How do I get my liberal friends to abandon identity politics and other liberal spooks and convince them that there is only class struggle without appearing like a commie or a dickhead?
Most of them are semi-politically aware but only when it comes to shit like Veganism and gay marriage
rank economism, you are a tard. read lenin.
Liberals are so deep in idpol that when you tell them that "there is only class struggle", they hear "only my (worker) identity matters".
Group interest language is tainted and we may have to abandon it altogether. Just keep pointing out how much they're exploited at work and what dickheads the rich are.
Show them that capitalism will inevitably collapse by giving a quick explanation of the fundamentals of Marxist analysis: LTV, falling RoP, colonialism/imperialism, alienation, base and superstructure… I am surely forgetting important stuff now, but the point is keeping it simple, quick and logical.
Stay away from moralist arguments, because it will inevitably devolve into IdPolian discussion.
tell them to read marx and listen to david harvey
only socialism and a class free society can truly be inclusive of all identities without fetishizing, commodification and division.
socialism already excludes hatred amongst identities to unite the working class. push this narrative.
So encouraging them not to quit the idpol whilst trying to get them to flood leftist organizations? I'm fairly sure this is the exact thing that keeps fucking us over.
Point out that there can be no equality under capitalism. Changing the composition of the upper classes so that minorities are "represented" in the upper classes* is simply a deflection from the real problem: that there are classes to begin with, and that the vast majority of the population will still be living paycheck-to-paycheck even if there are more black/women/LGBT CEOs.
*The idea of the upper classes representing anyone other than themselves is liberal fantasy.
the right party wouldn't accept their membership until they dropped that shit entirely. what are you proposing? antagonizing them instead and just kill them off at an opportune time?
seems good to me, just not realistic. there's still party purges and all that fun stuff you can do if the entry criteria failed and they turn out to still be idpol scum later on.
If they're aren't buying arguments that directly name the workers or capital, try the opposite approach of leaving out terms like those entirely. Instead use trivially true observations about the world around them; the number of children who live in poverty and food scarcity, families made homeless because of financial industry schemes, the endless wars no one voted for. Point out how even their darling celebrity politicians can't be bothered to pretend to care about pervasive social decay that effects everyone regardless of their individual identities or backgrounds.
You can’t tell a liberal to read Marx. Liberals are afraid of anything to do with communism because it killed 100 gajillion innocent people in gulags
Capitalism is at the crux of the left-right dichotomy.
A RED pill on Capitalism should be the starting point with liberals.
A lot of liberals are deeply connected to the liberal (bourgeois) parties that identify themselves with social minorities. Their political beliefs revolve around defending certain politicians and their records against their detractors. Case in point, you can get American liberals to trash Trump and Bush, but the equally hawkish oligarch HRC has a strange cult of personality around her. Telling these kinds of people about the means of production is premature, they aren't in the frame of mind to realize the significance of class because they're caught up in bourgeois politicking.
so what's your concrete idea other than telling them about class to somehow magically get them there on a detour?
you gotta put issues they care about into class perspective, give examples and have them learn through experience eventually, over time.
refusing to talk about class and the MoP because "they're not in the state of mind" is undialectical and defeatist.
Tell him to read Michael Parenti, his writing style is pretty liberal-friendly and doesn't use words that scare them
I don't want to exclude class or other Marxist analyses from the discussion, I'm saying mainstream liberals are so enamored with their politicians and parties they take all criticism as an attack by what they imagine are conservatives, racists, "Russian agents" and the like. They honestly think they're in a struggle just as real and material as the class struggle. I don't know how to disentangle them from these beliefs.
by really just sticking to class and explaining it. continuously. they're thick so it takes time but that's the only way to get there.
take their own issues and bring class into it, show how it's fundamentally defining these issues. doesn't even take to attack their beloved politicians since they're irrelevant. their character gets exposed when they accept the nature of things and where these people really stand in it.
I love Parenti but he's way too radical for the beast we know as "liberal" in the US.
Mark Blyth is not a Marxist (as far as I know) but he's really good at explaining how capitalism has gone off the rails lately.
But I don't think you can convince an adult to change his mind about anything. Or it's just really, really hard. As squishy and ill-formed as a liberal's opinions are, they will hold onto them dearly when confronted, and challenging them can actually make them clutch tighter. (Don't think you're any better on account of being a Marxist.)
Experiences and a change in one's surrounding reality can change people's minds. The LGBT movement made progress mainly by giving people the courage to come out. Now it wasn't some stereotype on TV who was gay but your son, daughter, brother, sister, etc. I don't really have an answer for leftism but if anyone has a chance of making any progress in the U.S.A it's the Dizzay since it's a normie-friendly way to get involved. I would act positively Mormon-like and give people free shit and fix their stuff.
Totally the wrong way to go about it. Suggesting that the hierarchy of men over women or whites over blacks does not exist is denialism. What you need to do explain how these hierarchies are shaped by class society and, through their division of society, actually protect capitalistic production.
very much doubt that this is possible at all. liberals are not "moderate" leftists, they are "moderate" right-wingers or plain neocons. many of them look down on "lower class" and unemployed people (they perceive themselves as "middle class", NOT as "workers"). however they still value democracy.
they might become an ally against reactionaries, like during the french revolution, but probably can't be turned into proper leftists. but they need to realize first that reactionaries will throw their "liberal values", fetishes etc. under the bus too as soon as they see an opportunity to do so. what's more, 200 years ago the enlightement movement was very very influential. in continental europe it was quite lefty at it's core.
today anglo style liberalism basically dominates everything.
you could probably convince the more left liberal, succdemish, jimmy dore types but your typical idpol neolib is beyond saving
But they don't. That's just what /r/socialism types like to believe to convince themselves their struggles to further identity politics are revolutionary. Racism, sexism and other such concepts are just the cultural remnants of the needs of previous societies, which remain in our society as the rate at which culture changes lags behind the insanely rapid speed of modern technological and institutional changes. Global capitalism cares not for the existence of any of these beliefs; abolishing them wouldn't harm the system in any way.
I believe in "intersectionality" as way of explaining race and class, but it doesn't necessarily follow that intersectionality has any explanatory powers regarding any particular (say) white or black person, or that anyone should be excluded from something on that account. (Ecological fallacy = making inferences about individuals based on the groups to which they belong.)
What doomed liberal-centrist politics in the late-Obama years and what is currently killing the alt-right is that their politics were based on a hateful, suspicious, abusive culture of policing the people around them and trying to hold people to a strict standard based on their identity.
I remember going to a party full of highly-politicized ultra-liberals, like in 2014, and hearing people talk shit about gay men for coming to one of their events. (I think gay guys stopped being a chic-enough accessory at this point.)
It was really homophobic and in any other context would be considered as such. But because this group swapped partners and dyed their hair green they thought it was OK to say such things. This party was all-white and in a gentrifying black neighborhood btw, and several of them had Tumblrs (yes!). This same group had an emotional meltdown two years later when Hillary's presidential campaign went down like the Hindenburg. No wonder Trump and the alt-right took off, yeah?
It was just a bad, negative space to begin with. What I like about the IRL left I've gotten involved with since is that they don't tolerate that bullshit. If you show up saying homophobic or racist shit you're going to get tossed. But I haven't seen this "reverse" form of it, either, where one's own personhood is subject to collective judgement.
I think I agree. Liberals often refuse to see there is a structural problem with society, they only have pet-peeves with stuff like representation and consumerism. Try to state "the problem is capitalism" to an avowed liberal and he's just gonna reply with a "no" without a second though, while listing his small-time complaints like representation in media or such.
Even fascists are easier to redpill since most of them are thoroughly dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. (not trying to horseshoe theory though)
Socdems are a weird bunch.
Nope, race and national divisions absolutely inhibit proletarian organizing, which is why porky is always so eager to support groups like the KKK
Ah, that must be why the ruling class massively promotes racism and sexis- oh wait no, they cram emancipatory idpol into all mass entertainment and 'information' that's made these days. In fact, the ideological state apparatus on every level constantly proclaims that racism and sexism and the like are utterly unacceptable and should go. Now why would they do that if it was supposedly so beneficial to capitalism? It isn't. Capitalism wants everyone to work and be exploited. For instance, women sitting at home was beneficial when reproducing the next generation of workers was a full time job. Thanks to technological advances, this is no longer the case and having all women sit at home is a waste of time, while every women added to the labor pool is one more person to either provide their labor to be exploited by a capitalist or to dilute the value of labor by increasing the supply. So what sexism remains in our culture at this point is merely a remnant of a previous cultural norm which has yet to be totally eradicated to fit the system's new interests. Same goes for racism now that slavery is gone and the third world is no longer limited to purely resource-extraction jobs, which removes any need to limit non-whites in what roles they can fulfill in the system. And sure, people and capitalists right now may still be racist and sexists, but their being so is in no way the desire of the system as a whole, as its desires can always be gleaned from the ideological state apparatuses.
let's pretend that capitalism wouldn't create division (which it does). how would idpol become revolutionary when it solely adresses phenomenons but not the essence of class society?
identity only plays a role insofar it acknowledges the class context. and that's where our leddit liberal "friends" go full retarded.
yes, this is a totally new phenomena and it shows how capitalism has changed to liberalism and completely rejects reactionary ideas. they'd never finance facists party like Front National, the AfD…
oh wait no, they do.
it's almost like there are different types of bourgeoise that have different interests and play both games in the bourgeois political spectrum. wow! who'd have thought it's not a 1 dimansional hungry hippo game.
socdems around my neck of the woods are a mix. some are bernies who slapped on hammer & sickle buttons after the election. others are really not socdems at all, they'd be in PSL if it was around here, and they're hiding their power levels and thinking pragmatically. this is just my anecdotal experience.
wow, that's almost like something marx could've written, back when blacks in the US still were treated as subhumans
Im not this guy but I'm actually one of those people, although i was sort of radicalizing during his run in the DNC. I think the rigged DNC primary is was pushed me to fully radicalize.
I think the reason fascist are easy to redpill is because they are more willing to listen and accept extreme ideologies. All liberals know about socialism is that it killed a billion people and destroyed democracy.
even if you sell it as just to be an educated person?
Nobody that supports the social norm of Liberalism is willing to read 1100 pages of something they disagree with for the sake of educating themselves. It's hard to get that kind of person to read an unbiased synopsis or watch a YouTube video from a Revolutionary point of view.