what do you mean you're taking part in a demonstration on "Obamacare"?
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Do I Admit to Being a Socialist?
This may sound like an odd question. But I am planning to take part in a demonstration on "Obamacare" in an extremely reactionary city in the U.S. south where I live. I'm not worried about this issue personally, but what happens if it turns off the the other people (very pro-Obama) there? Would it be worth the trouble?
(Do I dare
Disturb the universe?), etc.
what do you mean you're taking part in a demonstration on "Obamacare"?
You should be open about being socialist if you know for a fact it'll be safe for you to be open. I'd assume it'd be alright for you to be open, but I don't know the situation, so really this is up to you to decide.
Be open about it. Who cares what others think? Honestly, i doubt something bad will happen.
Also, as rednoise asked, why the fuck are you taking part in a demo on "obamacare"?
First of all, the Affordable Care Act is a mess. But it's better than nothing. There's folks where I work that will be alive five years from now that wouldn't be otherwise.
Secondly, go for it. People are so scared thanks to the genetic memory of McCarthyism. But they'll be excited to meet somebody that is they want to be. When I told folks at church I was a CPUSA member the response was very positive. They thought it was very cool.
I say absolutely and with conviction. First of all, you are not there to support Obama, you are there to further the struggle of the working class. Whether or not Obama loses support is not your problem. You are trying to bring a material benefit to those around you. This is the perfect place to introduce socialism to people who might be sympathetic, and haven't been introduced to the subject properly.
If you are worried about right-wing press painting Obama fans as leftist lunatics. Let it wash over you, that we consider that a victory in itself. For the communist right now, all press is good press.
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?” Charles Bukowski, Factotum
"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped." MLK
-fka Redbrother
I'm curious: has anyone ever been sacked at work for being an active communist? Do you admit your politics to co-wokers?
My intuition is that since the fall of the Soviet Union revolutionary socialism has gone from 'insidious' to 'eccentric' in the minds of most people.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
well, to clarify, i don't care if you're attending a demo "on" obamacare. i'm just not sure if you meant you were demonstrating against it or for it. if you're going for it, i don't see the issue in letting the liberals know your politics. some might be put off, others might be intrigued but you probably won't be shunned. if you were demoing against it, then i would play it close to the chest. you may meet some people who you could talk to about it and they might have an open mind and have a productive conversation, but there are others yet that might outright yell at you, harass you, etc.
eta. ah, i read a bit closer and just caught the context. sorry, i'm slow. if the pro-Obama people are turned off from it, fuck them. there are inevitably ones, even (or maybe particularly) in the south, that would be open to trading ideas about it.
I was sacked multiple times, maybe cause I agitate very openly in every workplace I work at where someone wants to talk about such stuff (which was in my experience almost all workplaces).
One wierd situation, were I got a good response from a fair number of people- I was sacked when I worked as a warehouse worker in a shop that is a part of a supermarket chain, the manager of the shop heard that a few workers and me were talking how capitalism should be abolished (interestingly, mosty older women, mothers, uneducated, that were cashiers and worked at the counters with pastry and meat, they agreed, participated in the conversation about worker control) and wrote a complaint against me to an upper manager. That guy called me in for a conversation and sacked me because that lower manager complained that I'm comming drunk to work and drink at work, leaving work to go who-knows-where probably to the betting shop, and that I'm slacking at work. I was like wtf, I don't drink alcohol or even most juices, I don't bet or gamble, I'm working like everyone else, but I couldn't appeal to anyone, and got sacked.
Another wierd situation, when I worked in a neighbouring country- I got sacked when I was a manager of a gas-station on the basis of worker complaint. It was a fairly big firm, with a bunch of stations. First I worked as the service provider, filling gas for people, connecting LPG filling pumps to the cars, charging the money, and after about a year the managed of that station quit the job and an upper manager offered me the job because I helped occasionally with some paperwork when the previous manager told me to, so I knew the job more or less. Before that I talked with a few people on the job who were cool with principles of libertarian socialism, after that more of them became interested, basically I was the only manager among all managers of individual stations that did work e.g. like cleaning, in general participating in doing stuff that needed to be done, all other managers just did the paperwork, decision making and then went home or hung out at the caffe accross the street, also, when some decision was to be made I called a meeting and asked them what they think. We would talk about worker control, about how my (manager) position shouldn't exist, everything could be done by assemblies of workers, etc, it was a nice situation. Then there was some mess with money and paychecks, workers started to get their monthly pays paid up a few months late, and I told them they should strike. A worker went to an upper manager and told him how I'm talking against the firm and that I talking about strike. Got sacked right away. Turned out somewhat well, stayed in touch with those guys, they did go on strike, the eventually took some books from the firm and took them to the police, police indicted both owners and some upper manages for cooking the books, and one of the capitalist and a couple of managers are now in jail for some accounts of fraud, some other firm bought the gas station and most of the workers are still, they have regular paychecks.
Other then that, had a few ordinary sackings, just bosses and managers not liking my agitating, and firing me on whatever exuse.
pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will
previously known as impossible
It normally happened particularly if your views are different from your manager. Anyway, going back to the original topic. It will depend on what kind of demonstration on Obama care are you going to do. If it is anti then expect that there will be no support for people who are agree on affordable care act.
Personally, I wouldn't dare. I can't handle in-person confrontation, nor being put on the spot, and I know if I mentioned that I was a Commie to someone who was hostile to the idea, even a liberal, they'd either dismiss me as a lunatic or try to "debate" me at the very least. You are probably stronger than I am though. Also, don't worry about turning off convicted Obamaites.
Sad anecdote: I told my mother I was a Communist some years back and, since my long-dead father was such a Cold Warrior, she was taken aback, and said something foolish to the effect of, "You mean Socialist, right? Communist is like what East Germany was..."
And Socialist, supposedly, is like what Obama is.
Dann steigt aus den Trümmern der alten Gesellschaft, Die Sozialistische Weltrepublik!
The Soul of Man under Socialism
That's cute. I never had this problem since my parents were both members of the SWP during the 80's. They probably see something of their youthful selves in my activism. Can't imagine what it would be like coming from a staunchly conservative family.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Well, you don't agitate by saying you're a communist or anarchist or socialist, you'd then have go into explanations about terminology which no one wants to listen to. One of best approaches in my experience is to start informally initiating discussions about concrete stuff that pertain to the daily life of the peiple you're talking with. Which means no terminology that is specialized in any way, just plain words.
A great thing is to do it in response to some comment by fellow workers that sounds rebellious, and there's gonna a lot of those pretty much everywhere. E.g. when people talk about some stupid rule they have to follow during work, you nudge the discussion in the direction of the fact that those that made the rule most probably never worked the job to which the rule is applied, it's suprising and elating to see how many people intuitively do think that workers should control the production. I get that all the time, without a single word alluding to left ideologies, and maybe even because of it. Probably if I were to mention socialism or anarchism they would shut down thinking that's some crazy nonsense.
That's the first problem, that words are propagandized into emotionally charged labels. I think I heard Chomsky mention those polls, like a large majority of the population in the US thinks that government should help the poor, not only at home but also abroad, and when asked how much virtually everyone give suggestions far larger then US govt ever spent on that, but in the same time when a different question is asked- a large majority is agaist welfare- because the term is twisted and made into a label, it's separated from it's meaning. Same people saying yes to help to te poor and no to welfare. Same thing here, when you talk with people for a while you can see that a lot of people will tell you that they are pretty much for workers' control over production and people's control of communities, but if you asked those same people what they think about socialism or anarchism, you'll get only slurs.
The second problem is using terms like exploitation, alienation of labor, and similar, to which the people are not used to. It will get them dissintrested very quickly, they will probably interpret it as pretentiousness. When people complain about low wages and inequality of the income of themselves and the owner and the managment of the firm, it's faily easy to nugde the talk into the direction of those notion without even mentioning them, and people will as a rule have egalitarian-like and labor-theory-of-value-like indignation at the present distribution of wealth.
Those are some of the things you do in the beggining, it's only later, when they recongize and accept (recognize that they already in a way accept) those principles that talk about socialism and anarchism can come, or sometimes not even then, some people (after a time you can predict somewhat accuratelly by their enthusiasm) will react well to that, some will not, and should be firsly directed to reformist movements, like unions, social-democratic and social-liberal organization that have most progressive reformist agenda. Presumably there should be libertarian socialists in those organization doing social insertion.
At least that's my experience of agitating.
pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will
previously known as impossible
demanding extension of medicaid (a sort of non-paid health insurance) for the state I live in.
After about 15 yrs of reading Marx I have become convinced that criticism of the existing state of things can progress only through praxis....the weapon of criticism cannot replace the criticism of weapons...theory is capable gripping the masses when it becomes radical..." Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.
I don't think it is even possible to think critically without active engagement in politics and political struggle. Where I live now there is a political struggle between the working and unemployed classes against a reactionary bourgeois government. It doesn't matter that the Affordable Care Act is a bourgeois extension of the welfare state. (Lenin said that health care for the masses was a revolutionary idea.) The point, I think, is to demonstrate to the masses that the struggle against capitalism is radical and political and possible.
First things first, if you want to start a genuine and interesting conversation with conservatives and liberals about "socialism", make sure you don't have a poster like this:
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Or you can be like Zizek and have a picture of Stalin in your apartment for the sole purpose of trolling liberals.
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human beings!
- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
Go for it, but be prepared however for counterarguments. Do not spent to much energy with people who just want to expose you. Focus to those who are more open minded. There is no need to state immediately that you are a socialist, let them find it out by being honest with what you propose.
Show up with a keffiyeh covering your a face, a red Che shirt and an SKS slung over your back. They will appreciate the boldness.
"Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind ... when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom." Engels
Left: 8.99, Libertarian: 5.84
