Something Sean from the Antifada said recently has really resonated with me. Communists are the only ones who are truly serious about understanding the magnitude of the issues we face today and really solving those issues. Every liberal postures about being more mature and pragmatic with their approach to politics, but look at how they're handling Biden's absolutely inadequate appointments. Thinking this admin is going to fix things with their approach is just as nutty as QAnon.
Read Marx.
Been posting on r/capitalismvsocialism, one things I've noticed is that capitalists will say "you don't understand economics" or "you don't understand investing" with no elaboration of how these things work according to them. You just don't understand it.
There's some lefty meme from like the ancient days of the internet with a libertarian reading "Econ 101" while the socialist has a huge stack of advanced econ books.
econ 101 means neoliberal econ, i.e. capitalist ideology/propaganda. Anyone who went to college studied it, lefties just recognize it for the ideological bullshit it is
To be fair, there are two conceptions of division commonly used when introducing the concept—division as “separating into equally-sized groups” and “division as repeated subtraction”—that coincide when the one number is divisible by the other.
The remainder stuff gets along nicely with the “repeated subtraction” viewpoint
yeah when I took macro the professor went on daily rants about vulvazula and govt bad and everything govt should be abolished except education and china is gonna fail any day now (he'd been predicting that since '01 :cope: ) and also he once he stormed out because we didn't understand a concept and no one could answer one of his questions so he yelled fine if no one is gonna pay attention I'm going home and walked out.
apitalists will say “you don’t understand economics” or “you don’t understand investing” with no elaboration of how these things work according to them
My favorite is when they criticize communism or socialism and they are just describing Capitalism: "Under communism nobody owns the fruits of their own labor". Buddy do I have shocking news for you.
"Under communism people just do unnecessary, repetitive and mundane tasks all day long"
Once on reddit, I literally had someone describing worker alienation under capitalism to a tee, and then they attributed it to communism.
I tried pointing them to relevant excerpts from Marx and describing how this is actually a property of capitalism, but I got banned from the subreddit immediately. (This was r/communism101 and the ban was for having previously posted in Bernie subreddits)
This was r/communism101 and the ban was for having previously posted in Bernie subreddits
This is the danger of becoming an insular community that has lost touch with what ordinary people think of your ideas, and that stops caring about convincing people to agree with you.
Some of it certainly is, but some of it is "I'm the One True Leftist and anyone who isn't 100% on board with all of my personal takes might as well be a fascist" bullshit. There are intentional wreckers, but unfortunately there are plenty of unintentional wreckers, too.
Leftist should be pretty charitable with anyone who will at least seriously criticize capitalism if for no other reason than they are far closer to agreeing with us than the vast majority of the population. Libs, apolitical folks, and anyone without a fervent ideological commitment to capitalism should be bullied responsibility and also given more substantive leftist arguments.
probably why chapo got into the admin's sights is that we weren't so incredibly off-putting with constant banning of users/newbie leftists. Other subs are so hostile to being successful that they are almost set up to fail.
Yup. The left poses no threat if it remains small. If everyone here, in the DSA, in the PSL, and in any other remotely leftist group magically became perfectly organized together and totally committed to a given strategy, it doesn't matter what that strategy is; we'd still fail on account of being too small. You need popular support to succeed on any path to socialism, and right now we don't have that.
A necessary prerequisite for getting anything accomplished is growing the left exponentially, and we can't achieve that by telling everyone who isn't already a One True Leftist that they're basically a fascist.
I agree, I was more saying that doing it is op shit, not that they are certainly ops.
I've honestly felt like a lot of socialist/communist subreddits are ops. No mod could be that fucking stupid.
Coworkers to me talking about communism : we will all be paid the same even tho we don’t work the same amount!!
Me, knowing we are all paid the same and are kept apart by 40-80 cent raises: :marx-angry: I do think they are coming around tho!
The notion that you shouldn't have a political opinion unless you have an economics or business degree is perhaps my favorite strain of brain worms.
"Shut the fuck up. The economy needs to reopen immediately" - exact same people to doctors and scientists. It's framed in their minds as the ultimate specialization. There is no possible thing more important on the planet than business transactions. Including literal death from disease.
pure projection, in that they don't understand it either. but they know it's good, so you must be wrong
even economists dont understanding investing or economics other than: if you have big number it more gooder and give more gooder numbers
"leftists don't understand economics" say the people who don't understand anthropology
This is the economics they want you to "understand". "What, are you telling me a nobel prize winning economist is stupid?"
That's an insult to most children. Only psychotic/brainwashed adults would be willing to believe such a contradictory ideology.
I think about that picture of the "what's a politician" school project thing where all the kids wrote stuff like "murderers" and "liars in fancy suits" a lot. Socialism is our base state, we have it beaten out of us early on.
"Your Amazon: Work From Home™ software has detected that your familial relation [AZID122765] is preforming at 10.34% higher efficiency then you. Please close this efficiency gap or your account will be terminated"
Spoilers: it's an act and they like it the way it is (for those in power; normies be true believers)
Me: “socialism actually gives you more incentive to innovate than capitalism”
Them: “lol no it doesn’t there is no risk”
Me: “risk =/= innovation. You’re more likely to try to make better coffee if it means more people want your product and you see the direct benefits of the more people wanting your product. Where’s your incentive to make something better if you’re working wage labor like the majority of workers? Why would I work harder to make a better product if I still only make $10 an hour?”
Them: “yeah but there’s less innovation”
Me: :agony-consuming:
To me it was realizing just how much the "sounds nice in theory" line is projection. Sure a town of mom and pop shops sourcing locally to support their community and ostracizing anyone exploitative sounds nice on paper, but in reality we just have walmart and amazon.
