Yesterday had a long conversation with a labor aristrocratic family member, age millenial and working in tech.
He announced things like: -China is a horrible Orvellian surveillance state, you (talks to me) have no idea how horrible it is there. Haven’t you seen the videos?
I try to cautiously reply that surveillance capitalism is pretty intense in the West as well and that we don’t really get good or balanced information from China. He goes:
-So you sayig something like Zero Covid was the right choice?
I am hesitant to reply with a yes as this person is clearly already very fired up and confrontational. But I try to point out things about how nobody in 2020 knew how bad it might and how many will die, how people in the West are still dying, how the virus isn’t in any way bening even now and how it’s pretty dystopian too that here we are just sacrificing people for capitalism now and choose to ignore it.
I did say I think it was better to save people to which he said that I am a nihilist.
I also tried to explain the State outside the capitalist project and protecting multitudes not individuals, individualism and such, but he was not receiving it.
He then told me how bad the country is as he saw in the Grand Tour how they have built a highway over a rainforest that nobody uses.
I asked him where does he think all the roads and buildings in the West are built if not on top of nature. The argument as critizism of China made no sense to me whatsoever.
Later this same person said to me that we as a society have no hope and there is no point in protesting, no point in doing anything but riding out the rest of our time to climate disaster. I tried to point out to him that a socialist state can be born from capitalism, but only if we the people develop initiative for it and understand our current condition.
Same guy also did admit that voting no longer works, the EU was a mistake and it’s grim how all our state systems have been privatized and are now in the hands of corpotations like Microsoft.
Now, I don’t even know where to start with this one. He very much represents his part of the population here and the deep apathy and negative thought that they harbor.
He still understands and thinks that the regulated capitalism of the 70-80s here (keynesian) was the best part of our history, but when I told him that it still was always going to lead to fascism and monopolies (told him to read Marx) he ignored this. Very much the “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” mindset.
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people? These people actually have power (capital), but the petty bourge status has made them like this. However climate chance does not discriminate so I feel this part of society is facing a new conflict from a historical standpoint where nature says no to exploitation. And this seems to lead to apathy.
If he’s doing well financially, he’s very likely a lost cause. Your best bet is to drop a few seeds in there and hope that they bloom the next time he loses his job or his town gets flooded.
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people?
The don’t. They focus on the poor, as there’s no need to go through logic aerobics to prove that, say, the largest military and starter of wars isn’t the good guy. I’m not saying that I’m a perfect communist and I spend all my time with immigrant meat packers. But for your own sake, trust me, the sooner you give up caring about the opinions of well off white men, the better.
Thank you. This is probably it. He has never lost a job, but is in a position to bargain for the best spots and say no if he wants to. This makes for some interesting takes towards someone like me who has been poor for over 20 years and studies/works in humanities instead of tech.
He was also hyped about crypto and later told me that AI will destroy the world because Musk said so. His views on humans are very negative and have taken on a lot of the tech style “people are just complex computers” bs that results in all kinds of dehumanizing takes. This has then lead to a kind of steadfast belief that people are all simple and have no agency/power.
What worries me is that guys like this hold a lot of power in the way things get done and they see themselves as progressive leftists, genuinely.
He still gets very mad at me when I oppose his takes even a little, but I have managed to slide him leftwards over the years slowly.
Every time I end up in these struggle sessions with him, I feel sort of hopeless for days after as he seems to represent his intrest group pretty well. In my country this group is very large and has a hegemonic status currently.
Terminal bazinga brain, wait until capitalism fucks him over and try again.
I’m not saying you should root for it, just wait
His views on humans are very negative and have taken on a lot of the tech style “people are just complex computers” bs that results in all kinds of dehumanizing takes. This has then lead to a kind of steadfast belief that people are all simple and have no agency/power.
The most effective response I’ve seen to that when it comes to shutting them up is confronting them with their own premise: so are they. If our consciousness, the first thing that we experience when we wake up every day as conscious beings is some sort of illusion, that illusion is all that we know. All of that Rick and Morty tier reductionist nihilism is just an elaborate cope on their part because they are alienated and disconnected from other people and at the same time have an excessively high opinion of their own importance as what they call “meat computers” because capitalists pay them more. Calling out that cope is effective because that’s what it is. They think that by reducing others to the crudest possible terms that they stand above the heap of everyone else. Calling out that arrogance often makes them back the fuck down again.
What worries me is that guys like this hold a lot of power in the way things get done and they see themselves as progressive leftists, genuinely.
They bubble up here on Hexbear from time to time and they’re exhausting each and every time. Debating them is as exhausting and futile as debating any typical Reddit techbro so just calling out the most likely ulterior motive (feeling superior to other “meat computers” by wallowing in reductionist nihilism and dragging others down and pushing them under themselves) works better and takes less effort.
This is a very good idea. I talk about things being social constructs with him all the time and he tends to get very frustrated with this, with the whole “but there has to be something concrete, something that is true”.
We are currently sort of stuck in the struggle session of Western media and bias, the way our worldview is indeed constructed and I do sympathize with the uncertainty that might come from being ok with most things not being black&white or clearly right or wrong. True or false etc. I told him that for me personally realizing this was freeing, he also called me a nihilist on that.
Problem is that when I make a comment about something like the LLMs from a social sciences pov he immeadiately dismisses it because I am not in tech and says “you don’t understand the threat because you don’t understand what AI is”. I try to explain that in the end your AI is just automation and statistics, not intelligence and he dismisses it.
For some reason the tech bro mindset produces people with exceptional confidence in their own understanding of the world and that is very hard to counter. But at the same time tech is working in the closest alliance with capitalism and imo it is the industry that is also doing a lot of class betrayal (unconscious as it may be). Which is why I think these are the people we would need to reach somehow.
This is a very good idea. I talk about things being social constructs with him all the time and he tends to get very frustrated with this, with the whole “but there has to be something concrete, something that is true”.
That’s a side issue that disturbs me with a lot of the same people, too: “if it can’t be measured in a laboratory environment, it does not exist” logical positivism takes. Academia generally dismisses the entire concept because logical positivism itself as a concept can not itself be measured in a laboratory environment, but it keeps popping up because of the weird fear/rejection of anything that isn’t yet another computer to touch.
Instead of the humility of accepting that there is some ambiguity to the world and many unknowns in the interconnected universe we live in, it’s “no, it must be like computer, computer I can touch, or else it is stupid and bad and doesn’t exist so stop talking about it GET SCHWIFTY.” I think it’s why so many of those same people can’t even begin to explore ethical concepts and just sum it up as “morals” in a crude reductionistic way and dismiss the concept whenever it’s inconvenient in favor of more treats.
Yup. I also think there is a discussion to be had about “evidence-based” and the problem of science turning into a sort of religion.
Looking at the entire covid response where nothing could be done until it had been proven over and over again by one of the methods these types of guys see as valid.
I work a lot with narratives or otherwise less colonial research methods and typically these measures get discredited from the start. I think this is related to everything you pointed out there.
Thank you. This is probably it. He has never lost a job, but is in a position to bargain for the best spots and say no if he wants to. This makes for some interesting takes towards someone like me who has been poor for over 20 years and studies/works in humanities instead of tech.
If he’s a millennial who has never lost a job, yeah he’s a lost cause. He’s a fascist-in-training as far as I’m concerned, and the instant he loses his first job is when he becomes a fascist for real. How can you have a 10+ year job history and not lose a single job? Either he is extremely lucky (and credits his outrageous luck to his merit within the meritocracy of course), he is a pathological liar, or he constantly shuffles between jobs created by his petty bourgeois small business owner parents like a petty bourgeois failson.
You need to write him off and move on. Imo, you’ve already said too much. He will 100% snitch on you if you try to organize your workplace. He will 100% be a scab and cross the picket line. He will 100% name your name and enthusiastically put you on the commie blacklist.
He is like the entire IT sector here from the early 2000s up. I know several guys like him, they shop for jobs. Nordic country so this is a thing here, they have been on 5k monthly salaries since age 30 and buy houses with ease.
He has been able to develop many very unrealistic views of the labor market and worker power, told my partner who burnt out in a healthcare position that he should have voiced his complaints more, hahahaha. They live in a full bubble from everyone else here.
Oh, I didn’t know you were from Northern Europe. I thought most Europeans use British spelling, so I just assumed you were from the US. I’ll put the disclaimer that what I’ve said is applicable to the US but not necessarily applicable to anywhere else.
Probably the best thing to do is to figure out how to scam him with some crypto nonsense and then divert his money to a revolutionary cause.
From an article on Maoist organizing techniques, specifically the Mass Line:
We go to the masses, conducting mass meetings, discussing situations and problems with them at bus stops, demonstrations, classrooms, workplaces, bars, homes, churches, and wherever else they can be found. Consider the mass line a sort of factory except instead of products, we make revolution. The ideas, correct ones, from the masses, represent the raw materials. Everywhere we go, our task is to ask people what’s going on in their communities and on their jobs. The police are killing people. There is struggle with landlords. The houseless are being suppressed. Alright. What are we going to do about it? This is another thing we must ask ourselves, and the masses. Prating and whining are not revolutionary solutions, neither is begging the power structure that keeps us in these atrocious situations in the first place for some warmed over solution. Maoists understand that the only way to develop a revolutionary movement is to actually go among the people, do research, talk to everybody and collect both correct and incorrect ideas, and develop ourselves theoretically to ensure that we are able to tell the difference between the two.
And the most important part:
Maoists seek to unite the advanced, win over the intermediate (most people are intermediate), and isolate the worst of the backward.
Every person you encounter falls into 1 of these 3 groups. Usually, like in this case you’re explaining, class relations and material interests come first in deciding where they are (so it’s typical that a petty bourgeoisie will trend towards backward, proletariats may be more intermediate etc). Your job is to ignore the backward, and conduct political education among the intermediate and advanced sections of the masses. So that means really listening to and getting to know people, and more specifically their concerns and the things they care about the most. Then, the goal is to connect these things that they care about to socialism (or depending on where the person is, connecting what they care about to prerequisite ideas like anti-capitalism, with the goal of building up to revolutionary socialism).
This is the concept of agitation. Agitation means to connect the interests of the people to socialism. An exploited worker who cannot pay rent, an immigrant who faces violence from the state, a minority who faces white supremacist or state violence, a person who has/is facing police violence and incarceration. Sometimes you find people who already care about something, like a person who already cares about climate change but doesn’t understand that capitalism is causing and profitting from it. These are all issues, caused by capitalism, that can be sharpened and connected to revolutionary ideas.
If you have not already, you should check out The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats and What is to be done?, both by Lenin:
“Our task is to merge our activities with the practical, everyday questions of working-class life, to help the workers understand these questions, to draw the workers’ attention to the most important abuses, to help them formulate their demands to the employers more precisely and practically, to develop among the workers consciousness of their solidarity, consciousness of the common interests and common cause of all the Russian workers as a united working class that is part of the international army of the proletariat.”
Where to find unorganized people who are intermediate and advanced? You mentioned being poor, so you can readily encounter the masses in proletariat workplaces. 3 comrades I know began working at a restaurant, and through their efforts, it has become unionized, and they are more able to conduct political education and agitation among their co workers.
I will give you 2 pieces of advice:
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Remember that agitation, education, and organizing should never be individual. It should be collective. Over the internet you’re usually seeing the thoughts of a bunch of faceless people you don’t know whose words usually don’t have anything directly to do with your material reality, or when you read theory you’re usually just individually consuming the knowledge within the pages, but organizing should be as opposite of this as possible. This makes sense from a Marxist perspective because we probably already understand that the masses make history, and not individuals. Every now and then you can have an individual agitational conversation with someone, but it’s difficult individually trying to bring an intermediate or semi-backwards person to a higher political awareness. Humans are very social, so having multiple people conducting agitation/education with you is very helpful, especially in socially atomized countries like America (not sure where you are tho). A strategy I use is inviting an intermediate person who I want to organize to a political event, either from my org or people we know, then allow them to get to know and make connections with comrades who are also present. From there, when there’s multiple friendly, trusted people telling you something, or offering their own perspectives on an issue, it’s easier to bring that person to higher politics. This is how we’re conducting further education among the unionized workers I was talking about earlier.
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Unless you’re talking about US imperialism and its devastating effects, generally avoid stuff like geopolitics and, more specifically, trying to convince people that China is a good country. You need to meet people where they are, starting what the material reality around them and their interests. Usually defending China isn’t where they’re at. But you did do a good job of deflecting it back to america.
Feel free to ask questions, criticize, disagree, etc with anything I said.
Thank you for this response, it gave me a lot to think about. I am approaching this from Europe, the socdem north where the conflicts aren’t very clear to many and people are detached from the global struggle and also our part in it.
This was a park bench discussion with someone who has already made genuine progress in thinking in my view so I would not probably leave it unagitated even though that would be easier for me.
In the last year I have been able to secure work in the social sector with similar benefits as he has always had and I have been able to show by lived experience the difference in material conditions that happens when you become less poor. I always use words like class and remind him that we are all working class, this has stuck with him.
He on average has left the cryptostuff and Musk stuff and many other things behind over the years because of our somewhat often occuring struggle sessions and this gives me hope. But it puzzles me how he tends to always opt for the most reactionary option first and ask questions later. This seems common in guys like him.
What would you recommend as first reading of Marxist theory that relatively easily explains especially the cumulative nature of capital and class? I know he isn’t ever going to read something like Capital, it’s too much effort. I have thrown things like Secind Thought videos and the Deprogram and Blowback podcasts at him, but he enjoys living in the RadioLab bubble of social justice without class concsiousness. Not sure if he had ever really watched them.
I have myself started from the progressive “voting is key” social democratic view and not even that long ago, but am neurodivergent and have always been an agitator and very political, so diving straight into this was never difficult for me, more like “where had this stuff been all my life”. And I was already seeing myself as socialist, just had the Soviet bad and other red scare brainworms like pretty much everyone here has. But this guy and a lot of people like him prefer to be “apolitical” and disengage from all the things they see as negative or ruining their vibes. How would we counter that?
Hey, sorry for the no response, life is busy but I can dm you sometime this weekend.
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We have no choice but consume funko pops till the apocalypse, no time nor way to do anything, and anyone trying to is an authoritarian red fash nazi
HE CALLED YOU A NIHILIST?
That’s the biggest proyection fucking ever.
Yeah though it was pretty funny as well. My realist takes on infection protection are nihilist.
One thing I’d add:
“Oh so you think Zero Covid was good?”
“Well, I think that given the circumstances…” 🤓
WRONG RESPONSE
“Of course, you imbecile, they prevented millions of deaths”
GOOD RESPONSE
You are right, wish I had said that. He just tends to argument pretty aggressively and the entire question threw me a bit as he is covid aware himself. I sort of didn’t even know what to say.
I’ll make it clear next time it comes up, I am sure it will too. :D
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people?
Manufacturing Consent through propaganda and subversively platforming an alternate culture. The Left’s obsession with thinking that we’re gonna debate our way out of the cultural hegemony is lib shit. It’s straight up Talk no Jutsu brain. Arguing with a wall is not a productive use of your time, nor mentally healthy.
Just seems the arrogance of privilege of social, global, and wealth’s position combined with fading youth reconciling with a world absent of hope and prospects of a future.
The charge of nihilism is projection and all such people have is subdued hedonism and self pity.
It’s worth making your argument anyway, since philosophies and minds aren’t changed overnight or within months. It takes time, and it starts with a germ of an alternative idea.
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people?
Yesterday had a long conversation with a labor aristrocratic family member, age millenial and working in tech.
You don’t. They’re the prime demographic for fascism, doubly so if they’re a white male settler. They’re mostly a lost cause. It’s only worth trying to reach them if you’re completely surrounded by them and have no other demographic of workers to radicalize, but be prepared to be very disappointed and see all your effort go to waste as they embrace ecofascism anyways.
white male settler.
The settler part seems unlikely since OP seems to be somewhere in Northern Europe. I guess it’s possible if they’re northern Swedish, but chances are.
Yeah not settlers, but our country did dabbble with colonial complicity and oppression a lot.
Difference here is that it has fully never been reconciled with as we see ourselves as outsiders to the colonial project (we very much are not). This is why issues like racism are so hard to discuss here as people as a majority have a “I don’t see colour” mindset, this makes incredible space for fascism to thrive in plain sight.
I have already heard the ecofascism bubbling to the surface with this one for sure. He travelled and came back disgusted by the way the poors “treat their land”. So we did a stuggle session on living conditions and exploitation and all that.
Techbro’s obsession with china is part white-anxiety about being outcompeted and part a way to assuage subconscious guilt from working for companies that actively make the societies they live in worse and do all the mass-surveillance shit their “hacker” culture is supposed to oppose.
Most of their rhetoric is identitical when talking about Japanese or Korean tech companies when they’re all capitalist US puppets and Japan literally have their constitution written by the US. They will likely use the same rhetoric against India in the coming decades as India’s economy develops more.
Great analysis, subconscious guilt sounds correct. I tried to throw things like Tech Won’t Save Us-podcast and the book Surveillance Capitalism his way, but he kind of goes *ears shut those times.
And yes it’s funny because most of these guys see themselves as unravelers of the Matrix or whatever.
Tech is very much complicit to upholding capitalism imo, they seem to be the perfect match.
