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Sat down with an old acquaintance for the first time in a couple of years yesterday and she’s unsurprisingly turned into a complete radlib. Not the screeching twitter type, she’s extremely well meaning and nice about it.
I haven’t talked to someone with politics like that in a while and man are discussions with them hard. They have such a fundamentally different philosophical disposition. Their entire worldview and ideology is idealistic. Talking to them as a Marxist is frustrating as hell, because dialectical materialism is so so foreign to them and creates difference on every single issue in every conceivable way. Class is missing entirely in their world, so no matter the topic you always have to explain your position from the ground up, starting at the very basics.
It’s kinda interesting too, but in a way it feels like talking to a toddler.
I know someone who funnily enough is anti-american and has some historic understanding of the heinous crimes of the US, but just goes “oh but the leadership doesn’t know what its doing, poor dudes!” I point out that it’s usually for corporate interests, and imperialism in general, and they just wave it off.
Audience member: But is it really a conspiracy?
Michael Parenti, every time: Of course it’s a ******* conspiracy. What did you think they’re doing in board rooms and meetings? They’re conspiring!
Haha yes, Parenti being great as always at answering these kinds of questions. IIRC there’s a chapter in one of his books where he talks about the term “conspiracy,” it was very enlightening regarding the subject.
Yet as a Marxist my contributions to conversations are shrugged off as liberals for being “too idealistic.”
Arguably that’s because they don’t understand the meaning of the word. Just like they don’t understand the term “democracy”, “authoritarian”, “labor”, “value”, etc
People around me tell me I’m innocent and idealistic in a positive way because as a Marxist I have a positive view of a possible future, but it’s kind of annoying because I’m a materialist with “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will.”
Actually that’s one thing I never had thrown my way. But I usually stick tie everything to class and production, which is material and which they don’t understand. It’s also too ‘technical’ for them to label as idealistic. I also rarely talk about future revolutionary goals, but criticism of the status quo and fairly immediate causes of action.
But their view of ‘realism’ is messed up anyway. Like this acquaintance has always been super against the military, because bourgeois pacifism and they alway saw it as a breeding ground for nazis. Yet somehow, now, we need to pump it full with blood money, swarm Ukraine with weapons, because some hundreds of thousands dying now is somehow a more realistic path towards peace than negotiations.