Politics, by its very nature, is a continuous struggle for power. It may appear like a debate to the labor aristocrats, petty-bourgeois, and other privileged social groups, but reducing politics to simple debates is to favor the status quo, those already in power. And to have no political position is a position in itself—a position of inaction against injustice—a position in which you defend the status quo. People don't choose their struggles; instead, their struggles determine them. They shape our ideologies, opinions, and, last but not least, our position in class society.
Joe Biden, Trump, and Bernie Sanders, even going so far as to back Mussolini and Hitler, are products of their society, of capitalism, of their material conditions. And so are all Democrats and the Republicans, the politicians and the voters, including the party apparatus—all serving one purpose: capital.
Specific people are born from this struggle: the socialists, such as Fidel Castro, Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong. These men were born during tumultuous times. Their purpose was to unite those oppressed by capitalism, and they all succeeded. The workers and peasants of their societies followed them voluntarily, just as they led the socialist leaders themselves. They were the same, united as one against Batista in Cuba, the tsar in Russia, and the nationalists in China. These socialists were not monsters, and the real brutality resides within the creators of such myths.
A significant concept that liberals cannot comprehend is that capitalism is unsustainable. Capitalists and landlords continuously siphon off people's wealth from the bottom towards the top. It happens in one country but also internationally through imperialism. That's capitalism, and it's always like that, and the imperialist social democrats cannot change that either. Even liberals occasionally admit that poor people are getting poorer and rich people are getting richer. A problem they have is that they cannot apply this dialectically and ignore imperialism. They end up with dumbfuck ideas like universal basic income. "People should be allowed to be rich, but nobody should be poor." It cannot work under a system where corporations continuously need growth, constantly absorb smaller ones, and make fewer people much richer, an unending process.
A worker tries to follow their own interests whether they are doing so is another thing, consciously or not. Some lib who think our views are too extreme are taking a firm position themself without knowing; they are protecting the status quo and, therefore, their social class.
The important thing about all this is that workers' material conditions are declining, and they are seeking alternatives. Our task is to educate them parallel to the decline during this struggle and turn them into socialists. The debates should be between Marxists. When it comes to others we teach, don't debate. We need to arm them with education before we arm them with weapons. And between education and arming, there are no debates.
All the concepts explained in this post are easy to understand, and most who don't comprehend them are not ready to become socialists yet due to their material conditions. However, we plant seeds in people's minds, and they only need to be watered. It is life experiences that will grow it. I don't really have a reason to make this post; hopefully, a few liberals will read it, and if not, well, it is still good if some Marxist reads it. I wrote this text rather quickly, so sorry if it appears a little all over the place. I hope it's not a word salad.
In conclusion, it is not debates or arguments that will transform people's political ideology but their declining material conditions. Our task is to explain to them why their life sucks.
Also, we are not moralists; however, we are the good guys on the right side of history, and it's the capitalists who are the brutal monsters.
I like this relevant Antonio Gramsci quote— 'The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.'
This is a good post that makes a point that we sometimes miss out on because we get caught up on criticising people on Ideological grounds. I would like to respond to some points to hopefully add to the discussion.
I think this is being somewhat reductive. Most of the party apparatus is serving the purpose of advancing their careers. This is true both for capitalist countries and socialist ones like China where the cpc has had to crack down on careerism many times throughout its history.
This is true for pretty much every industrialised civilisation. The socialist bloc was not and is not stable either. Most of the socialist world has experienced both earth shattering rates of economic growth and many socialist countries also collapsed. I think that only a late stage communist society could truly be considered stable, and even that would not be immune to change entirely.
To be honest, not really. Most of us have had years of exposure to the realities of class conflict before we became Marxists. Reminds me of this xkcd