change my view
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/238912
If you’ve ever looked at how rightwing movements operate, it appears they throw a lot of money around. And because of the world we live in, it gets results, ex the canadian trucker protest having basically all the same amenities as a festival, nearly a theme park. Advertising budget. Funding institutions/youtube channels to spread bs.
I think the first thing a leftist should do is, in order:
- get a good enough income for themself. This can include mutual aid or even things like food banks, depending on your philosophy.
1b) study some finance, ex the finance diet and use tricks from financial sources to boost income. This includes stock market/saving for retirement. I can elaborate later if u want on why savings are important. Including trying to use tax loop holes for our advantage. The rightwingers get an edge from this, we need to even the playing field
take care of other important things like enough exercise, good diet, dating
actual left things. But starting with making sure other lefties are well off financially. I’m not sure how to do this and not create capitalists. But technically if you have 0.0001% of stocks, you (the worker) owns 0.0001% of the means of production of that company. A good approach might be starting a worker co-op, where you give people a good wage and recruit youngins right out of high school. That way they learn what a just economic system is and when they branch of to other companies, they will hopefully expect just treatment and be more ready to push for a union in their new workplace.
-
The left is not a mirror of the right.
-
Ordinary right-wingers are not funding these things themselves, they have billionaire backers.
-
They have billionaire backers because fascism is power protecting itself.
-
Power is protecting itself from the left.
-
Laying flat is more effective, IMO. For those of us who are BIPOC, I wish I could explain to my white leftist allies just how much more difficult it is for us to get good paying jobs with decent job security.
I think telling largely poor people that the best thing they can do to destroy this system is to embrace it enough until they get a good income.
Personally, I truly believe money to be a drug and that no one is truly immune to the powers of corruption that money holds. I’ve seen far too many good people get corrupted by the power that money offers.
Edit: My brother and I were talking about this thread and he raised a good point. For every dollar you make as a worker, your work contributes to your employer making considerably more money in profit. This is why laying flat or at the very least living a life that requires as little money/reliance as possible is the way to go, I think. It’s like fighting a war where for every bullet you produce, you inadvertently produce 10 more for the enemy and still expect to win the fight.
or those of us who are BIPOC, I wish I could explain to my white leftist allies just how much more difficult it is for us to get good paying jobs with decent job security
Not 100%, but to an extent, leftwingers ive met are in lower paying jobs like cashiers. Not that I know each person’s situation or yours. But have you tried to get into trades? No resume or experience needed. No tuition fees since it’s paid on the job training. Heck, a lot barely pay taxes since a lot of the jobs are cash. At least over here, a lot of the labourers are BIPOC. A lot of the trades people ive spoken to enough are ex cons. I’m not sure how the job security is, but a career counsellor told me trades are highly in demand across the country.
I’ve considered the trades but part of why I chose to get into research science was because although there’s racism in science, I’ve found it less taxing to manage compared to racism in the trades. Trades i.e. carpentry, welding, etc… is just rife with racism. My brother’s first day on a construction site, some asshole write “this is where [N-words] are born” on the toilet seat of a portapotty. The foreman was furious and called a meeting, but all the white workers seemed to think it was just a hilarious joke and refused to name the guy who did it. Plenty more racist garbage ensued after that too.
Experiences like that… I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something like that in science. My brother thankfully decided to quit the trades after a while and now works in healthcare. Still deals with racism but nothing even remotely close to what he dealt with in the trades.
Gonna dox myself pretty hard here, but I’m not caucasian and my immigration status is uhh complicated. At least over here, I haven’t seen or experienced racism at trade jobs. Sorry that yall had to experience that.
At previous not physical labour jobs I’ve worked at, one of the white guys was pretty racist.
I’m always on the job prowl, how did you get into research science?
This discussion seems to have been split up across multiple comms. I largely agree with you here: https://lemmy.ml/post/238914/comment/165133
Also thinking about historic black liberation movements doing mutual aid in their communities and hosting things like free sunday morning breakfast.
Experience shows that if you make yourself financially dependent on the status quo economic situation (which is pretty much what you describe) you will always find excuses to stick to the status quo or at least it will be easily possible to blackmail you into supporting the status quo.
Anarchists are rather trying to opt out of the current economic system and build alternative support networks that allow them to uncompromisingly fight for a systematic change.
The right-wing are willing to exploit workers to raise the capital needed to fund the tactics and propaganda they use to keep exploiting workers.
In my opinion leftists opt to help people realize that they are being exploited and that they don’t have to be. Unfortunately, this can be slower since this is done more individually.
Commit to Anarchy by… submitting to the system? Hmm.
Dual-power ain’t this. But sure - if you can make good money, use it to support the people around you and your community.
