Up front, I’ve been drinking which doesn’t help my rhetorical skills and got into it with my lib friend about Ukraine et al. It was a long conversation that ultimately went around in circles, but the jist of it was that on my end, we should not endlessly prop up the meat grinder of Ukraine as it serves nothing but the western imperialist project. On his end, the argument was that Putin is a maniac and that nato should not appease him in his crusade to restore the Soviet Union. He came from an upbringing of UK champagne socialists and seems to have settle on lib nihilism as his pathway through life.
I’m not sure what I’m seeking from this post, but I guess, how do you all deal with the conflict of people that you love desperately clinging to the horrid power structures that replicate the horror of the modern world? I’ve been pretty blasé about the results of the US election, because the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie will continue on its course regardless, but it’s really hurt that someone I care about deeply has taken the “you’re a tankie, you must love le pootin” position against me. 
I hate that wanting something better for humanity is the madness rune. I guess I’m just deeply sad, and I love you all so much because without all of you here I would only be left thinking that I must be mad for hoping for something better.
The answer is difficult but simple. Stop trying to change everyone’s opinion, because you won’t.
Unless your friend has political power, there is no point in trying to change their mind beyond honest and unashamed expression of your own opinion. By openly debating with someone whose mind is not open, you work to close them off further. It makes your views seem desperate for support; only tentatively reasonable, therefore easy to dismiss.
Socialism is inherently righteous. It does not need to beg for acceptance. The truth of anti-imperial, anticapitalist politics is sustained empirically and based in scientific theory. Bourgeois political theories come and go with the rise and fall of bourgeois interests.
Your friend likely will never change their mind. But they might one day, through life experience, gain some curiosity about it. Only at that moment is there an opening, and instead of fire-hosing leftist theory at them, they will ask earnestly for information. Onboarding only works if it’s a mutual desire.
That’s good advice, comrade. I’ll take it to heart.
What’s the point of organizing, or doing anything political, if people’s minds can’t change?
We have to persuade people or else we are doomed to fascism. Obviously people can change because ten years ago they weren’t as bloodthirsty about immigrants as they are today.
People have to be able to change. Otherwise there’s no hope for anything good to happen.
Is it more a case of waiting an opening and then helping people to change than trying to change everyone right away?
Then there’s also organising efforts to change the masses, rather than going one-by-one with people who aren’t interested.
The point of organizing is to change open minds. If someone stops to listen to a speech about Palestine, they might not agree right away, but the idea is planted and that person has access to resources if they are interested to research it later.
A debate, for all its pretense of dialectical refinement of ideas, is a rare place to find open minded people. People don’t debate about things which they are uncertain; all it does is mix up ego and defensiveness and actually harden the participants against a change of mind.
I am an optimistic person and I agree with you that many people will change their minds given enough time. But socialists can’t be infinitely patient, there will be good people on the wrong side of history whose individual political learning timeline didn’t line up with the timeline of revolution.
Practically speaking, revolution can’t take the electoralist approach of campaigning to persuade people to switch sides. If the material conditions exist for socialism, then people will seek out the organization. But this only happens after people are convinced of their own accord. They won’t be browbeat into it and we can’t expect to browbeat people into a revolution — they wouldn’t be loyal anyway
I understand the issue. Where I get hung up is on this part of “waiting for material conditions”. Am I supposed to just sit around and read theory until these conditions get bad enough for 200 million+ people to want to revolt? What if they never get that bad?
I just don’t see this happening in the U.S. and especially not where I live. People are dealing with higher rent, shitty to non-existent public transit, there’s people dying in cars or from COVID or from heart disease and other preventable things every day. There’s people working two to three jobs just to get by. More and more people are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Food bank lines are growing. Homelessness is becoming more visible daily.
The conditions near me are getting worse all the time, but they’re NOT ever going to get to the point that they did in feudal China, or Cuba, or Russia before 1917. I just don’t see it happening. FFS the masses can be miserable AF but they’ll still have Coke/Pepsi/beer, Netflix, and infinite cheap entertainment. Maybe Capitalists checkmated us with the distractions and all of the fracturing they’ve been able to manufacture among the working class?
I just wish I know WHAT to do. No left org has a good answer. Seems like no one has quite figured out what will work, if anything.
I know what you mean. I also don’t like when people hand-wave about “material conditions” as if they will automagically produce a revolution when they fall below some arbitrary threshold. Marxist theory centers action and human agency as necessary elements alongside material conditions.
I think you misunderstand me a little bit… I’m not saying you should do nothing until someone deems conditions bad enough. For one thing, conditions aren’t uniform across space or class lines, so there isn’t a single answer for “what are conditions right now” like how the weather depends on many factors.
You can and should do something now. My point is only that there are effective and ineffective actions. It is much better to seek out likely allies and work with them, than to distract and frustrate yourself debating people who either aren’t ready, or will never be convinced.
Would you consider Vladimir Putins Russia to be a leftist regime?