Socialism

Just finished reading issue #1 of Kites Journal and thought I'd share this piece. I know it's long but you'll find it readable. Covers the O22 coalition, an organization that was created through a united front effort though with strong leadership from the Revolutionary Communist Party (before they devolved into a weird cult of personality thinktank) to confront police violence. Of particular interest is the fact that while organizing against police violence, O22 recruited family members of those who were killed by police to be the face of the organization and the actual leadership. It's in stark contrast to the style of orgs these days which operate more with a service style.

This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

I have noticed a huge difference between Lemmygrad and Lemmy.ml in terms of what kinds of theory gets upvoted and downvoted. What is the general vibe on here towards actually existing socialism as well as the ideas towards reformism?

Hi comrades, I'm new here, how do we feel about posting Mastodon content on Lemmy?

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?