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ToastedPlanet @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Ruleducation

We've reached the second iteration. There isn't a lot separating us from the third iteration. And the material conditions were bad enough, at the latest, sometime between the first and the second iterations.

People know socialism exists. People are experiencing sufficiently bad material conditions that they want change.

People have picked up neoliberal ideas from living in a neoliberal society. These ideas give people a framework to process their material conditions so that they do not rise up in sufficient numbers. People need to learn that these ideas are part of an ideology designed to enrich the owner class at the expense of the worker class. Things will continue to get worse unless people understand that everyone needs to own their work.

This education is work that still needs to be done after hypothetically defeating the current fascist dictatorships and is probably part of what will be needed to defeat them.

I keep having this conversation with people and seeing the accelerationist line of reasoning, so I wanted to address it with a visual.

47 comments

  • Wait, you think THAT's the loop?

    Nah, what's happening is the edges of neoliberalism are moving right. They are absolutely checking out from the neoliberal agenda, they are just becoming fascists in the process.

    The disaffection is there. They are rising up in sufficient numbers.

    To vote for Trump and other fascists.

    Accelerationism doesn't make sense because the loop is pushing people right. Do that faster, they keep going right faster. There is no steam buildup for left-wing revolution here. If anything the left has been lazy and the longer this goes the more ground they have to make up. There is no socialist revolution coming, there is a fascist dictatorship takeover at the end of that process. Russia is the model, just... different year.

    The question is why the left wing is failing to divert that flow of dissatisfaction towards its political side with anywhere near that amount of efficiency. Call it education if you want, I call it weak propaganda. Bad political action either way.

    • it's because fascism is easy, simple, and feels safer than stepping out of learned helplessness

      • Right, and if you have a minute I may tell you about the tragedy of Darth Plagueis.

        This is not about the dark side being easier and more appealing, this is about them having weaponized social media. It's a material problem, not a moral one.

    • It doesn't read much like she necessarily supports accelerationism. If she does then the post will be removed as it is a harmful ideology.

      The left is growing worldwide, especially among the youth (I only included some stuff on the US, but you see similar trends in quite a few countries). Remember most people in the US would vote democrat if they voted, which while not socialism is certainly left of the republicans. They just have a major problem with believing that voting will not matter, with gerrymandering, and with anti voting schemes.

      The statistics in my country aren't quite the same in that we don't have a geriatric fascist party, but there is a trend of polarization with people moving away from the center towards the left and the right.

      Though I do agree that we really do need to be doing a better job of reaching out to people. Here in norway the left seems to be struggling because our arguments are less emotion based, because unlike the populists we aren't throwing everything behind a small number of emotionally charged topics and we don't have disingenuous gurus or other big social media influencers lying to kids on our behalf. We don't do a good job of telling people the benefits of leftist policies in a way that really hits them and we don't have enough outreach for what we say to reach them. There's a clear bias in the news and in social media against the left which hampers us as well, both within norway but especially on international platforms.

      • That is a depressing chart, honestly. A few percentage points at best in the same timeframe when the neofascist US right went from a radical wing of the Republican party they were hesitant about tapping into and into running the entire country. Twice.

        During Trump's first term the positive view of socialism among Dems actually went down two points before recovering to five points up? That's rookie numbers. Trump went from reviled to actually becoming an outright felon and then to a landslide victory handing him control of every branch of government in the same time period.

        And that's even more shameful once you remember that for Americans "socialist" includes "social democrats".

        There are left wing parties that have marginally better elsewhere, and some are even in government, largely as junior parties in colaitions within parliamentary regimes. The only exception would be Latin America where there have been bigger swings back and forth, but that wasn't that rare there in the first place.

        I don't think it's about "telling people about the benefits" or "outreach". I think traditional powers have what's left of the information gatekeepers, the alt right has dominance of online discourse and the left has no idea how to use the Internet for anything other than arguing amongst themselves and no idea how to pierce the old media in any reliable fashion.

        It is genuinely depressing, and threads like these show zero self-awareness and very little self-criticism. Ascendant neofascists come from some mix of hostile propaganda and radical actors prodding at the information weaknesses of liberal regimes very consciously and very aggressively. The left has never been able to keep that sort of decentralized coordination going for any amount of time without decomposing into niche groups all over again.

  • People know socialism exists

    I'm not sure they do. I think most people have heard the term and think that it basically means high taxes and high govt intervention (basically social democracy). Or they think it means that the government controls the economy and all companies would become nationalized. I was effectively a socialist for a couple of years before I realized I was. A lot of people need to know what socialism even is before they can erase the stigma in their minds.

    • Absolutely. And even worse people often believe it is incompatible with democracy or is somehow otherwise innately authoritarian :/

      I really am rather tired of how well capitalists and tankies have ruined peoples perception of the term

      • it's great, because they really are saying the opposite of the truth often enough that people take it as common sense. Capitalism is incompatible with democracy, yet democracy creates the stability capitalists crave. They want a free lunch; constantly trying to get rid of the foundations while expecting to be properly sheltered.

    • The problem with knowing what socialism means is that it's a linguistic battleground of sorts, where the word has multiple meanings depending on who uses it. For instance:

      • A liberal and conservative would likely think that it's when "government does stuff" like you described - higher taxes, more public services etc.
      • ML's believe that the 'socialism' described above is just liberalism and actual socialism is when means of production are nationalized, private capital is abolished but the state becomes state capitalist and develops that way.
      • Marxists believe that both 'socialisms' above are just liberalism and actual socialism is when the capitalist mode of production is abolished, so commodity production is replaced with production for use and people pay for goods using something like their labor time with vouchers. This is Marx's definition in Critique of Gotha Programme.
      • Some anarchist/marxist sects believe that the 'socialisms' above are just liberalism, that this kind of 'wage' system is a needless concession and yap yap yap you get the idea.

      It's often genuinely difficult to know what the writer means when they use the word "socialism"

47 comments