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.
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.
Debate is a lot less effective than you’d think. Poke holes in their arguments and get them to look things up on their own time, you’re not going to be able to convince someone who is just ranting at you.
I try to not make a habit of debating, because the results are usually the same. I was taken off guard because we’d never talked about the subject before and I didn’t expect the usual western propaganda line from him.
I don’t have any answers for you, I just want to commiserate by sharing my own story of talking to a lib friend about Ukraine:
This was not terribly long after the invasion first happened, maybe a few months. I make my stance clear that I don’t believe the US should be engaging in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. They ask my why I think it’s the US fighting a proxy war and not the US aiding Ukraine in defending itself from Russia’s unprovoked invasion. I explain that after Ukraine agreed to surrender its nukes in the '90s it bounced back and forth between being basically a Russian satellite state and being a Russian satellite state that’ll play ball with the US, which was always a shaky situation, until the US played it’s hand with the Maidan coup trying to bring Ukraine firmly into the US’s control.
They say that’s not true. They ask why the US would want to control Ukraine, sort of incredulously. This from a guy who was opposed to the Iraq War, and the Vietnam War.
I think I came back with something like “Russia has refused to subordinate its economy entirely to the US, so the US seeks to destroy Russia. Controlling Ukraine is part that.”
And from there the conversation devolved. Putin the madman vs. Putin the guy with explainable motivations and historical reasons for his actions. Me explaining why I think NATO is bad. I know I said at some point that prior to the invasion western media had been pretty clear that Ukraine was a barely legitimate gangster state, and that the Ukrainian state and the United States were prolonging the war at the expense of Ukrainian people. Pandora Papers.
And I guess what I’ve realized, not just about this guy but all the libs I know—hell not just the libs but the people I know from all over the spectrum—is that their politics are highly individualistic. When I was a baby leftist I’d see people make analyses like that and I’ve realized I didn’t fully understand what they meant. But I think I see now that individualistic in this sense doesn’t just mean “self-centered” or “antisocial” or “opposed to community” but that they literally think of politics in the terms of individual actors. So this lib I was talking to hates Putin, and Trump, and Netanyahu, and George W. Bush—and therefore hates the politic projects these men engaged in when they had power—but he doesn’t recognize that the long-term aims of US foreign policy, which both predates and outlasts any individual president, are a force for destruction and evil across the world.
I don’t want to belittle my friend here, but I suspect his opposition to the Iraq War was almost entirely because it was a thing George Bush wanted, and not because he was opposed to the US destroying a stable-if-hostile state in the Middle East and remaking it as a neocolonial project.
Normally I just refuse to argue politics like this with friends and family, though. If someone asks what my opinion is I’ll tell them, or if they’re saying something homophobic or transphobic I will push back there, but otherwise I don’t think fighting about Donald Trump with my MAGA uncle or Obama/Biden/Harris/Clinton with my lib aunt or Tulsi Gabbard with my father who claims to be politically nonaligned but libertarian curious is going to do anyone any good. And I’m certainly not going to try and convince any of these people that the American project is evil, or that capitalism is bad. If they asked me about these things I would tell them my opinion, but mostly this shit isn’t worth burning bridges over. Except for the lib mentioned in this post, I will argue with him because he invites it. But he enjoys arguing politics anyway.
I think your realization makes a lot of sense and applies here as well. In my case, much of my friend’s arguments were based in great man theory. I was rather flooded by his stance on Russia as he’s already there on capitalism and American imperialism being bad. So the carve out of the US should do anything it can to stop Putin, the literal devil, seemed out of left field. He’s a horrible human being, but he and the Russian government are still making decisions informed by historical context.
I made it a good couple of years before popping off with someone I know, so I guess I’ll go back to laying low for a while. :/
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?
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
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.
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.
So its not his point, but there are intelligent defenses of funding Ukraine (at ‘finish them’ not ‘meat grinder’ levels; thats definitely fucked and punishing people on both sides of the border for the shitty decisions of a few assholes while also fucking global food supply).
I think a lot of people form their conscience as a social coping and cohesion tool rather than a system of ideals to guide them through life. He doesn’t really believe in lib nihilism; it’s just how he a kids friction.
the UK
uphold Norf FC thought, throw a wigan kebab at the bloody tosser with extra mushy pea wet and walk him around shitlingfordshire birmingham for a few hours so he knows that its a stupid fucking idea to support NATO and his own bloody failed state country, the fucking dodgy bastard
oi bruv
