• WhatWouldKarlDo
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    10 months ago

    Most people here are not capitalists. They’re workers like us and would benefit from socialism. But they’ve been subjected to nationalist and capitalist propaganda their entire lives, and that makes socialism become the boogeyman. It makes it hard for them to see how much they would benefit.

    • supersolid_snake
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      10 months ago

      I don’t disagree. Workers mostly are too busy working to argue. There are very few working class people that I couldn’t relate to and convince them of at least a few socialist principles.

      The people I have a tough time with are people that have nice homes in nice suburbs (mostly boomers) and tons of disposable income to buy goods made by cheap labor. Sure it might be propaganda, but the propaganda aligns with their lifestyle and makes it more digestible.

      The most vociferous capitalists I have met are actually well off tech bros that make fun of you if you think things like insulin should be offered at cost or free.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        The people I have a tough time with are people that have nice homes in nice suburbs (mostly boomers) and tons of disposable income to buy goods made by cheap labor. Sure it might be propaganda, but the propaganda aligns with their lifestyle and makes it more digestible.

        Solidarity among that type is very rare but it can and does exist. Otherwise they wouldn’t have to make up terms like “champagne socialist” to disparage people who think this way.

        • redtea
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          10 months ago

          I don’t disagree. Just chiming in to say it’s funny how students/recent graduates get called champagne socialists because they were never coal miners (usually, anyway, I’m sure there are exceptions).

          • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            Best response to that I’ve heard is “I’m not fermenting revolution in the Champagne region of France, so at most I’m a Sparkling Marxist.”

        • supersolid_snake
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          10 months ago

          I agree, and if you look deeper into the joke, perhaps too deep, they are saying that if you aren’t a miserable and suffering worker, it’s hypocritical to advocate for them hinting that you should only advocate for those in your class.

          The thing is that the champagne socialist argument is usually brought up by caviar capitalists.

      • horse_called_proletariat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        The people I have a tough time with are people that have nice homes in nice suburbs (mostly boomers) and tons of disposable income to buy goods made by cheap labor. Sure it might be propaganda, but the propaganda aligns with their lifestyle and makes it more digestible.

        its a shame because these are sometimes skilled workers and any future socialist society would depend on them to some extent to apply their skills to building the next mode of production. that said, maybe 5-10% (made up stat but just based on what I see at my workplace, which is largely people like that, tech professionals that think they are hot shit even in the face of layoffs and obvious capitalist encroachment on their standard of living but i digress) are reachable and when the crisis deepens and their bougie sectors get hit even more than now, there is a chance more of them will start to feel the pain and want to engage in collective struggle and have some solidarity etc. so far the outlook is bleak, though, and I actually think a lot of the new lemmy peeps are people from that stratum