How do you communicate leftist ideas to the average worker...

He said he works 40-60 hours a week and when he comes home just wants to watch television and sleep or spend the little time he has with other things. He also thinks he is too stupid to read books. I feel this is a common theme with workers.

Then just, well
this

How do you explain socialism without introducing concepts such as "controlling the means of production" and "capital"? You can shit out some Sanders tier ideology (and even then you still sound like an academic), but I don't see how you can explain leftist theory to someone with high school vocabulary and be content with the result. Feel free to do so yourself though by writing up an example and convince me otherwise

Wow. You're really dumb. I don't even mean dumb as in uneducated/misinformed, but you actually can't think. not only are both concepts completely unnecessary to explaining socialism, both can be explained in one breath.

No you

Controlling the means of production = workers control of whatever institution.
Capital = money in motion.

Is that so hard?

I think all you people severely overestimate how hard it is to convey this to workers

you know what "money in motion" is supposed to mean, but somebody who never dealt with political theory has no concept of it. Same with "democratic worker's control of 'whatever institution'"

You can call me dumb all you like but I'm speaking from real world experience here and actually grew up as a prole, most people I know are workers

tell him "Controlling the means of production" is where the workers run the show and own the "business" with no bosses. Factories are owned by the workers, farms are run by the people in the field, etc.
This isn't too hard.

If you work it, you should own it.

Yep. That's the key right there. Capitalists have done a really good job of making sure that workers have no idea what capitalism is. Once someone hears what capitalism is, they can't help but see it in effect from then on. Then they get pissed off.

You don't have to be stupid to not understand the asston of jargon that we use. Leftist economics is not simple.

You don't need to explain socialism at all. They will look that up on their own later.

"how can workers own the factory? It belongs to someone else, the people who started the business. And how are workers supposed to run their workplace?Have you ever worked a day in your life? They haven't studied for that. That's unrealistic. Where I work you couldn't just kick out the boss, the world doesn't work like that, there are laws and stuff in place for that. And why would I want that anyways?"

No they won't lol

Total fucking rube, just throw him against the wall.

I did. I doubt that I am alone either. How did you get class conscious?

Have fun putting the majority of workers against the wall then, because this is the prevalent opinion amongst them

Found the liberal

Yes, most workers are liberals, welcome to Western society. I was imitating one as should be clear by the quotation marks, if you are confused

Some workers will always be wallbait. I know workers at my job who worked until the day they died. The horse from Animal Farm was quite real. I don't like ML's but I totally understand their interest in a vanguard party.

Tell them that it wasn't owners who built the factory from the ground up, provided it's machinery or produced all the goods in the Factory
Tell them that they currently live in a Democratic country and that the same arguments can be applied there but he isn't complaining, now is he ?
R E V O L U T I O N
You will have greater say over what you create and you will get paid more

1. tell them that in order for their employer to earn a dividend, workers have to worker harder and create more value than they are paid for.
2. if you are american tell them that american productivity has risen continually since this country was founded, but the purchasing power of wages has stayed the same since 1970, because there is no longer a shortage of workers.
3. tell them that in a democratically controlled workplace, workers pay would increase with productivity. For example if workplaces, then the average American worker would be earning nearly double of what they earn today. But they dont because workers have to compete with each other, pushing down wages.

4. Tell them that socialism is a system that gives workers direct, democratic control over the workplace. That it isn't just a choice between soviet socialism or capitalism.

It's like none of you have ever talked with a prole in your lifes

I know, right?
Facts are nice and all, but what people really respond to is rhetoric.

simple
to live society needs to produce things
to produce things people need means of production
some group of people owns many of the means of production that they never could use themselves
some people have no access to the means of production so they cannot sustain themselves
first group of people hires the second group to use the means of production to produce things
then the first group takes the product from the second group in exchange for a wage
then the first group sells the product for a profit
question: where does the profit comes from?

also point out that wages - costs for the boss
ultimate antagonistic relationship right here

Copy Bernie talking points, except sprinkle it with "muh workplace democracy".

but Bernie is a socdem

wanna give us a rundown

i mean if it only takes a minute just give us a no jargon paragraph

you sound like one of them cultural marxist acedemics

I don't want to earn double by taking handouts. socialism is tyranny grumble grumble

Capitalism is when someone with more money than you buys a place and tells everyone there what to do and how to do it, and then that person gets all the surplus profit that's made at that place while fighting to give their workers less and less.
A cursory glance at the majority of workplaces can confirm this to be true.

"Surplus profit" is a bit of an oxymoron, whoops.

Reposting my response from the other thread:
I recently was talking with the maintenance guy where I work, he was telling me how his boss really inhibits his ability to do his job, he won't let him reorganize the tool room or expand it and if he wants some part most of the boss will say no because it's too expensive, and then buy some expensive other useless piece of trash for the facility he thought was needed.

Another woman, a CNA was telling me how the facility gave her so few sick days that sometimes she had to come when she was sick which of course is extremely dangerous for the people she cares for

For both of them I slowly introduced the idea of workplace democracy, and both agreed with me completely. Imagine if I instead started to argue and started to spew das kapital. Would I have been able to get through to them? No

Spreading political concousness is not about being a smartass and trying to win arguments. When you argue you put people on the defensive, and however good your arguments are the person will be inclined not to accept them, even if it is a friendly argument

What you should do as a socialist is to simply listen to a person's problems and offer a solution

Also don't mention any ism at all, most regular people will immediately shut out everything you said or will say. There is no value brand naming these ideas you know.
It doesn't make a difference whatever name they know the ideas by, just that they recognize these ideas are legitimate and would drastically improve thier lives

This leaves out the important part that you need someone else's permission to access the means to life, unless you are a business owner. It's not structurally possible for everyone to do this.

Ah, yes, sorry, I thought that was implied.
Still, he asked for a paragraph and I gave him a sentence, so there's still wiggle room to add more.
>Capitalism is when someone with more money than you buys a place and tells everyone there what to do and how to do it, and then that person gets all the surplus profit that's made at that place while fighting to give their workers less and less. To keep the workforce "competitive", bosses and owners drive down wages and benefits so they can maximize how much they bring in while screwing you, and this is why unemployment exists by design within capitalism - there must be a reserve of workers so bosses can coerce their employees into accepting less benefits for more work.

How's that?

Maybe the issue is that you sound like a cunt.

Wat.

That's my impression as well.

...

I would just say that the main drawback of capitalism is that you are required to gain permission from a business owner to trade your time for access to the means to life, so that he can profit, an arrangement which is enforced by the state, whose policies he purchases.

This where the majority of workers will tune out and have not understood what you're trying to say

talk to them.

my experience with a dishwasher in a semi-fancy restaurant just outside Olympia, WA

I mention to him that a waitress at the restaurant described herself as 'right-wing' (I forget why, I probably added that I thought it was a silly position to take). He tells me he doesn't know what right and left wing mean. I was honestly surprised. I tell him that right wing basically means elitism, aristocracy, the few lording over the many and that the left wing means democracy, popular government. He reasoned from there that right wing seems rather like 'dictatorship'. I don't think I spoke much more about politics than that. The guy was ignorant but he knew it and was open to more knowledge.

He was a druggie as an early adult, meth and booze. He was in some sort of program, had to go and pee test often. Overweight, overworked, allowed to smoke tobacco. Heavy metal fan (have you noticed how music is a tool of capitalism to sculpt people's subjectivities the same way politics, tv, brans in general do? and that music makes people non-political, metal especially?)
Poor guy, at least he had a girlfriend.
His job is horrible but he has to live somehow.
We need to acknowledge that prole life degrades people's minds. They simply fit into the machine-system and let their individual faculties decay. Plus they are on a strict economy of physical/mental/emotional expenditure.

I happen to think that only a small piece of the proles are essential to revolution but I think my case still applies to them in many respects.

...

Are you fucking retarded or something? How is that hard to understand?

I think you're just comparing workers to your own incredibly low ability because there's nothing about either of those sentences that is complicated or hard to grasp. There isn't a workplace today that isn't scaling back employee compensation or benefits or both while the companies they work for make billions in profit.

You obviously have not talked with proles before. I'm not saying that I don't understand it, I'm saying that a sizeable portion of the working class will not.

lol, I know they won't understand it because I have tried exact sentences like this.

I do and am a bit tired of people who have obviously not shitting on me for "not talking with proles".

Talk to them like they're human beings, that is: make an actual effort to be pedagogic, to relate their conditions of existence to things they experience in daily life. Nobody is too stupid for anything. If you truly see the working class as revolutionary agent, watering down theory will only give you useful idiots to your particular brand of politics, instead of a revolutionary proletariat that can participate in obtaining a better politics and thus a more successful revolutionary programme.

I would really like to see this chart extended to before 1945 some time. Wolff-senpai has mentioned before that the first 150 years of American capitalism followed the same trend as 1945-1970, but I'd really like a citable source with numbers on hand.

You don't talk to proles. You're a troll, in another shitty troll thread.

spurdoposter is completely right.
I would not have believed either, had I not met or been involved in the public schools. capitalist society reproduces the proletarian, defined as a capacity to fit in and work with the capitalist machinery. will to mastery has been stamped out. ownership is divine and mythical right along with the democratic principle (one and the same, aren't they really?)

this is very good!

it's okay I understand

this, too

I grew up as the son of a single mother working 60 hours a week at a shitty convenience store. All my life I grew up surrounded by proles and obviously I tried to talk politics with them at some point. I'm not the troll, you're the troll!

people seriously overestimate how far gone some workers are, some people do nothing else but work all day, then go home and watch television. If you've never received an education you simply don't know what stuff like "liberalism" is

"Hey, Whitey? You know everything you produced for yourself and your posterity? Well, fuck you, we're gonna take that, and give everything to the Blacks, the spics, and the kebabs. Except, that's just what we tell people. In actuality, we'll plunder 90% of that stuff for ourselves (Jewish and commissar bureaucrats) and just give scraps to the mudslimes. Enjoy the breadlines, pal, and keep working hard to support 'diversity'."

You explain what socialism is, and socialism is worker control of the means of production. So you explain that there wouldn't be owners, but the workers all own the factories and farms. Capital isnt even neccecary to explain basic socialism.

Funny, I've really had no problems communicating leftist ideas to 'the average worker'. In fact, a lot of the times I've done it they're eager to talk, and I often find myself just listening to them go on, no input required. All it bloody takes is for you to be able to relate to them and speak about things they actually care about.
Your middle aged, mildly conservative worker doesn't care about politics. They don't care about socialism or liberalism or whatever political denominations you can think of. They care about work, they care about what is happening in their daily lives, and they sometimes care about what they see on the news. Focus on that. Don't go in planning to talk about socialism, go in to talk about work from your leftist perspective. If they talk about the news, give your perspective based on what you know about it (you've probably read it here before it ever appears on the headlines). That's it. Just don't go in with the expectation that you're gonna turn them into socialists. You aren't.

...

People know what the word "profit" means. Are you joking? What's the complicated term that's got you in knots?

For most people profit just means when you make money in whatever way. The fact that only a business owner actually handles it is often left out.

I like the idea of eexplaining that work hours have increased, wages have not risen proportionally to inflation, life is harder than it was 'back then' - family work balance is non-existent. People as young as 27 will love a bit of nostalgia, let alone this guy. unfair work place = better workers rights and perhaps you can mention a different economic system in very basic terms from there, like 'is it fair that CEOs earn this much?? if there is a minimum wage, shouldn't there be a maximum??'.

Bernie's rhetoric is socdem rhetoric though. I don't want to explain to proles why we need to implement universal health care, free universities or living wages, why the 1% are fucking over the 99%, I want in fact for them to understand that socialism is not social democracy and what socialism actually is

I can guarantee you that most proles do NOT know what profit means

If you use profit to mean "money a company makes" and then say that they work only to increase that, they're not going to be confused.

Ok, and? People have stolen other people's rhetoric for their own good. Hell, some of Trump's rhetoric could have been ripped from OWS, do you think he's secretly a leftie? Learn to be subversive

They don't care about political theory, but they do care about "immigrants being criminals" and "immigrants stealing our jobs" et cetera, they do vote and they do voice their political opinions at the most inappropriate times.

Now this is next level patronizing.

It's not patronizing, it's personal expierence. In this thread I have only seen 2 posters who seem to be proles themselves and they both confirm my personal experiences. And it should be clear by now that by prole I mean lower class blue collar citizens who hold simple jobs and have no to little education.

There's your problem right there. Stop arguing off anecdotes. I guarantee you enough workers in the US understand the word "profit".

/po/ is fiesty today

And how do you support that statement? inb4 personal experience

outright domination. nice.

Lol no I don't need any personal experience. As of 2015, 88% of adults were high school educated or above. You don't need the 12% for a revolution, and you don't finish high school without understanding the word "profit".

[citation needed]

As opposed to all your citations? This infantilization is cute, but in this hyper-capitalist society everyone fucking knows that "profit" is "when companies make money". If they don't know that for some reason, you can surely say "when companies make money", unless you think that will ALSO break their poor prole brains. It's really not the alien thing you're trying to make it out to be.

I didn't claim to have citations, again, I have lived experience that tells me that the majority of proles I know could not explain to you the concept of profits beyond "profits is when you earn money".

apparently you don't either, so that would explain the confusion

this is a worksheet in a public high school in the Palm Beach County School district, one of the largest in the nation. this is an economics class, where everyone, zombie-like, writes the cookie cutter answer into the blanks. please refer to number 6. tell me, if millions of kids write this answer, do they understand what 'profit' is? likewise, examine the second sheet about history. Was the Bolshevik revolution in February/March?

I know what the word "profit" means, I'm talking about how one talks to proles. That IS what we're talking about right? You don't think the layman's conception of the term is useful in discussing leftist ideas? You don't think the actual definition of profit can be derived from a discussion on this?

yes

its painful

these people are so wrapped in ideology that a suggestion that they know more then their boss about the job they do comes off as a personal attack on their flawless way of life

its extra sad because they believe that all their problems are their own fault and are filled internalized hate for failing to rise to the top of a rigged system that they have been told is a egalitarian meritocracy and beacon of freedom for generations

look at the original sentence that was quoted. "Profit" was not meant in a way that means "to make money" there…

Link me, this discussion is long as fuck and I'm starting to get the feeling that you're responding to me as if I'm someone else

to be honest the fellow wasn't more or less wrapped in ideology than we are, he wasn't outspoken. The drugs suck, and it sucks that beyond their intrinsic consequences, the State makes drug users very vulnerable. Not sure if he had hate, he was really bland.

This goes with my point pretty well actually. They don't accurately know what profit means, but have an idea of the term as generally dealing with the money a company (not an individual) makes. This is functional enough to impart leftist ideas with.

All those answers are wrong.

Public schools, user.

I suppose so.

I think the takeaway from this thread is to just listen.