/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Why? Why do you care about "friends" and "family" converting to communism? Is there are a particular reason you want your "loved ones" to be communist? Is the thought that you will have to turn father against son, son against father, daughter against mother, mother against daughter to establish communism making you sick?

Good.

Coach it in vaguely populist language at first and then introduce more concrete socialist principles depending on how they act. Eg “elites” and corporations” and “fair share” before moving on to “capitalists” and other stuff. “Even china and India have more and faster high speed rail, why can’t we”

>>2848583
I think trying to deprogram people close to me is good actually

>>2848585
Cheers. I guess appealing to emotion could be handy in that sense

>>2848586
What an ideologically loaded answer. Can you tell me what is "good" there?

>>2848591
>"ideologically loaded"
>simple statement
kindly get fucked

>>2848596
>simple
What is simple about it?

>>2848585
>1. instill false consciousness (elites, fair wages for fair works)
>2. ???
>3. class consciousness
Not how it works. Why are you people so shameless in your anti-communism?

You should tell them that there are also many developing countries practice capitalismlots of people have diedunder it throughout history - like the well-known Irish Famine and the Indian Famine. They might say those were just minor setbacks of capitalism, but capitalism has caused just as much suffering over its much longer existence as communism does in their minds.
The kind of capitalism that causes suffering isn't real capitalism - a familiar tune, just like the enemy they reject

you know them better than us, if you want to try to push them that way, think about their concerns and their beliefs, how you might appeal to and/or encourage rethink something, and imagine what their plausible counterarguments to that attempt might be. then read and learn about how (in)valid their response is.

the best communist propaganda comes from someone who is educated and acting in good faith. if you think you are correct, you should know why and be able able to anticipate counterarguments and have an answer. and if someone is worth trying to convince, you should treat them as a person rather than a convert. if theyre too stubborn, if they refuse to argue in good faith, youre just wasting both of your time. if theyre worth your time you should be honest. tactful with your choice of explanation, qualify and adjust your terms and examples when needed, but you should never be trying to trick them or "beat them."

also, theres no getting around needing to practice. rhetoric is a skill. if youre not failing at it often, youre not doing it enough

one practical tip is try to avoid emotional appeals, and to try not to get upset at someones emotional appeals. you dont need to invoke the horror of children starving when its ultimately more convincing to reiterate that it is perfectly possible to make and distribute enough food for everybody in the world to get more than enough calories & nutrition a day, and it's fundamentally irrational that this is not pursued as a priority.

I solved similar issues in my home. There is no such thing as an easing into consciousness. Without a firm understanding and commitment to science, there is no consciousness. Consciousness is developed through endless toil and struggle, not a few conversations. Begin with light struggle sessions. If stubborn, smash your family idols and burn all capitalist thought. Seize every opportunity to dispense corrections and always claim the moral high ground.

Proving the successes of Communism and the failures of capitalism is the easiest step, but making them accept these facts and washing their brains clean can be difficult.

>>2848615 (me)
Also. Mud is thicker than blood. In China, many peasant families were exploited by their own relatives. Any bourgeois or bourgeois minded family members being reckoned with in struggle session are practically hostage and on trial, always, until broken, tending further towards reaction in proportion to intensity of the struggle session. They naturally serve as ideological punching bag for any proletarian family members according tk the principle of "curing the disease to save the patient."

>>2848599
No shit it’s not real class consciousness. I literally say to use populist rhetoric and messaging, not socialist class analysis, before moving on to the latter if/when the subject in question has been primed for it. That does not mean “reject the latter” and hide that you’re a socialist, but to recognize that if the person you’re speaking to is hostile to socialism, you need to meet them where they’re at first. Workers don’t spontaneously become socialists through abstract propaganda; they usually enter politics to fulfill immediate concerns: wages, taxes, housing, etc. the point is to begin with workers’ actual concerns and then show how these concerns are tied together through class struggle. Hence why Lenin started with “Peace, Land, and Bread” and then moved on to “Power to the Soviets”.

>Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/gw/

>>2848633
trvke

>>2848633
>Hence why Lenin started with “Peace, Land, and Bread” and then moved on to “Power to the Soviets”.
Peace, land, bread is a slogan which hides material demands. Talking about elites mystifies things. PLB arose during war, famine, crisis. Here we are talking about particular family members. You must see that political slogans based in material demands of a class used to mobilize the class are different to populist, anti-communist rhetoric used to mobilize Legion, for there are many. You must understand that PLB came after 1905, and 1905 didn't come because bolsheviks engaged in populist rhetoric, but because they held the party line. Lenin radicalized an existing movement based in class, this is not the fucking same as talking with your family about the 'elites' or 'fair wages'.
>>2848669
What fucking 'trvke'? It's trying to use Lenin's theory of spontaneity and consciousness to explain (a fucking elephant) a minuscule local issue (a fucking mosquito) which isn't even necessarily class related, and fucking fails at doing exactly that. It's impressive.

>>2848781
>Peace, land, bread is a slogan which hides material demands. Talking about elites mystifies things.
They both mystified things. Do you think the average peasant, which made up the majority of Russia's population, gave a damn about soviet power, which was far away from them in a city that in their mind they had little in common with? The only thing they care about was small property ownership, food, land, and not getting shot. This and capitalist initiatives were why kulaks were able to expand in the first place. Unless you are clearly defining your policies via class analysis there will always be a level of abstraction that hinders, but can also potentially benefit, depending on how you use it.
>PLB arose during war, famine, crisis.
Capitalism is constantly facing crises. Arguably we are even facing one right now.
>populist, anti-communist rhetoric
The point is that the two can be connected, not that we should be doing one without the other. These are people who have a fundamentally pathological hatred of even just the word "socialism", due to 150+ years of 24/7 brainwashing. You cannot even speak to them using this word or they will immediately tune you out. Starting a conversation with concepts that, while incorrect, have the potential to break down these walls is not anti-communism unless you deliberately refuse to connect the two concepts. Socialists in the SSRs, such as Romania and Germany, used populist/nationalist rhetoric to initiate with the masses even when it wasn't their ultimate goal, such as when Karl Radek gave that (misguided) speech in 1923 where he attempted to connect the KPD's goals to German nationalism.
>1905 didn't come because bolsheviks engaged in populist rhetoric
The material conditions were, as you acknowledge, fundamentally different. They had a large amount of socialists, whether Narodniks or Mensheviks or Bolsheviks or SRs or whatever, and the term was not outright demonized. Moreover, even when not demonized, the majority still think either "socialism is when the government does stuff" or "socialism is okay, but communism is le evil and these are somehow two distinct things". We are personally still closer to 1850 than to 1917, unfortunately. This does mean we must lie about being socialists or what we want, which was Marx's point when he said that "Communists disdain to conceal their aims." The point, however, is to start the conversation with what the person in question understands and then, as soon as possible, show how the revolutionary socialist position does not conflict with this. If an individual knows nothing about politics but thinks healthcare not being available to all is wrong, investigate why that is, show them that their concerns are valid, and connect those concerns to the broader issue of class.