, so phrasing it that way may be putting an obstacle. Making a Bernie comparison is useful, though, because it gives people a touchstone to a popular and well-known figure, even if his politics are not quite where we want to be. How else could you put it?

    • MAGAY [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      You're right - swap out Marx for something like "the fact everyone knows to be true, that there are rich fucks controlling politics and the economy instead of the people as intended"

    • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
      1·
      4 years ago

      Ooh let me take a crack at this -- I love slowly introducing leftist concepts to my liberal coworkers.

      "What do you mean you’re a communist? Like China or Stalin? Those guys are bad."

      I'm not going to get into the decades of western propaganda that we've been inundated with, but no - not like China or Stalin. Why do corporations and a small handful of people, like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and many more, get to spend their lives in incredible comfort and hoard money that they only received by exploiting their workers, consumers, and others? Why is it that we, as a nation, could solve homelessness and food insecurity in weeks if there wasn't a need for someone to profit? We have the resources, the technology, hell - we have the agricultural and industrial might to feed and home every person in this country if we decided to. But we don't, because capitalism necessitates that there must always be a malnourished, underpaid, and underappreciated working class for the ruling class to exploit.

      Anyways, it sucks that you have to take unpaid time off next week to give palliative care to your dying grandfather - I'll be more than happy to cover for you it's no problem.

    • ComradeBongwater [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      A few easy, very agreeable tidbits.

      "Instead of rich shareholders owning the company and hiring management to hire workers, you have workers owning the company and electing or hiring management directly. Within that system, there is as much diversity in views on governance as is here under capitalism."

      "Instead of the government granting legal status to what we call a corporation and giving them the right to own property, we simply only grant that status to entities under the democratic ownership and control of the people who work there. Current zoning laws prevent you from putting an Arby's or strip mine in the center of your residential neighborhood. Zoning permits would similarly be used to assure that all workplaces are owned by the people."

      "You can own all the property you want, but if other people work on that property, it is now legally regarded as owned by everyone working there or the public."

      "Everyone who works for a company votes to either decide how to pay each other or the person or group of people who make those decisions."

      "Communism doesn't necessitate a strong government, or even any government. America's strong ideals of individualism would likely squash tendencies towards authoritarianism, and any practical implementation here would likely be much more decentralized than most historical examples of socialist governments."

      Don't be afraid to oversimplify things. When they inevitably ask about the details:

      • Emphasize how much diversity of thought there is within communist ideology.
      • Make sure they know there is a lot of choice within the implementation details, none of which are really more complex than the legal machinery that enable capitalism.
      • Use that opportunity to explain the various sub-ideologies, showing that none of which are inherently about coercion or control. "x-ists would say that [thing] should be done by/through ... whereas y-ists would say that [thing] should be done by/through ...."
      • Show that many of the ideas they value in liberalism like rule of law, separation of powers, or constitutionality would either be improved or made obsolete by a socialist economic system. Use whatever sub-ideology that best fits their value.
      • Make things seem as mundane/tame as our current legal classifications. Speak in as few revolutionary terms as possible, and if you do, present them as how [historical figure] saw things. Revolution implies violence, which scares the fuck out of the libs. Presenting them as simple, minor classification issues simultaneously makes them seem quite achievable and also lets people build their own disdain at the system for being unwilling to make such minor changes...which will let them come to revolutionary terms without feeling coerced.

      I'm more ML than ancom these days, but I will take whatever rhetorical position is best suited to harbor agreement and create an opening for acceptance of anti-capitalism/socialism. If you have to denounce the Soviet Union or CCP to win favor, do so. It's practically impossible to say "Everything you know about the rest of the world is the culmination of decades of propaganda. All of your worldview is bullshit and you've been accepting it as truth." You can focus on debunking MSM red scare bullshit on the real-world attempts at socialism only once they accept socialism/communism as theoretically sound.

      If you can get them to look at links, send them this brief explainer on most terminology.