r/Socialism_101

The Communist Manifesto, the Principles of Communism, etc. all require a somewhat high level of reading comprehension, coming from somebody barely transitioning into high-school. Maybe I’m just not that good at literature or whatever, but it can’t just be me that notices all the context-heavy content in the manifesto and the tricky wording of most marxist content.
Regular, working class people in America have limited education when it comes to these sorts of things, and it seems that those who don’t have been indoctrinated to not even try. There’s only one person in my life that has ever read the communist manifesto and “understood” it to an extent, and that’s my liberal social studies teacher. It just feels like most Marxist literature and whatnot isn’t very beginner friendly to all people in general, and of course when talking about difficult political concepts in general that’s expected, but it gets to an extent where it’s just very treacherous to read. Maybe it’s just me, though. Thoughts?

To me the biggest flaw of Marxist theory is the suggestion that power-based social hierarchies are simultaneously a natural phenomena which humans are at present capable of moving beyond, and an artificial product of capitalism.

The implication is Marxisms' proposition that modern humans do not naturally seek to have power over others, and the only reason they do is because of capitalism. However, assume you agree that we evolved from apes who, like many other species, form power dynamics naturally. How can it be suggested then that we have evolved enough since the earliest proto-capitalist societies around 4000BCE, to where the pre-capitlist inclination for social hierarchy has dissipated, making a society of uniform status feasible? Evolution doesn't happen that fast, especially in organisms with relatively long life cycles like humans.

Perhaps in tens or hundreds of thousands of years the evolutionary need for power dynamics may dissolve, becoming a hereditary byproduct of a biologically outdated economic system, which we can then move beyond. But at this stage in human history, I don't see how human phycology can be reasonably argued to be compatible with Marxism.

There is a claim that real instances of Communist states did not employ "real Communism/Marxism", and therefore don't demonstrate that Communism cannot end subjugation of the working class. However, as I have argued, Marxist theory itself appears to make huge, unfounded leaps of faith about evolutionary biology and the origins of social hierarchies, leading to major contradictions. These contradictions appear to make Marxism quite obviously incompatible with actualising liberation of the working class without devolving into autocracy either short term via seizure of power by revolutionary leaders, or long term as sects form within the working class and begin persuing social hegemony.

In my interpretation, the defeating hypocrisy of Marxism and Communism is therefore not rooted in economic or political theory, but evolutionary biology. For Marxism to be actualised there is an impossible, or at least unrealistically optimistic requirement that 99.9% of humans will not act on inclinations to persue and accumulate power over others. Even if a workers utopia and Communist state is initially achieved as envisaged, the power vacuum such a system would produce, combined with the 'imperfections' of human psychology, makes Marxism far too fragile to be capable of constituting societal organisation over centuries, as liberal democracies do.

I am not a staunch capitalist whatsoever, I would say I identify as a Social Democrat, but I don't understand how Marxism can be justified as a legitimate theory for social organisation in the face of the above argument.

(This is not directed at socialists, more-so those who identify as Marxists or Communists).

Hi,

In my country the next presidential elections will be in 2027. For years the far right has risen and risen, while on the left a new figure has emerged and since a few years has shown himself capable of winning the elections. Our two turn elections are expected by many to figure this man against the young and new representative of the far right. My country hides less and less his racism, his reject of "wokism", of Islam. Our president is fucking us in the ass and slowly paving the way for a far right which he doesn't specially want, but prefers to the left.

Now, our left is divided, and Mélanchon, the only one capable of winning, is by far too radical and speaks too loudly for many, but for a lot of people on his left he is too imperialist, too much of a socdem, he's weak and won't be able anyway to do much. He'll be, for them, either a traitor, a liberal, or simply a failure.

He will not make France a socialist state, or instaure communism, or start the revolution. My question is : does it matter? Should I associate myself with his party and use my energy and my time to help him in this democratic game?

I deeply want to, but I want to know what do you all think of this, whatever your specific affiliation. I have friends who find him too much of a brute and I am unfazed by their opinion, but I do have some others who advocate, on the contrary, either to vote and be a militant for some minor party with absolutely zero chance of winning, or simply not to vote and instead write articles or whatever else that may be done politically outside of taking part in the electoral fight.

He will not save us, he will be a social democrat, but he will fight against fascism, racists, bigots, homophobes, transphobes. He and his party will do what they can. Should I actively engage myself to support them? Spread their word? Read their books and share their ideas?

I will fight fascists either way, and I am ready to defend my and my equals' rights if the far right reaches victory, but the left's eventual victory will not bring the revolution, anarchists argue this is simply slowing down the rise of the racists.

Recently he has announced he will present himself to the elections. This has been the call I had waited for. Now, I just need to know how much should I invest myself into this.

And if so, to what extent?

I understand that Western countries use LGBTQ rights as propoganda against socialis countries, anti-imperialist countries, and global South countries. But like...so?

I completely understand how we are used for pink washing, and I be detest it. But obviously LGBTQ people exist everywhere, we aren't unique to the West.

I guess I'm getting at a bigger theme: Western countries seem to use social progress as a shield from economic progress. And on the other hand we have suppression of social progress in places like China, but they have economic progress, bustling infrastructure, industry, etc etc.

The two concepts aren't at odds, so why does it seem like they are?

Is social progress just a distraction? I personally don't believe you can separate social and economic progress. But at the same time, you eliminate a lot of the issues facing social progress when everyone has equal economic opportunities.

Hi comrades, I just had a thought that I wanted to hear your perspective on.

My question is whether we need to find other “labels” for some of the classical and most important terms in class struggle, such as “proletariat,” “bourgeoisie,” “working class,” and so on.

I had this thought because these terms have been heavily tainted by Western propaganda, and many people I’ve interacted with become very skeptical the moment you even mention them. Also, the term “working class” or “worker” often evokes the image of the classic factory worker, which doesn’t really fit the majority of the working class we are speaking to in modern times.

So I wanted to ask whether you agree, and if so, whether you have any ideas for new terms we could start using instead in order to communicate socialist ideas more effectively to the masses.

Thanks in advance!

I ask this as someone who is a very aesthetically minded person, and when trying to in my free time make a board for Marxism, realized there was a severe lack of variety in image choices, symbols, and so on comparatively to other boards I had made. When I came to writing a list of Marxist aesthetic items vs non-Marxist aesthetics, it was a lot more difficult for me to list it out beyond propaganda posters, Marxist figure heads, the hammer and sickle, and the color red.
I could try and further on why I think this is, many aesthetics can be rooted in cultural specific locations and conditions, and symbols of those cultures can be taken advantage of to produce various moods. I won't get too specific as I think I fail to make a proper explanation, but I feel like Marxism is very static and singular and doesn't branch out.
It vexes me and I am concerned with it for no reason than wanting to integrate my ideology into my own personal aesthetics.

I’m new to socialism and I’m trying to start reading to understand it more. Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should start with?

Okay, so I would consider myself a socialist/communist. I’m actually currently looking into Marxism and other forms and types of socialism and communism. I was wondering if the fall of the USSR would have been different if Stalin had not ruled. There were definitely some benefits to the USSR, but the many deaths in the USSR from these gulags contributed to the propaganda that the Americans were fed by the CIA, which was that the USSR was a horrible place where it was a dictatorship (the documents that state this are in the CIA’s ‘declassified’ folder thing). It was not, but that’s what we were told. If anyone has any theories or thoughts abt this please comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts! :)

As a Vietnamese, our most common view is that Soviet was the big brother helping and protecting smaller socialist nations while China was a back-stabber.

However, it seemed that most western socialists denouned Soviet for destalinization and China was in the right

Do they really consider Khruschev's actions to be more reprehensibe than China cozying up to USA, supporting Pol Pot and invading Vietnam?

I'm from a third world country. In our here leftists and liberals are widely thought to be same. I knew there were differences. But even in leftist and liberal societies often work together here. Yes, there are criticism in our leftist circle too about the liberals but these aren't nearly as much as i see on Reddit. I have some questions regarding this scenario -

1. In Which side liberals are situated politically ? Left or right?

2. As many ideas of liberalism match (obviously not economical ideas) with marxism like secularism, gender equality, internationalism, lgbt rights, anti racism, equality in justice; why leftists dislike them so much?

So I’ve read the communist manifesto, the whole premise of the 1st chapter is that the rapid development of productive forces leading to the inevitable overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariats.

Yet this has not happened a single time to my knowledge and the only countries where marxists took power were were some the least developed countries on Earth with very underdeveloped productive capacities. Russia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Angola, Cuba, Zimbabwe, etc.

Westerns instead seem to be some of the mostly learn towards reactionary politics that completely ignore or further empower the bourgeoisie.

I'm something of a closeted socialist. My parents, and most people who surround me for that matter, are deeply confused about the inner--and outer--workings of the world. For this reason, when conversations involving politics arise, on pain of exposing myself as some sort of alien deviant and subjecting my peers to a wild culture shock, I kind of shrink and avoid involving myself as much as possible, even if I might have something quite enlightening to say. The reasons for this tendency of mine are felt by all of us I'm sure. Not only is it nearly impossible to use political terms correctly because of years of deliberate obfuscation, explaining your position with any degree of depth seems like a complete waste of time when your foundational assumptions are different from everyone else's. You are forced to stay within the extremely restrictive bounds of acceptable popular notions; literally everything that might be useful is unthinkable and deemed conspiratorial. What a great testament to the power and diligence of ruling class ideological forces that the term "socialism" is taken to mean the exact opposite of its historical meaning. Our whole political vocabulary is a carefully conditioned psychological entrenchment which incontestably elicits certain emotional reactions depending on the preferences of the rulers: "communism" bad, "democracy" good. These terms are subject to no critical consideration nor serious investigation. Unlike the rest of the English language, they are not ever-changing definitions with varying connotations, but definite and irreproachable truisms independent of historical influence. They have a single meaning and a single acceptable attitude to be adopted toward them. I may sound cynical, but popular attitudes are so expressly sheepish and embarrassingly uncritical that not complaining about it seems to me an act of complacency for the existing order.

For these reasons, I wanted to know how fellow socialists express their positions to people who, having been systematically fooled by the masters, may not be familiar with the elementary facts of political-economic life. It seems to me that describing your political position with a single word like "socialist" or "communist" is entirely impossible due to reasons detailed above. So what do you say when people ask you what your political beliefs are? How do you work around the indoctrination, the deeply ingrained misconceptions, the unavoidable sheep mentality? How do you support your position with theory and evidence without sounding pretentious and high-minded?

Hi, I come from a liberal family that primarily focuses on the environment and how to stop climate change (they are also members of “The Greens” in Germany, where I live). I frequently try to convince them of the idea of socialism ever since I came to believe it is a much more effective approach to achieving long-lasting change.

One argument I often hear from them is: “We don’t have the time to advocate for socialism; we need to focus on climate change first because we only have about 20 years left.”

I try to make it clear to them how the economic system is connected to climate change, but I also understand their argument. Do any of you have counterarguments I could use to further the discussion?

I’m afraid that if I can’t even convince my liberal family, I won’t be able to convince anyone else down the line.

Hello everyone,
I have some points in favor of the question in the title, but I still have some doubts which I ask you to answer please.

1. the lower the hours, the more motivation and productivity. I believe that you can get more work and higher quality work done when working less as you have more free time and you do not feel like youre suffocating in your job.
2. the reasons why working hours are so long is because companies want to create more and more profit, thus relying on workers working more than they're paid.
3. producing enough entertainment for everyone, food for everyone, clothes for everyone, food for everyone, building infrastructure and so on doesn't actually require that much (in comparing). However, there are many useless jobs that are only existent to create profit and/or exclusive to a capitalist society. Think of all the jobs related to money (which would not exist in a communist economy) and so on

now to my skeptical thoughts:
wouldn't certain jobs that require long working hours that are not producing anything or accumulating profit, like teachers working 30+ hours a week, police, fire brigade, nurses,… still have these highly time consuming tasks?
How would it exactly work?
Please feel free to give me more insight on this topic as I would like to discuss this topic with my dad.

Have a great day!

1. Value, Price and Profit

2. The critique of political economy

3. Germen Ideology (M + E)

4. Origin of family, private property and state (E)

5. Anti Duhring (E)

6. Socialism: Utopian and scientific (E)

7. Economic and political manuscripts 1844

8. On the Jewish question

9. Gotha programme

10. Thesis on Feuerbach

11. 18th brumaire of Louise Bonaparte

12. Poverty of Philosophy

13. Contribution Critique of Hegel's philosophy of the right

14. Das Kapita

15. Grundrisse

I have read manifesto, principals, wage labour and capital. As this list is too long that I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to finish it, is there any titles here which can be avoided or have almost same contents? Or something which i should add to the list?

Hello! My FYP have been full of these, and honestly, my uneducated ahh, is struggling to understand the meaning of these, can you guys please help me understand what they are? Thank u smmm

My opinion on consumer activism has always been something like “it’s good to do but it won’t organize the masses nor will it materially change anything. Its benefits to the workers is short lived at best”

In the aftermath of both Trump presidencies and other, localized uprisings or organized efforts, it always seems like there’s a period of fervor, which includes consumer activist efforts… eg, boycotts. I know they’re effective for short term efforts and for building solidarity but, a few of my friends over the weekend said something that sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. Their basic sentiment was that they felt demoralized after the consumer boycotts of GenAi, Starbucks, Amazon, Facebook/Meta…. Etc., made them feel disheartened since it didn’t bring about material change.

I can find some sporadic, random comments and posts echoing similar sentiments, and now I’m question if consumer activism is ever a viable tactic. I don’t recall reading anything on consumer activism in any of the theory I’ve perused, so here I am posing the question to others online.

My question; is consumer-activism worth it as part of a broader revolutionary strategy? It’s something I am going to continue to do for the time being because it’s low-effort, but I’m reluctant to encourage it if others outside more coordinated and organized efforts