Disclaimers
tl;dr at the end
My perspective comes from living in part of Burgerland (aka the US) and will be focused on the left “movement” in this country. I’m not going to do the typical American thing of assuming my experiences and perspectives are the only ones that matter, so please let me know in the comments how other countries handle what I’m about to cover.
Also this post has been kicking around my head for a while, so apologies if it ends up long-winded or hard to read. The way I think is all over the place, so I have lots of headers and sections to keep things organized.
Intro: Messaging from the left = Capitalist Realism
Mark Fisher (RIP) wrote a very important book about a phenomenon he called Capitalist Realism.
I highly recommend every leftist reads at least the opening chapter to this book.
In this piece Fisher describes a widespread cultural attitude that Capitalism is inevitable, the only system that can exist in this “end of history”. No alternatives are possible, so don’t bother trying. And if you do try, you will be made an example of, another reason on a long list of reasons not to try again, so don’t even bother. Or worse, your criticisms of Capitalism are used to help keep Capitalism going! Your efforts co-opted and integrated seamlessly into the machine. “Sorry To Bother You”, but I doubt “Don’t Look Up” got throngs of people who never heard of Socialism to sign up with 
The left, unknowingly(?), contributes to Capitalist Realism
Look at the news feeds, the posts on here, all of the updates on all of your favorite Reddit subs, left Twitter, etc. Overwhelmingly negative stories about how Capitalism is screwing us, how this week a company is caught poisoning food, or how capitalist governments are suppressing speech, or some shitty Conservative politician pushing the latest woman-hating bill. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Capitalism sucks. No one here needs convincing of that.
What I want you to focus on is how this deluge of negative stories affects activists and organizers. More in comments.
1 - Capitalist Realism dampens organizing
Again, this is a US-centric take borne from my own experiences. I believe that we have a lack of good left organizing, of any kind, partly because of the effects of living in the heart of the Capitalist empire. It’s hard to imagine a revolution in the belly of this beast. This place is depressing in a way that is hard to explain to folks who don’t live here. What I can say is that seeing Teslas and $70k pickup trucks zoom past homeless tents day in and day out, and no one around me really cares… it sucks. There’s no great way to put it. Electoralism at the local level is the same handful of perennial losers shuffling seats around every two years. It’s nice seeing some “Free Palestine” stickers around where I live so it’s not all bad, but I know just a few miles out of town and the scenery changes fast.
Also a lot of “Jesus Saves” and similar Christian stickers everywhere.
It’s already hard enough to be motivated to act under Capitalism, and our current messaging “non-strategy” only makes it worse. I believe that the sum total of the culture adds up to creating cynicism, defeatism, depression, and ultimately a lack of motivation to act.
“Why bother? No one really cares about any of this stuff, and it’s not like those other countries are doing any better. This is it, just worse and worse for the rest of life. Maybe I should keep myself with porn/games/hobbies/TV and keep my head down like everyone else. At least some of them look happy.”
2 - What about the left orgs?
I don’t want to be a downer on the orgs we have! I appreciate the organizing being done by groups such as CPUSA, PSL, and DSA. I don’t want to get into any fights over which org is “best” or is most effective, rather I’m arguing that all of them combined do some good local work. That is something positive and something that I think we could work on spreading more often. BUT, the way leftists are organizing under these headwinds of constant doom-and-gloom Capitalist Realism is leading to too much burnout. This causes great organizers to leave or take long breaks, leading to membership churn, brain drain, and an ever-weakening organizing base. Without a clear goal to strive for at a national level (electing Bernie), groups like DSA are seeing membership drops that are leading to budget issues that are leading to layoffs… and I shouldn’t have to explain why a socialist org doing layoffs is a bad thing!
3 - The revolution will be won by paid staff
I don’t believe we will get to where we need to be as a movement without more people being paid to organize full-time. I’ll try to elaborate on why that is in the US in other sections. In a nutshell: Individualism of the American variety, Capitalism taking our free time, Capitalist Realism, and lack of a tangible end-goal are all combining to keep unpaid volunteering at a minimum. Our entire society is structured in such a way that makes it that much harder to organize! Someone on here had an excellent comment about “car culture” and how the car-centric designs have led to so much atomization among our communities. America isn’t like Europe where organizers can be linked by a cheap, convenient train ride. Here it’s cars all the way with maybe a few exceptions in major cities like Chicago.
4 - So what is the end goal for American Socialism?
We should have a clear, easy to understand, easy to repeat goal for the movement as a whole: We need a new Constitution
Why not just call for a “revolution?” “Revolution” is too vague, abstract. Can’t get too specific because of state power. It is a loaded term which implies a lot of bloodshed, violence, and death. And yes America is a country full of bloodthirsty hogs, but most of those hogs are cheering for the blood to be spilled somewhere else.
Calling for a new Constitution is materially similar to having a revolution, but comes with several rhetorical advantages:
-
It is a more “serious” sounding goal than revolution
-
It is an easy way to instantly separate us from liberals/Democrats. This is a BIG problem in mainstream politics here. Democrats want to co-opt us outside of election years, then scapegoat us after they lose elections. They pretend to support us, but I guarantee a liberal will NEVER agree to wanting to throw out the whole Constitution. It’s the most sacred of sacred cows in American politics.
-
Is does not immediately come off as “anti-America”. It’s not that we want to destroy America with a bloody revolution. We just want to make American so much better with a new Socialist Constitution. Especially one that helps us build the society closer to what our AES neighbors have…
-
Gives us a unassailable distinction between us and Democrats. What is the Dem plan if they have power for 50 years? Do they even have a plan?
-
Something we can actually build towards with a real end goal.
It’s still revolution, just with a re-brand. And better branding is how we build a larger, more resilient movement.
**5 - How do we get to this end goal? Enter Socialist Realism **
Socialist Realism is a term I am using to describe messaging that shows the clear benefits for the average worker living in Cuba, China, Laos, etc. over living in the US. The term was originally used to describe an art form that was prominent in the USSR (according to Wikipedia). For this thread I’m using it as a type of messaging strategy.
What does this look like? Positive messaging that shares a irrefutable fact showing how life is better in one of these countries vs. the US.
This recent post is a great example of what I’m talking about. More of this please!
I made a thread a while ago asking for stats for AES countries. Creating positive messaging contrasting America with these nations is exactly what I’m going for.
Off-the-cuff ideas on how this could go:
- Pyongyang: Life, ad-free
- DPRK: AdBlock for life
- China: Life longer, live better (point out China’s higher life expectancy)
- Retire before 60? China does it
- Vietnam: Where no one is above the law, really
- Cuba: 0 Billionaires, 0 medical debt
tl;dr
Our current left discourse tends to be very negative. This plus culture hurts our movement. I’m suggesting a shift in messaging strategy to focus on a tangible end-goal (we need a new Constitution). I am proposing we adopt what I’m calling Socialist Realism, positive messaging comparing existing Socialist countries to America, to help us build a larger left movement in the US.
Wait, there’s more?
In the next few comments I’ll go into more detail around my thinking on messaging, marketing, and how America poses a unique challenge for left messaging.
** American Individualism - A roadblock to success **
Individualism is a barrier in America. This ideology hurts the movement in several ways: it causes problems recruiting people to volunteer, it hinders getting people together to show up to meetings, and it keeps people from building projects. Work tends to be either seen as “charity” or aimed towards an ideal (emotional/inspirational feedback.)
Think about it: Our society is structured such that there are distractions everywhere. “Sure, we say we want to join that rally, but there’s the game, or that new movie, or hey I’m just gonna sit here and scroll through my algorithm-curated feed of content, or or or. And c’mon, it’s not like that rally actually makes a real difference (there’s Capitalist Realism rearing it’s head). I’ll go to the next one.” And then we end up with a “paper member” who pays dues but never shows up for anything, or just a social once every two months. I’m sure we all know several comrades like this.
Don’t place all the blame on the individuals! Our society is built this way in literally every aspect. We push individual competition over each other from childhood. We have “grades” to compare kids to each other in school, competitive games and sports where there are always “winners” and “losers”. Just wanting to enjoy running around? That’s not what your Karen mom came here to see!
We are pushed in ALL directions to compare, and compete, vs everyone else in society. Everything from wealth to weight to what we wear is up for scrutiny. We are told to “be ourselves” in corporate ads, but always with the goal of buying more. “Be yourself” by buying that $1000 pair of sneakers that was artificially made scarce by the manufacturer. And yeah, maybe you feel a little bad about buying this thing from a corporation you know is paying scraps to the people who actually made the shoes, but there’s only 5000 of them and think about yourself for once! You can buy it and re-sell it later and get rich. You deserve it for working so hard. Treat yourself.
Religion is individualism. To me the way it is practiced in America is all about the individual’s relationship with God, with parts about giving back ignored. “If I follow these rules, I get “saved”. It makes me feel good to tell others that they are damned. I don’t care if my “Jesus Saves” stickers annoy people or pollute, because they don’t matter. Only I matter. God is mine, and I have a personal relationship with him.”
Individualism is in the workplace, in schools, on roads, in markets, shopping, everything.
There was an awesome comment that I can’t find now which described how it has gotten so much worse to be driving these days, and how this is an offshoot of how increasingly selfish we are all becoming. In the case of reckless driving, individualism, literally, kills.
Correct me here please, but from an outside perspective I see less of this individualism manifest in places like China? I’m talking about the way the country handled COVID so much better than here. Were there people going out maskless while the lockdowns in place? Was Chinese corporate media giving hours of free media to vaccine deniers or other such quackery? I know there eventually were protests to lift lockdowns, but it also seemed that the people really banded together to stop the spread of COVID in a way that never happened in most of the US.
So why does individualism need to be addressed in terms of left messaging & organizing?
- Appeals to “the common good” are just not going to work here. We’re too self-centered to care about our neighbors. Hell, most of us don’t know who our neighbors are, and the corporate news scares us into liking it that way.
- We can’t expect notions of charity or “feeling good” to build a robust volunteer movement, at least for anything long term. This is why I push for PAID organizing. Now to find that current-day Engels to fund us…
- Idea: I know we can’t afford to fund everyone’s organizing, but we could do things like hold a raffle. All active volunteers (however you want to measure that) get put into a pot, and whoever’s name is drawn gets paid airfare and hotel to the next DSA National Convention or a trip to visit Cuba or something. I know the dedicated lefties on this board don’t need something like a raffle to motivate working for the movement, but I’m trying to get those “paper” members, those people who show up once in a blue moon, a little nudge to organize more. And if more people show up to organize many hands make light work, which means the super-volunteers that always show up have a little less to do and maybe don’t burnout as much? One can hope!
That theory doesn’t affect me because I can’t read
Yes, theory is something to say here and on Lemmygrad or LeftTok or what-have-you. I’m not trying to reach the already dedicated core of leftists, but people who are more left-curious, people who see the contradictions in Capitalism but aren’t quite in our camp.
Theory just isn’t going to move the masses, mainly because the average American can’t read! I’m not exaggerating: check out this Medium article showing 54% of American adults are reading below a sixth-grade reading level! That means the overwhelming majority of the audience we need to reach simply isn’t going to understand the Communist Manifesto, much less Pedagogy of The Oppressed or Capital v.1. We need more accessible communication to the average person.
So how do we convey this important information from theory into something that adult with elementary-schools levels of reading comprehension can process? Ideas:
- Memes (simple graphics and text)
- Infographics / charts
- Comics, drawings, art (but don’t make the message subtle and don’t use irony, see how people take Starship Troopers at face value)
- Avoid the “wall of text” style memes. I know, I love them too, but I’m not sharing those outside of lefty circles.
- Avoid long words, and keep the overall text to a minimum. A couple sentences max. Maybe make use of LLM tools like Gemini and ChatGPT to help “simplify” messages.
Advertising works with emotions, not facts
I’m kind of a Political strategy nerd. It’s not a secret that I am an ex-:lib:, and I see nothing wrong in learning how experts in the field are looking at politics today. I say learn from what the major parties are doing well and adapt those to our needs. I’m currently reading Reinventing Political Advertising by Hal Malchow and am sharing some takeaways from this book.
A good ad should have a goal of eliciting a specific emotion from the audience. Ex: Showing how Cuba, despite decades of embargoes and American pressure, has managed to thrive should cause cognitive dissonance in people who buy into America being the “best” country. Other ads should be aimed at creating feelings of disgust, anger, pride, or inspiration.
We want to always have a specific set of emotions as our goal. We do a good job as a movement of stirring anger and disgust among our adherents. Where we fall short is balancing that with messaging that inspires, gives hope, and helps us build pride in our movement. All anger and no hope leads to burnout and cynicism.
We should build our own audience, not try to win over the Democratic targets
I hope I never get another canvassing turf that puts me in the middle of a upper-middle-class cul-de-sac. That’s prime lib territory, and I’m afraid as long as leftists work with the Democratic party’s infrastructure, voter files, etc. we will continue knocking on doors that are targets for Democrats, not us. I support electoralism as a way to get messages out more efficiently through a candidate’s increased access to the press, but not by running people under the Democratic Party.
One way one could explain why electoralism gets a bad rap… talking to the wrong audience! Bernie tried to mobilize everyone at once. Winning over a population doesn’t work that way. We need to adopt a more gradual, long term approach. Changing minds doesn’t happen over a single election cycle.
We need to find our own audience of people who are going to be the most receptive to a radical movement away from the status-quo Capitalist parties. To me that means we should target:
- Non-voters, checked out of the system, not targeted by Dem/Rep messaging. This group is very large and unorganized, not yet radicalized, but more potential to be radicalized than Democratic audiences.
- Anyone who is disenfranchized under Capitalism. People who have more than one job, people with any sort of disability, people in LGBT communities facing persecution, unemployed people. I am proud to be a Marxist because we lift up people society wants to keep down. Thanks to the wonders of modern consumer data and other creepy data collection things, we can find these people easier than ever before.
-
This is very good but I don’t know what I could add to this discussion. Do you know anyone else you’ve discussed these ideas with? Maybe formalizing a blog post or something reference may be useful, even a MarkDown file on GitHub or something.
I haven’t talked about this at length with anyone. It’s really more of a brain dump from a year+ back that I’m trying to piece together. Right now feedback would be the most helpful… and yeah I should put all this together. It feels like a zine is in here somewhere 👀
