You must log in or register to comment.
I think it’s pretty easy to talk about the sort of political policies you want to see without feeling the need to attach political ideologies to them. You can talk about wealth redistribution all day without ever mentioning socialism.
Man, it’s annoying what characters like Mao and Stalin (as well as America) have done to those words.
scary socialism coming to give people a better life in general
Evil Mao almost doubling the life expectancy and having an average growth rate of 7% for decades 😢
D-didn’t he also destroy the agricultural system in place displacing millions of people and then destroy their cultural heritage? I might have missed a /s
I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic. But no. He didn’t.
Unless by “agricultural system” and “cultural tradition” you mean the semi-feudal system of pre-CPC China. Then yes, he did.
Now China has the highest percentage of home ownership in the world!
Evil spoon man 😢
🥄👿
Also add the word ‘capitalism’ in there. It’s like I don’t even get to finish saying the word before the people I’m talking to either zones out or start defending it with: “well there is no better alternative”.
We’ve tried less democracy and we’re all out of ideas!
Had this convo last night. Friend is confused as hell about what is left/right. Frustrating trying to undo years of doublethink.
The conversation wound up with this: How do you best raise a child? With one parent’s word being the only thing to consider like a god? Or with the help of aunts/uncles, siblings, family, doctors, teachers, community, etc, to help them form their own opinion? Then ask yourself why is it that everyone considering themselves “conservative” spends the majority of the time screaming about how each one of those things is the enemy.
Yeah, I have a terminally racist relative and was trying to explain to her why we should look after refugees. I asked her if her neighbor’s house burnt down whether she would invite them inside and offer them some shelter and comfort, and she agreed that “of course” she would. Then I asked about if it was someone from the next street over, and she immediately became hesitant about it. Sometimes I think as a species we just never psychologically evolved beyond living in a tiny village and fearing anyone we don’t know personally.
She saw where you were going. Or there is someone she’s racist towards that lives on the next street.
But this is the best way to both keep discussions level headed and root out the real cause of the opposition. Avoid the labels and names and just talk about general ideas, see how far they will go with “hypotheticals” that don’t trigger the reactions they’ve been embedded with. Even better, some street epistemology, often used with religion but it can be for any beliefs. The basic idea is to ask the person about their own beliefs and guide them in reasoning why they think that. It’s far more complex than just that, but that’s the idea, to let them come to conclusions themselves rather than some debate where their defense will come up and block any more discussion.
It’s okay to care more about people you actually know in person.
It’s not okay to not care about everyone else, though.
I got some rednecks to almost agree with me about socialism at a party once.
We were outside this quaint little town that was supported almost entirely by a cement factory. People in the town had been working there for three generations. The entire town depended on the factory for its existence. If that factory closed down the town would die.
But the person who makes that decision doesn’t live in the town. He doesn’t even live in this country. He’s just some rich dude in France who can wipe an American town off the map at a whim. Didn’t we fight a revolution to stop that sort of thing? Shouldn’t the people who do the work have a say in what happens?
I could see the dawning realization in their eyes just before some chud pointed out that was technically socialism and that shut down the discussion.
Could have been worse. You might have tricked them into socialism and then seen them turn it nationalist and give ownership to the police chief.
Not technically; explicitly. Not the garbage they’ve been shoveled down their throats all this time. Real change with real benefits to the workers. But I guess they don’t want that for whatever reason.
Extreme leftist trying to sound reasonable, challenge impossible
It’s really a winning strategy by the left. As long as the Nazis let their fascist flag fly, the left look normal.
If you don’t confuse and scare people with ideology, I think you can meet them on a personal level.
I support moving the overton window this way.
I do not support extremist political systems. Neither from left or right.
I would love to know what you consider extremist political systems from the left.
when talking to my parents, if I say “community” instead of “communism,” or “nobody deserves to starve” instead of “free food”, and “help vulnerable people” instead of “benefits” and “everyone deserves to feel safe from harm” instead of XYZ - everyone wholeheartedly agrees!
But if I let them go off on a tangent without guiding them, then they’re “anti woke” even though they don’t know what woke means
Some of us Americans are so hopelessly fucking stupid. Kudos to you; I’d have blown up at them and never spoken to them again at some point.
I love socialism but what is with North American kid’s love for communism? I assume you guys love the idea of it but you must know that the idea of communism relies on humans not being selfish and humans willingness to share the wealth and power which is not a reality. I say this as someone who has lived and grown up under an oppressive, communist regime, not just as someone who romanticizes it.
Communism is an idea. Just as capitalism is.
What fucked up things people do with that is an entirely different problem.
You can have an oppressive communist regime. You can also have an oppressive capitalistic regime. Both could be really good and beneficial for everyone.
Heck, even a dictatorship could be a good governing system given a wise and benevolent dictator who has the best of all in their mind.
The problem with all of these economic, governmental and societal systems are humans. All of those systems require a specific set of properties from humans in order to work well. The problem is, that not all humans meet those requirements. There is no system which takes humans as they are, with all their good qualities and all of their faults, to get the best out of humanity for humanity.
From an engineering perspective, this is really stupid. But it’s immensely difficult as well. There are no simple solutions to the complexity of humans and their interactions. Which is why systems with self-correcting mechanisms might have an advantage. For example, democracies. However, those too have many pitfalls to address.
Point is, communism is not inherently bad. It can be good, if no one exploits it. Even capitalism can be good, if no one is greedy and exploits others. There’s a lot of ifs. Improve the system or change it. Whatever might be better. But I don’t think it’s as simple as blaming it all on one core idea of a system itself, rather than to look how badly it was implemented.
You can have an oppressive communist regime
History has shown so far, that that’s the only version available. Many in Europe have experienced this and don’t want it back.
On that note, I’m so glad democracy was defeated forever with the fall of Athens. Everyone knows one state failing a method of government means it can never work.
Letting Americans travel to Cuba would have done far more to discourage the ideals of communism then the blockade.
Ok, but why are you putting Cuba’s issues at the feet of the u.s? I get it, I mean Americans destroyed my country and killed my people by funding one side of a proxy war on my country, but the Russians funded the other. But I still blame my country’s leaders for giving in and for being bought. I blame Cuban leaders for the shit show that Cuba became.
Anyways, I’m not Cuban, but I grew up in a place where communists were every bit as brutal and violent as you get. So I have an aversion to a communist government, despite the good ideas it puts forth on paper.
I’m not. I’m saying if Americans see the shithole that is Cuba they would think twice about romantizing communism. Its better then it was, but the scars there run deep.
Cuban leaders are absolutely to blame
Cuba failing doesn’t mean communism failed.
sorry, my mistake, I totally meant to say I value “community” not “communism” ;)
(also, I’m not North American!)
you must know that the idea of communism relies on humans not being selfish and humans willingness to share the wealth and power which is not a reality.
Lol no, no it’s not at all. It’s actually specifically the opposite. At least for materialist communists.
If you could just rely on humans being selfless and willing to share, capitalism itself would be a great system. That’s just not how it works.
Communism is more about recognizing the individualist greed and selfishness which is not only allowed but encouraged within capitalism, and limiting its harmful effects.
Again, on paper. The moment you put together a communist government with humans involved, those same communist champions will give in greed and selfishness and “everyone is equal, except for me cause I help run things so I should get a bit extra and so should my family and relatives and friends” and so on. Again, communism is great on paper but has it ever worked as it was intended? Ever?
The moment you put together a communist government with humans involved, those same communist champions will give in greed and selfishness
Did you even read what I said? Of course some people will give in to greed, that’s why the system has to be formed in a way to not reward it, which capitalism does the opposite of. Greed and selfishness exist everywhere, the only difference is do you reward it or limt it’s influence.
“everyone is equal, except for me cause I help run things so I should get a bit extra and so should my family and relatives and friends” and so on.
And this doesn’t exist under capitalism? That’s literally the basis of the exploitation of labour value…the bourgeois feel entitled to part of (most of) the workers production.
Again, communism is great on paper but has it ever worked as it was intended? Ever?
Communism itself has not, and can not exist while the global dominant order is a capitalist one.
The most we have experienced so far is different levels of socialism with different characteristics based on the historical and material realities within those countries.
Now when these socialist states have made clear their goal of communism (China, Vietnam, Cuba) then they are colloquially “communist countries” and are led by communists, but they are still in different stages of socialism out of necessity, and yes, I would say it works well in these countries, particularly better than capitalism. Though obviously no country or person is perfect.
@Flatworm7591 careful with the ape holding the fasces…
We currently live in a post scarcity world. Yes right now. The only reason we have poverty in today’s world is that it financially benefits an extreme minority of humans on earth. We currently can provide for everyone and still live the same level of comfort we have now, but imaginary line on graph must go up.
Funnily enough, even the fascists agree. The man who convinced me of that fact, and thus of socialism compared to social democracy, was Jordan “Literally a Nazi” Peterson.
In some rant of his he threw out some factoid to claim that population growth can keep expanding forever because “each new worker produces seven times more resources than they will consume in their life”
Regardless of the literal brain damage it takes to come to that conclusion from that factoid, the actual numbers aren’t far off. It’s a bit more complicated but the result is the same, a post scarcity society beset by parasites.
This isn’t true, if everyone in the world raised their living standards to first world countries, we would’ve already consumed all of earths finite resources many times over.
False. Not saying that we can change to a system that provides for everyone over night but there are no real resources scarcities. Just fascist that want you to think that way.
in sweden we have the concept of “folkhemmet” (the people’s home) which i like a lot for this reason, it’s a big part of why sweden is such a nice place to live.
Sweden has something like 20% of housing under housing cooperatives which I like as a Mutualist who doesn’t like shareholder ownership or government ownership.
I usually just talk about worker and consumer cooperatives and if I have to name an ideology I say Mutualism.
In your view, what differentiates Mutualism from Anarcho-syndicalism, and on the other end, from Anarcho-communism?
Isn’t the goal to use words that won’t scare the libs?
Based on @[email protected] 's other comments under this post Mutualism seems to be a label they really identify with, and I was just curious about why. I consider myself an anarchist but don’t really read theory, so I guess I’m trying to make sense of the differences in these hyper-specific labels.
I find it funny that it costs $30k to criminalize a homeless person, and $10k to offer supportive housing. Yet we choose the expensive option.
Same with energy we have solar, and batteries… Yet we power cars with gasoline, we have hemp yet we make things out of plastics
how do we even undo that stigma?
almost everyone i talk to who hates marxism doesnt even know what it is.
I hate marxism, but that’s because I’m a Mutualist and agree with Proudhon’s criticisms of Marx.
We got:
-
Double down and fix public perception/rectify the definition
-
Switch to a different term
-
Avoid terms all together, focus on ideas and values
-
Demolish any positive opinions of capitalism
Maybe there is more options, but to me #2 is probably a losing strategy, as conservatives/fascists will continue to dirty whatever new label is made, just as they’ve done with everything else. It’ll just get us back to square 1.
A mix of #1 and #3 is probably the move. Get everybody on board with the ideas and values, while making slow progress in the background on #1.
#4 is another one that can and should always be worked on
-
He materialist approach of Marxism misses far too much of what motivates humans to be viable.
Imo: You have to not run away from the terms whenever possible, if not even communists will say they support communism it lends credence to the idea that communism is inherently dirty and not to be associated with.
If you talk to 100 people and half agree with the principles but all leave still hating communism blindly, thats much less effective than if half agree with the principles but deny it thanks to cognitive dissonance and 1 person realizes communism might not be so bad.
Then perhaps when 2/100 of those people are communists instead of 1/100, maybe a 3rd would be willing to listen, so on.
1 commie, teach 2 commies, teach 3 commies, teach 4 commies, teach more commies.
Obviously I’m not saying to lead with a eulogy on Stalin or anything, but it should be a balance between drawing them in and not treating communism like a bad thing.
I don’t like memes that use a fasces to describe leftism.
Have you thought about using words like “unions” or “The New Deal?”
