"Don't say the word COMMUNISM!" — Should we lie to win?
One of the most common questions we get is whether or not we should "hide our power level" when it comes to our political positions. In this video, we look at the words and practice of Karl Marx, Fred Hampton, Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro, and Harvey Milk to tackle the question: should we hide our true positions as we build our movement?
Yeah, I still have the tendency to want to "ease people into it", but it doesn't really seem like that's actually effective. Then again I think I kinda suck at persuasion regardless of the way I try to approach political conversations. I just draw a blank when confronted with dumb lib takes and figure out what to say after the fact
I have a lot of success with easing people into things, but it really depends on the person. If they're already open, you can come at them directly, but if they're just starting to question why things suck, in my experience it's better to stoke the flame of their frustrations before presenting them with the solution.
I have gone with being openly communist and also really fucking cool 😎.
I kinda suck at persuasion regardless of the way I try to approach political conversations. I just draw a blank when confronted with dumb lib takes and figure out what to say after the fact
In a way you need to "ease yourself into it". If you're on here arguing with people about the finer points of the Iranian response to Israeli aggression or Chinese economic policy, it's hard to shift gears to defusing liberal brainworms when you go offline. In this case it can be easier to just put your succdem hat on since you'll at least be in some proximity to one another ideologically.
I'd almost say you can still call yourself a communist and argue from a socdem perspective, but that's probably just confusing to people in the long term so actually don't.
Also isn't that, like, what they accuse us of doing anyway? Like yeah DEI, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and all the other social policies aren't inherently communism, but they're certainly a big part of what we stand for. It plays into their narrative about us to lie about our positions.
The common true answer to these kinds of thoughts is always, "it depends". Wanting simple and fast rules helps to frame questions, discussions, and solutions, but you would be incorrect to just say yes or no.
If a cop is harassing you, do you just call yourself a communist because you reject "hiding your power level"? Won't that just pointlessly make them go after you harder? Will any observers understand or care what it means for the cop to arbitrarily detain and arrest you after sharing this fact?
If you are tabling and are cagey about your associations, won't they, correctly, distrust you? Aren't you missing out on opportunities to spread consciousness and recruit?
This is actually a propaganda question, and for propaganda just about your very first thought should be about identifying your intended audience(s), what you want them to think or do after your interaction with them, and what threats might exist and how you will mitigate them. That should determine how open you are about communism. For example, if you are in the US at a party and calk yourself a communist to a stranger, they will probably not even understand what you mean by that. You will fail to communicate if you rely on this alone. You'd need to explain it shortly in a way that speaks to things familiar to them, like working a job and imperialism. If you lead with "communist" they may end up leaving before your explanation. Better to explain first and label later. On the other hand if you're giving a speech for a communist party.
Overall I think it is best to explain yourself as best you can to be understood when it comes to non-enemies. Sometimes that looks like hiding your power level and sometimes it doesn't.
Crazy to think this guy and badmouse both started as ancaps and then noncompete went on to become a very thoughtful and intelligent leftist.
I thank Luna Oi for this
Isn't badmouse the smug "if gommunism good, then why liberate Ukrainians in Poland with Marathon-Ribbedcock pact?" How is that anything but anticommunist revisionist propaganda?
No matter whatever political position he takes, badmouse will always do it in the most smug, pretentious way possible. Even his ML videos were annoyingly condescending.
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 proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of All Countries, Unite!
-- last paragraph of the Communist Manifesto
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
What part of this means you have to say "communism", your views and aims are probably not saying a word so if your politics have a chance to be popular but your political identity does not maybe focus on the former. Notice how anti-immigration fascists don't say they're fascists nor that they're doing fascism when they're doing stuff that's popular like deporting migrants.
We're not in 1848. "Never ever be subversive" has never been an objective principle of communist strategy, nor recognized as universally good political tactics, if it's worth doing you do it.
In most people's imagination "Communism" is a thing that already happened and mostly ended, whatever changes the world is going to be called something else even if it retains the same views and aims.
I think you just did the thing where one provides a quote and lazily confuses principles with strategy.
Two closely related points on this -
Yes 100% if possible if your starting something new you should not come out swinging with complicated positions/theories/political identities that people don't understand nor have the power to achieve when in the immediate term all you're really going to be doing is trying to revive unions.
Look at recent insurgent political parties in europe that achieved at one point significan results, both left and right, a lot of them do say the "neither left nor rigbt" thing, even when its obvious which it is, they also have non-ideological names look
Reform, Podemos(we can), Chega (enough), 5 stars movement, that new greek party, hell even macron's "republic en marche" etc
So all I can say is corbyn should name his new party Solidarity or Revival or some anodyne shit like that.
5* movement isn't recent at all really, they were eclipsed by the fascist party years ago
And at one point they were in first place so my point remains, and now they're explicitly left-wing (idk how that happened), also I consider anything that had it significant results since the left-populist moment in the early 2010s recent.
And the fascist party you mentioned could also be an example of part of what I'm saying , they're not "neither left nor right" but "Brothers of Italy" is a lot more attractive than "Fascist party of italy".
I could add to this melenchon's "Insubmissive France" which is explicit about its political identity but namewise is a lot more anodyne than "Socialist party splinter group with a bunch of agglomerated trots party".
Corbyn might have a harder time saying this, but in his new party I’d use “neither left nor right”.
At this point in time, we need to be hiding our power levels.
Yeah that's where the "starting something new" part is more relevant, corbyn isn't new so it'd be a conversion of his, and his movement's, political identity into something else, even if its politics remain the same, and there's no guarantee that actually works out well. It'd be very hard for him.
I'm always just open with the fact.
Any conversation I've had, people have walked away with a softer view of communism because they talked to an actual human who believes it.
If you don't outright say it, then their only engagement with communism is going to be strawmen and propaganda.
Remember, libs are like dogs who only understand tone. Stay cool and matter-of-fact. If you lose your cool, even if justified, then you're "one of the crazies." When I talk about trans issues with my family, I have to grit my teeth while they casually say the dumbest, most harmful, humiliating things. But it works . They'll outright say, "wow, you're not at all like those insane people I see on the news or in my slop videos."
In my opinion, it's not helpful to try to hide what you actually believe behind phrases like "democracy in the workplace." Democracy in the workplace is part of a broader political project that needs to be clearly explained. If it is not contextualized that way, then it just becomes another item on the internally contradictory American political ideology buffet.
Excellent way of framing it. Americans have no coherent political ideology, so the goal should be to introduce one to them.
Every country under the imperial core is like this, imo