How do you deal with this situation? How do explain that Capitalism doesn't work and how Socialism will fix it? Along with this, how do you dispel common myths about Socialism?
Okay I support a Socialist sy-
Angel Young
Nathan Wood
I'm not convinced you often can or should anymore. Depending on the person I think you should just slowly shake the foundations of whatever their particular views are and lead them to a place where they are amenable to something like saying "socialism makes sense". But it's hard to talk about it in any specific way because of how diverse the objections to socialism could be, depending on their ideology.
Camden Lee
address the form of their "argument." accuse them of interrupting needlessly and approaching an intellectual subject as if it is some kind of point-scoring banter contest. point out that they are not attempting to learn or investigate anything, only assert their present (non-investigated, uncriticized) views.
James Clark
also
Point out that Marx had a great deal of respect for "basic economists" like David Ricardo and Adam Smith, and that Marxist political economy develops their theories through criticism and expansion, and integration into the overall philosophy of historical materialism and dialectics.
Point out that this is the whole logic of capitalism. The only way to make a profit is to increase production of commodities with less labor, gaining a temporary market advantage.
Andrew Hernandez
When they are as bad as you characterize here, you humiliate them. You ask them to back up their claims and then refute them in a really condescending manner. Once they are humiliated you can then bring them back into the conversation on a more rational basis.
Liam Hughes
When talking to normies, first thing you want to do is say such low-energy bait yourself. Example:
Now you must realize that normie believe that we live in maximum democracy, and that capitalism == democracy. If you manage to show him difference, congratulations, you did your job good and altered basics of his ideology. Wolff's videos will help you. After that, read cockshott and become ready to debate for planned economy.
Do not debate ancaps, they are always solipsists. If you must, just act as dickhead as comrade suggested.
also
PEOPLE WILL JUST DO AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE LMAO
What is wrong with that? Isn't basic of human's progress to get more for less work?
Grayson Bell
When I debate normies I try to mention materially provable things like the recession. The number of empty houses in America despite so much homelessness in every community. The scarcity of full time well paying work and the abundance of part time low wage shitjobs.
How many people shuffle arround dingy schools and business places, warhouses and highways on endless commutes? Life is poor for them because of capitalists etc.
Christopher Edwards
This is the right way to approach it.
Carson Russell
every political action should take in mind that your audience is operating on a spectrum, with active supporters on one end and active opponents on the other.
active supporters ←> inactive supporters ←> moderates ←> inactive opponents ←> active opponents
point being that it's more or less a complete waste of time to try to get your active opponents to move over four slots to your side (and is why i think debating the alt-right with the goal of changing their minds is stupid). more realistic is to get them to move over one slot. so if you're arguing with someone on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, i'd set moving them over one slot as an achievable goal. don't try to argue them out of capitalism, but at least think about how to present your arguments in a way that will make them less implacably and actively opposed… although they will probably walk away still opposed. but that's fine.
in terms of "debate" i prefer full-blown mormon-style "aw shucks" friendliness. and let them do most of the talking (people like to yap) and then you can ask friendly but probing questions to make them question what they actually believe and why.
as far as the general strategy, the anti-fascist mobilization at cville is a good example of this. notice how afterwards a lot of the alt-lite moved to the center. "both sides are equally bad." it means they actually moved leftwards, and a lot of the alt-righters went inactive (although they're still alt-right and still blah-blah-blah on the internet).
Hunter Nelson
Normies know and understand nothing. They accept the legitimacy of existing authorities simply because they are there, have no clue what capitalism even is, and believe they live in a real democracy where the people are in charge. To reasonably argue with them, you'll first have to play Morpheus and show them was a twisted place the world truly is.
Colton Scott
oh another example of this spectrum business: inactive supporter shows up at the socialist meeting. here's the catch: he's a self-proclaimed zionist. considers himself a socialist and likes the old-school kibbutz movement and is involved in it. before you knock him, remember that uncle joe backed israel from the late 40s until the mid-1950s.
he first tried to link up with the trots and they told him to get lost. of course he didn't go back. he thought they were "hateful." with our group he didn't know if he "belonged." our group are not dem cents, though. so do i sit there and try to argue him out of his zionism? it would be a waste of time. instead i asked him about socialist zionism, how he's involved in it (with what remains of it, in any case), because i don't know anything about it.
maybe he'll be at the next meeting, maybe not. the strategy will probably fail most of the time. but demanding ideological purity will fail almost all of the time. i was just trying to nudge him over one slot.
Julian Harris
Read about labor zionism. They gave up on socialism a while ago snd became succdems, but back in the day they tried reconciling zionism with socialism.
Samuel Brooks
And then correctly identified Israel as a reactionary NATO puppet. Nobody has an excuse to make such a mistake in 2017.
Lincoln Cook
fair enough. but basically i think the left needs to accept the fact that 99 percent of people are super dumb and don't give a shit about anything outside their bubble unless they're manipulated into it, like what the right-wing does. if that means nudging over someone who has an ideological difference but accepts the other 75 percent of the package, then so be it.
nudge… nudge… nudge…
Charles Robinson
one thing that seems to help in convincing people is just through individual stores — comparing a poor, working individual who works two part time jobs totalling 60hrs/wk, vs the person who lives off stock dividends, or the lazy middle-management executive who watches cat videos while paying others to do his work for him
Colton Jackson
Every fucking time…
Hudson Campbell
truth
Nathaniel Barnes
Please never say this. The fascist lies that communism has killed gazillions of people must be immediately shot down.
Grayson Davis
If you're American, you're fucked. Otherwise, most people aren't this close minded.
Sebastian Bailey
thing is, most people don't know how.
Most history books you find on the subject are incredibly bias.
Evan Jackson
marxists.org
Times have changed but liberal arguments haven't
Adrian Phillips
I'd start with saying that Robert Conquest was forced to admit he was wrong when the Soviet archives opened up. Point out that even modern anti-communist historians such as Timothy Snyder (while still wrong about the USSR) are forced to admit that Stalin only killed at most 3 million people (rather than 40 or 100 million as we were to believe). Say that this shows that even the current bourgeois claims can't be trusted.
Cooper Rivera
To even say "Stalin killed 3 million" is a massive loss. The purges cannot possibly have been more than in the thousands, the problem is that the Black Book of Communism and all those other sources count anyone who trips and falls as a death caused by communism.
Henry Edwards
That's the number the anticommunist historians can still arrive at if they stretch the archive data. But the thing is, even if they're stretching it, there's still a lot of people who were killed during Stalin's leadership. And that's when you just have to come out and say it: most of them deserved it. They were Kulaks, reactionaries, and wreckers.
Anthony Williams
Well that's the thing, do you count people who died in wars as victims of communism? How many nazi soldiers did they kill?
Thomas Bailey
I do this, but then I get
Cameron Scott
What about China? 65 mil according to the Black Book, did they do acrobatics there or is it more or less exact?
Anthony King
That's a good point. I'm not sure how to frame that exactly. I guess you could argue that the Russian civil war actually extended well into the period of Stalin's leadership?
Anthony Young
We don't have a comparable historical source for China the way we do for Russia now. However, there is no evidence that Mao killed 65 million or anywhere near close to that number, and basic analysis would suggest that the numbers, not only in the Black Book, but lower estimates as well are a complete ass pull. Here's a relevant article I think probably doesn't go far enough:
monthlyreview.org
Evan Morris
Also, this irrefutable historical data speaks volumes. Nobody can deny that the Great Leap Forward really did work, and it added more than 20 years to the Chinese life expectancy in an insanely short timeframe. Imagine how light-speed-fast Chinese society was progressing under Mao for this to be possible.
Ryan Perez
Always ask for examples, sources, don't let them get away with shit.
The democracy angle is a good one, capitalism predates universal suffrage and generally it was the left who agitated most strongly for it.
David Gutierrez
Well, isn't this actually our goal in a way? Only accounting for socially necessary labor and nothing more?
Brody James
so if deng hadn't liberalized the economy chinese life expectancy would have been 150 years today
John Hernandez
kek, but in all seriousness, Mao and Stalin both proved you don't need NEP or Dengism-style bullshit to develop your productive forces. But I think political factors make it more difficult to pull off consistently. Dengist gradual improvement is certainly preferable by far over what happened to post-Soviet life expectancy after the crash.
Mason Ramirez
there's a "natural cap" on a humans expiration date somewhere, it's a matter of reaching it by terminating poverty caused early mortality
Isaiah Sanchez
I disagree, try turning them towards mutualists or geolibertarians. At least give them information on those.
Joseph Gonzalez
Your response?
Ian Robinson
Ideally a member of a party that controls the state apparatus which can forcibly redistribute housing and slaughter the property owners who resist.
Zachary Roberts
...
Luke Wright
If she doesn't resist she has nothing to fear.
Ryder Scott
Well I mean they don't have to die. If they agree to relinquish all rights to their property then they can live. If they don't, they (and their family) gets to die. It's the same sort of voluntary arrangement that wage laborers are provided with every day under capitalism.
Brandon Taylor
no
Xavier Thompson
why not?
Camden Bell
Why would you? A parent can own a business with the kids never being involved with it and vice versa.
Matthew Wood
they are, always
they benefitted from it at some point at least indirectly. do you really want them to run free and work on revenging their parents that were "robbed" by the evil commies?
lock them up and flush the keys down the drain
Nicholas Cruz
nits make lice
Leo Ross
Should we also lock up the brothers, cousins, parents and grandparents of business owners?
What about the cousin's cousins?
I don't know why I'm trying to argue with a "Stalinist" on how the sins of the father arnt the son's
Aiden Peterson
Go to Miami and talk to the children of gusanos then fucking tell me that eliminating the children of reactionary land owners is not a good idea. Also a lot of these porkies are old and only care about passing their wealth onto their children. If you threaten their kids they are less likely to resist at all.
Connor Price
If they resist then go ahead but there is no need in locking up people who didn't do anything.
Leo Flores
sadly Stalin was too soft on this issue and i was just joking, don't lock them up indefinetly but you'd be delusional to think this whole circle of people isn't a potential danger. why are you so sympathetic towards this scum?
Matthew Hill
that's very bourgeois to think on an individual scale. they're a class that needs to be liquidated.
Adam Robinson
I'm sorry but the 5 year old son of a business owner aint a bourg no matter how much of a hate boner you have for their dad.
Dominic Foster
duh, the little shitter is gonna grow up and hear his families story though. unless you erase it. now how do you do that? leave the family together and be good citizens? really?
Isaac Bailey
You could imitate Stalin's internal deportations and send the porky kids to orphanages and foster homes.
Dylan Davis
I'm in favour of reeducation camps before going full jacobin on the kids.
Camden Bennett
forgot to add, give them a fake family history too.
Thomas Brown
Well shit if your gona lock someone up for something they "might" do why don't we just break out the precogs start up a precrime division and call ourselves Minority Report
Colton Miller
like i said, locking them up was a joke but to be honest you can't tell me you'd leave them be entirely after you had to force the peoples hand on "their property"?
you are begging for infiltration and sabotage. you know what that entails? straigh up murder of workers at their work place in terror attack. we had that shit already, why'd we allow it again?
what are you proposing other than moral outrage?
Ryder Mitchell
Oh I don't know how about
But without (and their family) unless the family resists
William Flores
Keep an eye on them, but don't go straight to repression, most of these cunts wouldn't know the first thing about murder or sabotage, and without their money, what can they do?
Nathaniel Wood
Act as agents for foreign influence. The best way to solve a problem is to remove the people that are causing it. HIstory is cruel. Deal with it.
Leo Rodriguez
no offense but i don't know where this naivity is coming from. foreign capital is just one of many ways. old connections are still there. criminal networks aren't that easy to bust either.
you can't underestimate the potential threat these people pose to the people.
Samuel Reed
So you're seriously advocating liquidation over a potential threat? As if that won't lead to the type of shitshow that the left still hasn't recovered from.
Julian Gonzalez
liquidation of a class doesn't mean physical removal. the "type of shitshow" we haven't recovered from is the lack of action due to social democratic revisionist leaders that paralized the economic foundation, ideological strength and security forces.
there was no such problems during Stalin times.
Jaxon White
Nice try Holla Forums
Nicholas Scott
If you really want to bait liberals, combine capitalism with global warming and hope they don't immediately say that Hillary would have saved them.
Ancaps probably just end up claiming that the free-market will solve global warming, while fascists will deny it.
If you have more than 5 minutes, explain to them how GDP and recessions are related to each other (and what happens to people during depressions). What capitalist growth is, what expansion of production entails, and why it has to be done to keep the GDP rising at a steady level. Then hope they understand we can never have enough workers, land, resources to sustain capitalist growth for another 100 years (exponential growth models), and that it would lead to global warming due to energy flow and carbon emissions. If they argue with green power or nuclear power, counter with transport chains, and how they absolutely depend on gasoline and diesel (also heat energy flow again if they understand physics). Add that the current energy supply from coal and oil is still 70% of all power.
Unless they are a fucking retard, they will either see that capitalism will fuck us up in the long run. The question then is if they become an totalitarian eco-fascist or a socialist.
Hudson Ortiz
This is good advice.
Other things: point out that intellectual property is essentially a state-enforced monopoly, with all the negative consequences monopolies have.
Point out planned obsolenscence, the reliance of the overdeveloped west on the exploitation of the underdeveloped nations (so people can't just chicken out and say "but it's all so much better than when Karl Marx lived!").
Aaron Russell
they base their whole spooky masculine, tough guy identity on being exploited as much as possibly by porky so yeah something pragmatic and not pathological like that would seem like a con to them
Justin Cook
Not always true, I'm in contact with a fascist who cares for environmental concerns.
Ryan Jenkins
then what's the alternative? I mean if nuclear or green doesn't work either what the hell can we do?
Jackson Jones
The first option would be Elon Musk creating a viable electric transport truck, bulldozer, mobile crane, etc. These could charge their batteries with green or nuclear power. This would not fix the problem with capitalist growth, in the long run, meaning that a massive depression will happen at some point, ruining the lives of people.
The second is the get rid of capitalism. Socialism doesn't require a growing GDP. It only needs it to compete with capitalist countries. If there is no capitalism, humans can escape the looming threat of economic depressions. While also stopping further damage to the planet.
Capitalism currently has a very simple premise. Avoid depressions and the destruction of the western world by satisfying the growing needs of capitalism at the cost of the poor, the animals, and nature itself. Or destroy capitalism live according to simpler premises and local economic planning resulting in a sustainable way of life. The greatest lesson we can learn from Marx, is that Capitalism and Markets are abstract things, not under the control of humans. We fulfill their needs, not the other way around.
Then why is he a fascist? Or is he an ethnic socialist?
Joshua Gonzalez
...
Christian Roberts
This is why normies hate communism
Jordan Robinson
So you concede the point (which is a lie) and then go "NO U". What kind of an abortion of an argument is that?