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.
Let’s do a roleplay to demonstrate. I will be the buffoonish ignoramus who only knows communism bad.
What do you mean you’re a communist? Like China or Stalin? Those guys are bad.
I’m gonna take this seriously like ur a coworker or stranger, u guys critique me
Nah not like that really, more like… original Marx stuff combined with Bernie Sanders. It’s not that radical when you get down to it, essentially that most resources should be democratically controlled instead of by a single weirdo like zuckerberg.
Probably wouldn’t go on that long unless they continued to seem with me
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?
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.
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.
Fuck you, the way everyone is so hyper-critical online has been so annoying to me lately. Every single earnest post attracts a swarm of intellectuals ready to condescend. The reality is though, marxist-sandersism, or whatever I’m describing that you’re laughing at, is not a laughably shitty explanation, you’re just being a dick. What would you say to the coworker after they accuse you of supporting Stalin? Say yes he’s le epic and based? Yeah that’d be very normal and not laughably awkward in reality. Yes this was a wild overreaction but like I said I’m sick of everyone just cumming themselves at how clever they are for cringing and loling at everything earnest
oh no, I’m scared
Let’s pause the roleplay. I think that maybe you should avoid speaking Russian before establishing a comfortable rapport.
“Well, what I believe in is something called Marxism-Leninism. It is a marriage of both Marx and Lenin. It primarily advocates anti imperialism, anti capitalism, and economic and social justice.”
I will hold back on redpilling them on the benefits of Stalin and the PRC for a later date
Sure, he was. But how do you know for certain that’s the real reason why he shot Kennedy? I mean, the guy that shot Reagan did it to impress Jodie Foster. And because Oswald was murdered before he could testify, you can’t say for certain.
I wouldn’t give him the talk about why Lee Harvey Oswald was a heroic man and should be on every 20 dollar bill.
“Tell you what. If you can get 100 words down, on paper, without using the internet, explaining how “China Bad” and “Stalin Bad” are effective retorts that disprove dialectical materialism and render the entire concept of Communism null and void, then I will stop being a Communist.”
What I consider to be necessary for a communist government is largely just a communal concern for well being, both ours and everyone else.
At the expense of being called a revisionist, I actually disagree that this is necessary. Too many people are self-centered assholes to make this a requirement for our movement. We will need quite a few self-centered assholes if we want any chance at succeeding. You just need to convince them that our goals are good for their goals. If they aren’t upper management or a business owner, it isn’t all that difficult.
It’s quite easy to frame things in an individual perspective. “YOU should get the full benefits of YOUR work. Rich assholes who don’t give a fuck about YOU are basically stealing what you make.”
Just reframe “taxation is theft” into “profit is theft”. The tragedy of the commons just needs to be presented as “how greedy elites are fucking people like you and me over”
