• JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.mlOP
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    9 months ago

    “Treat socialists” is a good way to describe these people. They heard the right-wing canard that socialism is about an easy life and free stuff, and decided “hey, I like that.” In fact socialism is about fulfillment, not ease; by taking care of basic necessities, it frees one to work for the nation and society, and thus to live a fully human life. Socialism is not just freedom to work, but an obligation to work. The continual advancement of the productive forces requires all hands at the grindstone.

    I get your fear about first world socialists collapsing the revolution almost as soon as the build it, but the good and bad news is that these people are never going to form a vanguard. They are completely tied to the liberal hegemony, and will turn fascist to protect it if they haven’t already. Most genuine working-class people in the first world aren’t like this, and a big reason they reject socialism is that it’s so widely promoted to them as being all about “treats.” This they rightly see as undignified – “I work with my hands, and I’ll provide for myself that way, or die trying.” Their worldview is reactionary in many other ways, but here at least they are correct. They need, thus, to be shown that Marxism-Leninism (i.e., genuine or non-loser socialism) is about giving them the results of their labor – and that the capitalist system is predicated on stealing that labor from them; hence Mao’s slogan of “land to the tiller” and all that.