Sometimes when a socialist is lil’ booj/labor aristocracker, I see this canard used to console them that just because they’re a part of an exploiting class doesn’t mean that they can’t be a traitor to that class and aid the revolution. A similar sentiment is expressed when someone brings up that Engels, Lenin, and Mao all came from priveleged backgrounds, or when someone brings up the clapback that Zhou Enlai made against Kruschev. However, I really can’t shake the feeling that that’s just copium, especially in the context of the imperial core.

When not invested into making more money, the income of this strata goes into consuming treats. So, so many treats. Services like Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, and Steam are high powered treat beams aimed directly at their brains. On top of this, the places people own their own homes (or rent, but they make enough income that they don’t need to worry about not making rent) are invariably in white flight crackerburbs and gentrified parts of cities; I like to call such places the crackersphere.

Considering being an actual communist requires being among the masses, this presents a pretty big issue for would-be communists within the crackershpere. How is one supposed to relate and build comradery with proletarians when they share none of their struggles? Not many are willing to give away their things and become proletarians themselves. Hell, the most famous living socialist in the Great Satan is currently a millionaire parasocial treatboy.

If this post seems kind of half cooked and rambly, that’s because it is. This is a thought that’s been haunting my mind for awhile now.

Edit: I’ve read all of the responses to this post so far and you’re all right. I definitely have a lot of Christian idealism I’ve yet to purge from my mind, and it’s an individualist lens that ignores how to figure out how to collectively change material conditions in favor of individual moral pissing contests that are as connected to reality as debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. This logic, if taken to its extreme, results in the kind of left deviationism perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.

While this is a point often used as a purity test, I think I posted this as more of a call for help. The atomization and alienation of this society is literally driving me insane.

  • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    13 days ago

    Ownership class traitors do exist and even if they are rare they can be super helpful to the cause. Looking at Engels here. Treatlerism is when people ignore the suffering of others in pursuit of treats. It is not just when people enjoy life.

    Ideological purity is not helpful. Communism won’t get any closer if enough of us think the right things. Communism requires action and money is a way of pushing actions. We shouldn’t care or even think about peoples intentions or motives if they are doing things that help communism come sooner.

    Instead of berating people for their wealth and questioning their dedication encourage them to show their commitment to communism with actions. Show them a cause that needs funding. Even if they are just faking their leftist cred to assuage their conscience you can still milk them for cash to help the cause.

    • darkernations@lemmygrad.ml
      7·
      13 days ago

      Ideological purity is not helpful.

      If marxism is a science then may be the ideology needs updating. I think we all have our purity filters or litmus tests of what is acceptable. The question here is does our filter allow for revolutionary pragmatism, as you have rightly pointed out.

      And for me it hinges on measurable objective development; the development of China with 800 million lifted out of poverty with ongoing rapid progress - and using the bird-in-cage model to be able to do this for their material conditions, and in sharp contrast to India - is a shining example of this.

      What are the strategic consequences of decisively rejecting the tripartite social theory advanced by Orwell, and adopting Marx’s all-encompassing one instead? The basic call to action looks something like this:

      Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”

      Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.

      Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.

      If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.

      https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/