Literally talking with 99% of boomers and trying not to say socialism or communism when they already agree with 100% of your talking points.
I've learned to call it socialized capitalism when I talk to older generations, and I'm pretty old. I find it an easier pill for them to swallow. We have to remember that the baby boomers were children in the middle of the red scare, that shit got internalized deep. It's almost like they're traumatized.
Legit feels Pavlovian, like you've sent them back into their teens watching/listening to McCarthy ranting to them on their TV/Radio, it'd be funny if it wasn't so horrifically sad
This is me and my dad so much.
Last year he was complaining about how the owner of the company he works for is retiring and giving the company to his son who doesn’t know anything about the business.
We talked about how the workers could all own a portion of the company and run it themselves.
He agreed that’s how it should work.
But socialism is bad… 🤦♂️
Lol I have so many conversations like this. Someone was saying a bunch of people got laid off at their job during covid and they almost lost their house. I said something like "it's a shame that they didn't just temporarily decrease everyone's hours so you all still had work. I mean, the work was going to come back eventually".
And they of course agreed
For real, especially trying to get across Lenin's analysis of Imperialism, or the necessity of Revolution, both of which are far touchier subjects than "Marx good" on the Fediverse.
Marx has been blunted and made tame and by those who haven't read him.
this is a really good thread on the subject https://xcancel.com/existentialcoms/status/1248728086834601984
Excellent thread. Even suggesting Lenin has good ideas can get you immediate ire, because what he wrote is accurate and practicible.
Indeed, Lein's work is highly relevant today. For example, The State and Revolution directly addresses the debates over reformism and the nature of the state that we see constantly happening right now. It's depressing to see all the same arguments replayed as if we don't have historical evidence to lean on to decide which ones were correct.
I suggest Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution to break people out first, less scary than Lenin, and a I think a "woman's touch" does a thing for peoples minds under patriarchal norms, with the assumption that they're somehow less capable of all of the things they're afraid of. It was critical in my political education when I was starting off grabbing from everywhere to see what gripped the road I saw us flying down (Conquest of Bread sucked, never read more 'kum-ba-ya' utopian idealist tripe in my life, and I could tell that having barely even read much Marx at that point); and Reform or Revolution is more focused on dismantling the single topic. From there, once the reader are forced to mull on that reform will never save us, haunted by their discomfort and spurred by the sprouting seeds of their discontent the only logical next step is to try to find out "okay, well then what is to be done?"
But you have to give a background lesson first if the book/site of it you send them doesn't explain in the preface, the whole thing that in the context of her book "Social-democrat" meant socialists in general; both revolutionary and the Bernstien-type 'voting in socialism through reform' revisonists; because this was in like 1900, before the failure of the second international and resultant split of the communists. It's only after all of that and the 3rd international and the betrayal of Rosa and the communist KPD by the reformists that that the "social democrats" came to be understood as we know them today, reformist welfare liberals (which, incidentally, thoroughly and undeniably vindicates Luxemburg, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, et al and their criticisms of reformism).
That's a good point, Luxemburg also hasn't been demonized in the west the same way Lenin has.
Marx has been blunted and made tame and by those who haven’t read him.
You might say they have "Turned Marx Into A Common Liberal"
Actually its prob like only one or two laser lines you can casually step over.
But the are super sensitive & triggery.
All the "isms" and the "ocracys" are fine except for one small point... none of them work.
China uplifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, is on track to have one of the highest home ownership rates on the planet, and is steadily eliminating its dependence on fossil fuels. It has space age technology displayed in every city and a successful modern transport system (with an enormous high speed rail network).
100 years ago, China was a feudalist country ruled by warlords where a landlord could take his peasant's daughter as payment. Famines would come and kill several million people once or twice per generation. The British empire had weaponized opium to keep the country in a state of internal conflict and dependence.
What the hell kind of system can you think of, other than socialism, that could represent a greater success, put food in more hungry children's mouths, and elevate as many people to be citizens of a society that works in their favor? Is that not working? Does it need to produce sex robots or more funko pops for it to be a system that works in your view?
You have a cabal of elites who say they are improving the lives of the working class while executing any workers who disagree with them
I was talking about Boeing, but I accidentally described communism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
and by accidentally described communism you mean that you accidentally shown that you have no clue what communism is
Communism allows everyone to pretend to have free stuff by declaring those that actually make it less than human, and thus less than citizens.
Your crops are picked by exploited immigrants, the coltan in your electronics mined by African child slaves, and the electronics themselves assembled on 14-hour shifts by sweatshop workers under capitalism. And you still have to pay for them.
What you're describing are colonialism and slavery, both of which are time-honored, bedrock capitalist institutions.
I love when people describe a system better than capitalism when trying to make communism look bad.
Communism allows everyone to pretend to have free stuff by declaring those that actually make it less than human
I know you've been banned (not unreasonably so) and can't respond, but if you truly believe what you wrote above, you owe it to yourself to find out how you've been lied to. Communism at its most fundamental core is about alleviating the exploitation done to "those that actually make it" (workers). Communism elevates everyone to personhood, as opposed to capitalism that only does so for the ownership class.
