Literally talking with 99% of boomers and trying not to say socialism or communism when they already agree with 100% of your talking points.
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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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… 🤦♂️
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.
Holy shit that's a banger of a thread
Chuds, libs and ultras are furious in that thread.
Wish the brigaders would read that thread
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"
me describing democracy
Literally Communism
Actually its prob like only one or two laser lines you can casually step over.
But the are super sensitive & triggery.
