I’ve noticed that talking to people that some common tropes seem to come up when topics like socialism come up.
Basically I hear a lot of defense of capitalism that boils down to capitalism is good because “I personally benefit”. As well as “I’ve heard bad things about socialism”, ie taxes are too high in countries with good healthcare and social programs.
I wanted to know if other people have these issues come up in conversation and if people more well spoken than me have a way of getting through the road blocks and have some easy starting points for discussing things with people.
I feel like propaganda and fear mongering have placed a divide that make talking about things harder
Correct ideas bore out in reality. This is undeniable. Correct analysis will be correct, and flawed analysis will not. This works out in Marxism’s favor, because it is an extremely powerful analytical tool.
With regards to speaking to non-Marxists, following the previous paragraph, you can describe concepts without giving away their origin. Point out Monopoly Capitalism as it relates to Modern Imperialism and is the driving factor of modern conflicts, without pointing out that it was Lenin that put pen to paper on it a century ago.
You can also take advantage of “common sense.”
I’ve noticed a pattern with this sort of thing, that when people are complicit in systems that they benefit from, they’ll put forward arguments they don’t really believe in because they’re obligated to by their own cognitive dissonance. I was first introduced to a term for this pattern of behavior by PhilosophyTube: a phantasm.
It’s a way of organizing feelings, selective observations and misrepresentations. A way of intepreting the world that also does things to the person using it.
Okay, that’s a bit vague. The video essay goes on to provide some cohesive examples, but if I could try to summarize it:
A phantasm is a self propagating system of incoherent beliefs that a person generates to willingly deceive themselves about their own complicity in systemic oppression of others in order to alleviate cognitive dissonance and maintain the belief that they are a “good” person.
I’ve seen this behavior most notably in alt-right, anti-vax, and conspiracy theorist types, but I’ve also seen it a lot with anti-vegans.
One of the main symptoms of this self deception is to blindly parrot bad arguments that perpetuate their own deception, even when they don’t believe their own arguments are coherent.
I think, sometimes, depending on the severity of the phantasm, this behavior can also be a search for a refutation. Part of them might want to reject the phantasm, and given sufficiently well gounded arguments and/or evidence, some people are capable of rejecting the phantasm.
In any case, I think there’s a lot more going on psychologically than simple willful bad faith. Phantasms are incredibly hard to dislodge when people are emotionally invested in maintaining them, and I don’t have a good answer about the correct approach, or even if there is any sort of generalized right way. It may well be that every single instance requires a unique solution.
It’s the concept of Base and Superstructure. The Mode of Production, ie Capitalism and Imperialism, reinforces the art, ideas, and ideologies that support it, ie liberalism, which in turn reinforce the Mode of Production.
Ideas are consequences of Material Conditions, Material Conditions determine what ideas are acceptable by a society.
I would just like to remind you of the following sentence from Karl Marx: ‘The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.’
The material conditions of capitalism will evolve towards a state in which the contradictions between classes are reflected with high intensity. The middle classes tend to proletarianization, due to the concentration of capital in the hands of a few bourgeois and to competitiveness. We must create class consciousness so that when the time comes, if we have done a good job, we can reap the fruits and finally establish socialism. This means pointing out the causes and origins of injustices, always proposing a political solution.
