I thought about this yesterday when I was trying to explain the difference between socialism and communism. Even such a simple question requires so much foundational information. I couldn’t just say they were different stages of society, because communism is really more a vector of transformation for societies, and to even understand how these societies transform you have to understand dialectical and historical materialism. So I’m revising my post to explain what a dialectic is and I realize I’m already in my third paragraph. Not only is no layman going to read this because its just boring philosophy mumbo jumbo, but I’ve wasted the last 20 minutes writing out this thing that I eventually just end up deleting anyway.
What we need is a streamlined way of propagating theory for a new online age. The Communist Manifesto was supposed to be the quick and dirty version of theory to propagate, but people don’t even read 10 pages anymore. What we need are children’s book versions of these ideas, summarized in an easily spreadable copypasta format. Not only do they have to be simple and succinct, but entertaining as well. Getting someone hooked has never been harder, because with so much information at our fingertips, its never been easier to ignore it.
I also think they should be modular, rather than longer masterposts. Someone who asks a simple question shouldn’t have to read an entire essay, but if the question requires it we should be able to plug-and-play with additional information. This is the hard part, having separate copypastas for each topic that can work with each other while still being understandable independently. It’s hard, but I think its necessary in order to bring editing down to a minimum and increase spreadability as much as possible.
Edit: oh cool I got featured lol
There is a brilliant section in Blackshirts re: the supposed brutality of the former communist regimes, I can’t find it right now, but it goes along the lines of this: if they were so violent and repressive, why did they cede to a new capitalist regime with barely a whimper of pushback? What brutal, repressive regime allows itself to be peacefully destroyed without a violent counter-revolution?
If they were so evil, why, after their eventual destruction, was there no mass campaign of reprisals against the former communist leadership and their apparatchiks? At minimum, we would expect some kind of truth and reconciliation committee to punish those responsible, or at its extreme some kind of Nuremburg-style mass trials and hangings of these murderers and torturers. And yet, there was nothing.
