I feel like anti-intelectualism has won. People can be given free audiobooks, the physical book, etc but they refuse to read because they view reading theory as bad or some bullshit. I have a friend and she thinks “its posh” to read theory. It seems like everyone has fallen for the propaganda that the only people who read theory are rich white college students. It fucking pisses me off.
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I have no idea because whenever I try to talk to a non-leftist about capitalism, let alone theory, sometimes their whole understanding of how our system works is so messed up that it’s like trying to explain the internet to someone from the 1700s. There is too much to teach and they are conditioned to hate learning. Couple that with me not being all that smart, and I struggle to be convincing.
explain the internet to someone from the 1700s.
it’s not a big horsecart you just dump things on, it’s a series of tubes.
“So, you know how witches can watch people sin by scrying in a crystal ball, right? We have that and it’s called TikTok. And you know how God randomly speaks to people? We have that too, and it’s called Twitch…”
I honestly think I could more easily describe the Internet and twitch streamer drama to a medieval peasant than get a zoomer to read an actual book
Meet the people where they are - modernize the language in theory. No one uses booze waz je in normal speak. Just say rich fucks. No one uses prole la terry at. Use commoners or the rest of us besides the rich fucks. It’s been over 100 years since Marx and the egalitarian language of the late victorian era where theory was written. Things have changed, though the base ideas are similar. Language has changed. Terminology has changed.
You got to make it bite sized and simple.
Modern contradictions of crap-it-all-ism is incompatable with a sustainable and peaceful society.
rich fucks is wrong, it’s business owners. commoners is also wrong, it’s working class, it’s perfectly legible, if diluted via identity signaling term, pensioners are not working class, pickup owning, is not, in itself, working class.
and people do say bougie to describe extravagant spending
Vulgarization of Marxist theory robs it of its revolutionary edge and turns proletarian theory into petty bourgeois radicalism
i do think there is something to be said about not banging on about contradictions, it’s dialectical, negations of negations, you have to be able to explain theory in normal language, but like you have to understand something to simplify it.
There’s a vast difference between doing what Moissaye Olgin and Gus Hall did in their times with colloquializing Marxist theory into shop floor talk and and doing the capitalists work of robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance as Lenin describes in the very first paragraph of his titular work "State and Revolution"
Proletariat and bourgeoisie are not big words
They are for Amerikkkan smoothbrain types. What I try to do when engaging in theory talk is use “owner class” or “capitalists”, and “workers” etc, then later I will drop a “bourgeoisie” or “proletariat” to introduce these words.
Oh yeah big brain lady?! Then how come I have an advanced degree and still can’t spell that silly French b-word?
Gotta get with the skibbity times fam frfr. 67
They’re big words to a poorly educated person, and at least the US population mostly consists of poorly educated people.
Use those words to a working class USian and they will accuse you of being a snobby college liberal and ignore everything else you say.
I live in Ireland
Noted, I can’t speak to the population from your country except that you probably couldn’t do worse than the US.
since OP’s friend said “posh” we’re probably not talking about an american, but 4 syllables is big
Do USAians not say ‘posh’? What do y’all say instead?
i don’t think we have a 1:1 equivalent because we didn’t develop the same social class structure. i’d just directly say “fancy” or “upper class” or “rich” etc depending on what aspect was most relevant.
For modern westerners they are and completely foreign to their vocabulary. No one says these words in modern language. They aren’t raised on those words. You might as well be speaking in sandscript as people are turned off by them as soon as you say them.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
My zoomer younger sister calls stuff “bougie”
Yeah but bougie can mean spending an entire paycheck on a gucci belt or a hotel room. Most of the time when that term is used it’s by someone with poor spending habits trying to appear bougie
Yeah I think that’s become a relatively common phrase the last few years, but I’m willing to bet the majority of people don’t know it’s origin as a contraction of bourgeoise
And its counterpart ‘bolshy’ (meaning brash, strident but also used to mean callous, overbearing) from Bolsheviks
“The communism situation is crazy” 1:54:32
Okay, but seriously, talk about communist history like it’s hot gossip, and I’ll watch two plus straight hours of that video essay.
communist history like it’s hot gossip
You say that like it isn’t
The Russian Civil War was so cliquey it’s unreal.
A lot of Marxist writing is the boys beefing too.
So much of Lenin’s writing on communism is just him slagging off other communists, yeah.
And a lot of philosophical writing from Marx’s era does that thing where it assumes you’ve read all his contemporaries and goes about insulting many of them, but since Marx and Engels are often the only ones modern leftists encounter, we tend to chalk it up to “early communists” rather than that era of philosophy and social sciences in general.
As stupid as this may seem, we have to make people give a fuck first. People who actually care about something might bother to read. Getting someone who is barely bothered by politics or social issues to read about them is borderline impossible.
Also I dunno, just keep impressing them with your knowledge as you politicise them and press home that you learned this stuff by reading lol.
“How do we get people to do their homework?” They don’t really think it’s posh and only for rich white college students, they just don’t feel like reading. It takes time, it’s work, and there’s better things to do.
I was calling myself a leftist a decade before I finally started reading theory; ultimately it was the pandemic that forced me to read because I was bored. I kept up the habit after that.
The only idea I have is to ground them until they do their homework. “No investigation, no right to speak” but applied socially.
I cannot enforce no right to speak
Yeah, you’d be risking all of your social connections if you tried it by yourself. “Don’t talk to me until you’ve read What Is To Be Done” would be a good way to not have friends. Only an organized effort would be able to socially enforce homework assignments.
You can’t force a person to do anything, but what you can do is use your position to influence them to start reading. I openly read theory at work, with a book in one hand and my cigarette or coffee in another. Most of the authors that we know of, nobody else does, so it’s not gonna raise suspicion. But when someone asks what i’m reading about, i use very plain language, especially if it’s something sensitive. “It’s fucked up” resonates better than a theoretical breakdown for a lot of people, and you can work from there on.
ngl there’s been a couple of times I’ve open carried a socialist zine on the train, not even to read it but as a prop to let others read the headline.
Tell them that reading theory makes them better at posting and winning online arguments.
Bake it into parables in popular media, like putting your dog’s medicine inside a tasty treat.
Or practicable, easily consumed media like zines, memes, art, etc.
The same message can be applied today but needs to be translated to modern language and examples for some audiences. Reading Kapital isn’t for everyone. (Isn’t there a graphic novel of Kapital now?)
Sign them up for a hexbear account and tell them it’s a forum for liberals like them
I think even a graphic novel of capital won’t work because people are against learning.
You have to trick them into learning
It can’t all be on the unlearned though. If people are more stubborn and less enthused to learn then that means the teachers and thought-leaders have screwed up somewhere along the line as well.
I’m actually wondering if people treating theory as parables is a problem. It tends to gloss over the specific context in which events happen in favor of crafting a tidy and appealing (biased) narrative. If you’re trying to use theory that way, and you want people to get a certain message, you will bend the theory to fit that message. You will ignore the things that don’t support your analysis in favor of things that do.
I tried to get the anarckiddies I was organizing with to read but can’t tell them to do anything lol. I’ve since used a dialectic lens when discussing current events or things like capitalism and poverty. That kind of helps I think.
I do have a few reading lists for those willing to read. I have cowbee’s, one from a Marxist discord server, and my short and sweet one with it’s audiobook counterpart.
I would like the short and sweet one please. I was thinking of reviving my org’s “party school”. So I think a crash course on socialism would be neat.
Also sharing because it’s incredibly well put together but this is cowbee’s reading list: https://hexbear.net/post/5974069
Also toss in Why Socialism? by Einstein. I think it’s a good intro for very new people to socialist ideas. If you have some Bernie or Zohran people in the “party school” that could b a good jumping off point.
This is the audiobook list so the links go to that but you can prob find the rest easily online:
Audiobooks: Principles of Communism - Engels https://open.spotify.com/show/5r9qzHZMtkMDEGcotb7lEg
Communist Manifesto - Engels & Marx https://open.spotify.com/show/3nZuwEi6G5qseUF3g8IlE3
Wage Labour and Capital - Marx https://open.spotify.com/show/1vAuQAwfBHYD92YiyLpluI
Value Price and Profit - Marx https://open.spotify.com/show/2Ou3gr6URd19ny8QeXM3uI
Reform or Revolution - Luxemburg https://open.spotify.com/album/3kQL2sHszrsAUsZYbvzWtb https://open.spotify.com/episode/3E5NjRqDNEmtvh2tYdOPYB
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism - Lenin https://open.spotify.com/show/46SXs5brqzyCe6GN7DNt4y
What Is To Be Done - Lenin https://open.spotify.com/album/4elgTRD0M8HqHUnWhGiG6i
State and Rev - Lenin https://open.spotify.com/show/6uJwSCvFvaXZqe9cP6faPz
Inventing Reality - Parenti https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPYUOPVsBq0&list=PL0-IkmzWbjob0rkb9-tZlCvHAKse_HtF6
Blackshirts and Reds - Parenti https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4zpGwtNv3f3dcv2NjMC1y7
Note: I finally got around to Value Price and Profit and if you are looking for short and sweet, it can probably be skipped. Marx goes in a bit deeper with the Das Kapital related stuff. I’m also currently rereading through Lenin so this list might change a bit. It’s sort of a living document.
One more, sorry lol. Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer is a great intro to thinking from a dialectics point of view as well. It’s a bit longer and more philosophy than theory but I highly recommend it.
my mom reads me theory before I go to bed
Is ‘reading the manual to understand how something works’ also too posh?
…Actually, they’d probably say yes to that too. Unfortunately I think the answer to this is “you don’t.” This probably won’t be a popular response, but I have been doing this stuff for a long time, and the thing that seems to be lacking most to me is that people do not want to learn. They don’t want to learn, and they especially do not want to be wrong. You see this all the time in other places, too—“I shouldn’t have to read to use my computer,” “I shouldn’t need to know how a car works to drive,” etcetera. Maybe so, but no one ever hurt for having curiosity, that nonsense idiom about the cat aside. There is a joy in learning, a joy of discovering history and information and knowledge, but it needs to be taught and encouraged early and often. It’s not, and I don’t think it ever has been in modern society really, and so this is what we get: anti-intellectualism as a proxy for class interest. I don’t know how to fix it, and I have severe doubts that you even can without some serious cultural reassessment, which is not going to happen soon.
I think you’re putting the cart before the horse a bit. You read the theory, apply it to your conditions, and develop practical actions. Those actions are what should get people interested in what books you’re reading. People need to see some results come out of your theory-- not just historical results, mind you, but things that can help them now.
Make a movie adaptation…
Which won’t actually do anything because most people don’t remember what they watch, let alone what they read.
You have to also make it into a Subway Surfers level, a Fortnite event, and a Roblox “experience” so that maybe some of it sinks in while they multitask through the movie
Fuck… I hate this being true…
I fucking LOVE ANDOR!!! Slava ukraini!
organised political education built into the regular activity of a mass socialist party
the road to mass political education isn’t just handing out books and pamphlets but developing infrastructure and organisers who are popular pedagogues that can spread Marxist thought beyond the confines of small, insular groups. at the same time the need and usefulness of revolutionary theory must be demonstrated by the effectiveness of our interventions into the class struggle wherever it is to be found.
There has to be a purpose for reading theory.
Your friend is a little bit right: some people read theory just to know, but they don’t do anything with it. Except maybe tell others and make it and ego thing. That’s a bit posh.
Theory is relevant to left organizing. If you get your friend doing organizing work, then the people around her will make references she doesn’t understand and you can share why things should be done a certain way, what historical precedent there is, etc and she won’t understand. Those will be reasons to read. And if it is a good org it will require reading groups.
And if it is a good org it will require reading groups.
This seems a little of a chicken and egg scenario to me. If an org requires reading, one who doesn’t want to read is not going to bother, no matter if it’s relevant or not.
the people around her will make references she doesn’t understand and you can share why things should be done a certain way, what historical precedent there is, etc and she won’t understand. Those will be reasons to read.
Those will be reasons to “stop going to this stupid nerd shit.”
You are far more charitable than me, I suppose.
Disciplined orgs require reading, at least for cadres. So at some point a person either has to read or be relegated to not having much decision-making power. Even if this is not an explicit rule, many orgs will de facto enforce it by describing certain potential members / general members as undeveloped because they don’t read and cannot contribute to discussions at a level that is relevant. So they won’t chair committees or lead projects or otherwise change the direction of the org, instead acting more like a member of a front group.
It’s true that all by itself a group that reads might be uninteresting for someone that doesn’t want to. They could definitely call it nerd shit. But that is why you join it to work and participation, it has to be relevant. And if it isn’t relevant, then the theory isn’t necessarily something to focus on reading anyways. Choosing works that don’t apply to an org’s conditions is a common mistake in immature orgs, like having brand new members read some esoteric works of Mao even though almost nothing about his conditions relate to, say, the group’s status as an imperial core student group that is, under no circumstances, going to just mass quit college and go to “the countryside”. Not that the work shouldn’t be ready, but leading with it will be actually and truly pointless if not counterproductive. On the other hand, reading someone like George Jackson or Bevins can be mug more immediately relevant and help steer them away from ineffective means of organizing and unprincipled capitulation.
Anyways, what I mean is that the actual work of the org is the “carrot” to draw in someone that otherwise won’t read theory. The reason to read the theory is so that you can constructively criticize past organizing actions or frame your approach to community or choose the next action. The person should join because they want to, say, help organize a rent strike that the org is running, and then read because they are going over capital and rent and strategy, etc.
Anyways it isn’t foolproof at all, someone could still decide to bail and not read. But I think that making is tightly coupled to organizing can usually bridge this gap.
Thank you for such a thoughtful reply. I basically agree on every point, I am just very cynical on the prospect of people on the whole conquering the massive zeitgeist of anti-intellectualism right now, at least in the imperial core. I am not sure people are ready to go beyond a Sanders or a Mamdani which is nowhere near the level of urgency required for the severity of the polycrisis we are facing. I understand “baby steps” and all, but I think the tab for that is long overdue and we need to be sprinting to meet this moment. You can’t meet people where they’re at when the flood is already at your knees, you need to move; that seems impossible with such an inured population.
