As Marxists, who desire the overthrow of the bourgeois capitalist state through revolution, one of the best ways for us to spread revolutionary consciousness and its ideals is through explaining whenever we get the opportunity. Not through necessarily reciting every volume of Capital in depth, but applying theory to give succinct explanations to real-world phenomenons in the neoliberal world anyone would understand. It will not turn a liberal into a unionizing Marxist and anti-imperialist overnight, but instead it’s obviously incremental.
Sadly, we can’t directly accomplish that from a comradely online space like this one, but we can use it to develop strategies!
We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.
as Thomas Sankara once said.
So share your experiences, and let’s learn from eachother, question eachother, and make a space for constructive criticism.
Be they liberals, socdems, reformists, bourgeois nationalists, conservatives of all kinds, hell, even fascist-adjacents… any rightoid sympathies, whatever the case.
And my fellow comrades of the Global South probably have experiences with the defeatist types who are nihilistic and end up becoming imperialist bootlickers, due to adopting a neocolonial inferiority complex.
Do you prefer to calmly engage through theory in simplified terms applied to real world examples they would understand and relate to? Perhaps focusing on making them see the contradictions and guiding them to answer questions themselves through dialectical materialism? Do you simply prefer to disengage and let them be, depending on the situation? Do you sometimes balance between “preserving your sanity” and standing your ground?
For the Westerners, I would assume you’d often avoid the “trigger words” of communism and socialism due to red scare propaganda.
Perhaps it depends on how susceptible they are to cognitive dissonance (i.e. how much they seem perceive their beliefs as a personality trait)?
Very curious to hear about everyone’s experiences!
Hard question! Thanks :)
I would love to say I lead through questions because I know this is very successful but I am not there yet in this topic.
Today I still try and debate people on topics nad I do happen to ask questions but it is very far from what I want it to be. Most likely that is due to me not having enough experience in engaging with people about this complex issue yet.
My personal final boss atm are leftlibs who see themselves as some amalgamation of the holy western democracy and socialism. There mere existence triggers me sometimes and their smugness makes my skin crawl.
Most importantly, it is because I used to be a leftlib not that long ago but I never was this smug when presented with facts. At least I like to think to TM.
In any case, I’m glad other people are on the path with me. Good luck to us all. We will make it through this somehow.
Nice to hear your perspective and recent journey! The priority, in the end, is not dwelling on “losing” a “debate” with a smug lib, but learning more and more about why they’re wrong, from observing world or domestic societal affairs whose class characteristics can put into perspective moving forward, to simply reading theory.
Exactly what bourgeois media trains them to. Those acquaintances won’t be so smug anymore once their beloved Western “democracy” crumbles further, they’ll be faced with a choice. And you could impact that if they’re people you know well / are close to - even if it won’t magically make all libs becomes leftists, obviously.