Socialism has garbage marketing, full stop. Probably because those who specialize in marketing tend to thrive in, and thus gravitate to, capitalist frameworks. Consequentially, a great many members of the working class are propagandized into reflexive rejection of socio-economic policies that would greatly benefit them, based on taboo buzzwords and false equivalences.
Yes, established terminology is quite useful for nuanced discussion in leftist spaces, among those who understand the distinctions between “communism”, “socialism”, “democratic socialism”, “social democracy”, “command economy”, “State capitalism”, and “totalitarian dictatorship”. But for many people, those are all synonyms. “Socialism” means gulags and breadlines and the government stealing your stuff to give it to slackers.
I propose a reactionary framework. A movement committed to abandoning familiar terminology in favor of capitalist buzzwords. Driving a wedge between “capitalism” and “market economies”, leveraging discontent of blue collar workers against big business and political cronyism.
It’s not universal healthcare, it’s alleviating the unfair healthcare burden on small businesses. It’s not universal welfare, it’s freeing business owners by replacing the minimum wage with a prosperity dividend. It’s not a socialized workplace, it’s an equity compensation initiative.
The established terms are poisoned, but the actual concepts are widely popular, if you phrase them right. The movement cannot thrive by trying to carve out a portion of the “leftist” party, it has to draw support from the entire working class. The only way to accomplish this is by abandoning the poisoned terms in favor of business terms that cannot be twisted by capitalists without destroying their own platform.
Thoughts?
You can’t build an enduring movement unless you are straightforward about what your goals are. Anything short of that is just building a social formation which is ripe for co-option. The Red Scare has completely scrambled peoples’ brains when it comes to history and politics. The situation demands political education, not scrambling people’s brains even further.
You can use people’s political ignorance to set up some pretty funny pranks. You can get people to embarrass themselves on social media, but you cannot effectively organize people while keeping them ignorant.
You say that, and yet right wing politicians consistently win elections by doing exactly that. Policies that explicitly hurt right wing voters at the benefit of the bourgeoisie are hidden behind bluster and culture war hot button issues.
That said, I’m not advocating ignorance. There’s no “Gotcha!” moment. I’m advocating an honest movement which merely chooses less stigmatized, and less stigmatizable, vocabulary to express its sincere policies.
Defanging communist terminology is only going to weaken the movement and provide room for social democrats and neo-liberals to co-opt it for their own gain.
What must be done is fighting against red scare propaganda not through terminally online activities, tone policing, or a grand restructuring of vocabulary that will only make it reproduce capitalist ways of thinking, but through actual real material organizing to help people in need as well as holding a solid political platfom through which we can spread revolutionary thought. Communists of today just like liberals of the past must reject notions of the current world so that a new one may be carved in it’s wake.
Another important thing is that socialist terminology is wildly popular, it’s not without reason that it tends to be co-opted and used by reactionary environments. Thus we are only requiered more to never stop explaining.
Also when it comes to the words you proposed, they can and will be used by capitalists for their own gain.
It’s not universal healthcare, it’s alleviating the unfair healthcare burden on small businesses.
Then only those who own small businesses may recieve such benefits, and their workers omitted.
It’s not universal welfare, it’s freeing business owners by replacing the minimum wage with a prosperity dividend.
In a capitalist economy, such a measure would be proven useless in a couple of months. Rents would rise, food cost would rise, gas prices would rise, everything would be more expensive as despite everyone becoming richer no one would be. Real wages could become not only stagnant but even lower for some, particularly those that should’ve been rewarded by UBI the most.
It’s not a socialized workplace, it’s an equity compensation initiative.
Fucking what? I don’t even understand what would an “equity compensation initiative” be.
The established terms are poisoned
And it is our duty, to not fall into the capitalists hands by creating an environment favorable to them. Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
But I have to agree left-right politics are a tumor on modern society and it saddens me we have to exist in this infantile descriptor of ideology, but we cannot easily leave them behind as all of society would have to for intellectualism to flourish.
Do you think? Idealism is nice and all, but memetics seems to be winning elections these days. “Education” and “fighting propaganda” sound very noble but I’m not sure that’s realistic or effective, unfortunately. Adhesion to particular terminology distracts from the underlying principles. If you can’t rephrase your pretense to appeal to the proletariat of any age, it doesn’t really represent them, and is merely another exploitation attempt.
Do you think? Idealism is nice and all, but memetics seems to be winning elections these days.
I think you might be using idealism incorrectly to describe what I’m saying, because idealism philosphically means that ideas have primary influence on creating reality and not that reality has influence on creating ideas. Sorry for the tangent. Either way, I do not disagree with you that there is a lot of outdated terms or even a lack of terms, however I completely oppose adopting capitalist methodology to constructing terminology that would only entrench us in things we try to fight.
Also, electoralism? Really? Has Allende taught us nothing? That even in utmost favorable situations we will be faced with violence and repression?
Regarding memetics, I have little to say as I’m uninformed in them. However I do recognize them as an extremely useful tool, but they must be additional to real exisiting groups. They cannot stand on their own. For example in 2016, memetics helped Trump a lot but they weren’t inherent in his victory. They were already carrying a wave of popularity behind them, and most of all they were not manufactured specifically for or by the campaign.
“Education” and “fighting propaganda” sound very noble but I’m not sure that’s realistic or effective, unfortunately.
Nobility is not what I strive nor am I guided by. Teaching is what I care about most, and it will not be effective without on the ground work, as actions speak louder than words. But just beause of that, it shouldn’t mean we ought not speak up. These things are something that must happen always, from the littlest begginings to a stage of high popularity which, let’s face it, is a long ways to come.
Remember that we can fight propaganda by making our own and utilizing it in demonstrations, protest, strikes and more. Even the littlest ammount is something we need, and reversing negative stereotypes is something we can only do by showing them to not be true. In the US (and in my home country; Poland) we are not starting at square one, but sqaure negative thirty.
Adhesion to particular terminology distracts from the underlying principles.
And those principles being? I’ll guess you mean pragmatism, which are a good baseline, so let’s go from here. The words themselves will become archaic with time, that much is true, I support for example using ultra-rich instead of burgeoise when talking to people that are not “in the knowhow”. For most Imperialism itself means general conquest instead of the leninist definition that communists generally use, thus saying capitalist imperialism pretty much does the job for better clarification without saying thr oh so scary word “leninism”.
If you can’t rephrase your pretense to appeal to the proletariat of any age, it doesn’t really represent them, and is merely another exploitation attempt.
I don’t understand how proper wording and definitions can exploit a person, much less a demographic. At best I can see it being exploited and co-opted by those that wish to undermine communists and use it against them through misinformation and outright lies. For example, most people nowadays are propagandize beyond belief that they do not consider themselves working class, as they relate that to being poor, and not a person who must survive through the sale of their labour.
I’ll summarize what I believe to best course of action. We must adapt to the times but not allow ourselves to become entrenched in capitalist society by operating through rules that it does, otherwise we will become a force that doesn’t weaken but strengthen capital. And that the best way to spread the message of a fight for freedom and dignity, is by being a living example of it in the world. There’s nothing really noble about this, it’s just the way that works best.
@agamemnonymous over all i have to disagree with the premise of what your proposing here. i do get your point about the more socialist terminology being scary to most american, especially older more reactionary ones; but i also dont thats who we should be talking to
the reason i disagree with premise is becuase i think it makes things too easy to completely distort their meanings into something completely reactionary. yes lets choose a different word for bourgeois
@agamemnonymous continueing the thread. you stated the issue was marketing being terrible. i dont actually think thats the case. talk to practically anyone below the age of 40 and almost unanimously they’ll tell you they hate capitalism and thats the starting point. for example i wound up on the far left thabks in part to youtube videos relating to xlimate change and then linking to further and further left wing channels.
i think at this point its more about patiently explaining the position
I disagree. I don’t think waiting for conservative reactionaries to die out is a viable methodology. Yes, millennials and gen Z slant left, but it’s not unanimous (I know several personally who grew up petit bourgeoisie and think capitalism is the only way) and gen X will be around for decades to come. Deciding that the hypnotized are worthless is not viable. The policies are popular, we need to reach those who would benefit on a broad scale before 2060.
Actually, I believe, if you look at the demographics, leftists will be a majority in like a few (~10) years anyways.
Yes it’s not a marketing problem. The marketing is doable. The bigger issue is that there isn’t the resources or ability to mass market in Western nations the way capitalists and the more fascistic members do. Combine that with a lack of education in Western nations regarding the subject. Which is the only reason they’re able to “soil” the terms. Combine that with the constant association of socialism solely with leninists and Bolsheviks etc. Those are the real problems.
Most citizens of western nations couldn’t accurately identify more than one actually left wing or socialist ideology. And it’s always the most dubious one. It isn’t by mistake. It would come as a shock to many westerners to realize that libertarians aren’t just some selfish right-wingers. But actually has its origins and resides mostly on the left of the political spectrum. That anarchism isn’t chaos etc. I know that for the first 40 years of my life I didn’t. And I don’t think I’m all that special.
@Eldritch yea the beginning of my political education literally began with reading the manifesto and going from there.
i will say that now a days the libertarian party really is just right wings cranks but yes im aware of its left wing origins
i do wish i had a different word than communist to describe my political leaning just cuz of the negative associations from the cold war era
I tend to qualify big C and little c communism. Usually that’s enough to slow someones roll to try to understand what you mean by big and little. Well as long as it’s a good faith discussion. Using the authoritarian bolshevik style communism as the big C named ideology. And something like a hippie commune as the more generalized concept of little c communism. To illustrate the difference.
That’s precisely my point. The movement is up against capitalists with resources to soil the term. Faith in truth and education isn’t going to do it. These policies need punchy branding that can’t be villainized without subverting market economies themselves. Carving out a portion of the left from neo-liberals just dilutes voting power and hands elections to fascists. The only viable solution is branding to pull voters from the left and right wing bases.
Um, isn’t that a communist symbol? If so, is that not impairing the ability of the average American to tell the difference between Russia and every one of USA’s G7 peers?
I’m not sure I understand, could you clarify your point?
Can I? I’m not sure I’ll make things worse.
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I think that symbol is the classic and recognizable symbol of a country and was socialist in name only.
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I think the biggest difference between America and every other country in the G7 is how much more socialist each one is than America. Healthcare, unemployment, welfare, housing; it seems each one offers far more consolidated support and ‘safety net’ services.
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isn’t that symbol of a known communist socialist-in-name-only country muddying the waters when using it to talk about socialism? Am I wrong, here?
That’s the best I can do.
Are you referring to the hammer and sickle? That’s just the logo for the “Socialism” community, and is only present because I posted this here. I don’t necessarily advocate using it for the proposed movement.
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This is roughly in line with the idea that “socialist” (ha) policies are incredibly popular, electorally, in the US, but the “socialist” label renders them unworkable in reality.
Beyond the fact that none of the things discussed, such as universal healthcare, are actually socialist, it does speak to the idea that talking about how these ideas work and avoiding their traditional labels has some merit.
However, I think you might find that we’re stuck at, like you said, marketers tend to gravitate to capitalism and it makes escaping their web quite difficult. (Cue Bill Hicks saying “I feel like I’m trapped in a web!”) It’s very difficult to get people onboard in changing how we discuss it, partially because many feel like we shouldn’t have to change the labels for people to figure out ideas like workers having agency and control in their own workplaces isn’t a bad thing.
@dingus @agamemnonymous one of the best parts of that standup
Healthcare and UBI are generally considered “politically” socialist. The one actually (economically) socialist concept I brought up was workplace socialization. A co-op or ESOP model gives the workers in a company meaningful ownership thereof: if the shareholders and employees of a company are the same group, profits go to the workers.
the established terms are poisoned, but a good chunk of that is a result of because of the association with actual support of horrifying, monstrous practices, people and systems, as well as the general uncertainty of what a given group actually supports
youre not going to fix that by forcing socialists to conform to neolib language, you fix it by distancing yourself from actual support of horrifying, monstrous practices, people and systems, taking away focus on ideology and by putting all of the focus on those already “widely popular” concepts
Yes? These are not mutually exclusive means.
