depends on what you mean by “argue”; we should educate them if possible, but trying to debate every liberal you come across is unlikely to be helpful, especially considering the bullshit asymmetry principle
What is that?
If it’s what I am thinking of it’s basically that it takes drastically more time and energy to dispute liberal bullshit than it does for them to make it up. Libs will just spew capitalist propaganda bullshit all day long because it’s easy. To refute every point takes drastically more time and energy from us to come up with sources, explanations, etc. So it’s a loosing battle to try and refute them if it takes you hours to debunk and takes them 10 seconds to spew more bullshit.
A corollary: the move from liberalism to Marxism is marked by a change in worldview as a whole. Like ‘paradigm shifts’ in the Kuhnian conception of scientific revolutions, ‘disruptive innovation’ under capitalism, or the qualitative character of change in dialectics, this transition is marked by a kind of incommensurability between two things, in this case the consensus point of view in liberal societies and the Marxist point of view.
Marxism isn’t a liberal, capitalist framework with a series of factual misapprehensions and faulty analytic judgments corrected, and for that reason, winning people to Marxism isn’t a matter of correcting liberal bullshit. Taking up Marxist thinking involves movement from two directions: realizing that liberal, capitalist ideology is defective, an inadequate way of understanding or changing the world; and entertaining a Marxist perspective on its own terms. Correcting liberal errors can play a role in the former but does nothing for the latter. And today, there is already a widespread sense that the consensus narrative is bankrupt.
The final consideration in explicitly embracing Marxism is that a Marxist framework does a better job of making sense of the world and orienting oneself towards political action within it than a liberal, capitalist framework does. The largest part of motivating such a judgment in favor of Marxism comes from engagement with Marxism itself, both analytically (theoretically) and practically (i.e., working with Marxists and Marxist organizations).
Great points.
People rarely change their minds when you argue with them. The reason is that what people believe tends to be deeply integrated into their personal experience, their upbringing, education, and so on. Beliefs that were formed over many years aren’t going to be overturned in some brief interaction with a person who holds different beliefs.
Incidentally, this is precisely the trap that liberals fall into thinking that they just need to show people facts and fight “misinformation” to get people on their side. It simply doesn’t work, and in many cases it produces the opposite of the desired result by hardening people’s existing views.
What is productive in my opinion, is to focus on educating people who are already starting to fall out of liberal mainstream on their own. These are people who are starting to question the dogmas they’ve internalized because they’re no longer able to reconcile them with their own experience and understanding of the world. Such people have already made that crucial first step of being open to consider alternative views, and that makes it possible to have a meaningful discussion that will help steer them in the right direction.
One other thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s more important to focus on quality over quantity. Majority of people are passive, and they’re not going to actually engage in furthering any sort of political change. Your time is best utilized convincing people who are likely to be motivated and put in their own work to further the cause.
No it is uour duty to make friends and convince them through the gratitude they feel for the good you have done.
Be a good person so people will realize that communists are good people.
Also, no liberal is going to convince you that communism is evil other than the liberal who is the reason you are no longer homeless. The opposite is also true.
By being a friend to the friendless you have a lot of power.
If I actually personally know someone who is communist sympathetic but holds onto a lot of recycled liberal brainrot then I offer to have an in-person conversation with them if I think they’re worth it. Otherwise, no. Arguing with dedicated liberals is a waste of your time. And unless it’s your territory, you’ll likely be arguing in theirs and won’t change the minds of observers either.
Relationships are more important than rhetoric.
Both in life and in efforts to persuade
public arguments are more about the onlookers than the person you’re engaging with directly. people don’t change world-view or beliefs they take as part of their identity in just one conversation.
I try not to but my impatience and contempt tend to win through, it’s something I have to work on. Identifying people you should bother trying to educate is a skill in itself. All the effort is on your part. Brandolini’s law unfortunately always at play.
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All I’ll say is pick your battles wisely. Don’t try to convince some random Right wing weirdo in public, they dig into their positions and don’t listen. If someone is willing to listen to you, try to give them basic not too scary stuff at first and slowly push China as a better alternative to the status quo, but you need to know your shit, and especially know what’s not true because most people in the West know mostly lies about China, very little from China actually gets here without heavy criticism. Climate change can also be a good topic, the capitalist system relies on “line go up” mentality, infinite growth, finite supplies, increasing numbers of climate disasters around the globe. Like I said, start out simple, most people won’t listen to someone quoting Mao from the get-go.
