Basically dress up the economics as futurism instead of tankie shit with its associations.
Marx said we should hold the means of production in common, and follow a socially beneficial plan. But a lot of audiences would roll their eyes and close their ears as soon as I said Marx.
If instead I say, “Artificial intelligence and computerised logistics are becoming so sophisticated we can think about phasing out the human element of management. We can choose democratically what we want the robots to do and they will produce it for us.”
This might sound like subterfuge to some of you, but it’s not actually dishonest. It’s a correct way to describe a Marxian economy. I replaced the phrase “the means of production” with “the robots”.
The real win here is you get around “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” People don’t expect a Marxist world revolution. People don’t expect the fall of capitalism. But people totally do expect robots and AI in the coming decades.
I’m of two minds about this. Let me explain.
On the one hand…
People are scared of “Marx”, “communism”, and sometimes even “socialism” (Though some people think it means “just some parts of europe with more social programs than us”, and those people are wrong, but at least have positive associations with the word). Terms like ‘tankie’ get thrown around loosely, and the USSR, China, DPRK, Cuba, are all “bad places” that westerners don’t want to be associated with. In this way, re-naming things can help introduce the concept in a fresh way, because most people actually want to bring about the change that communists/socialists do, but they are conditioned to ignore everything positive about it’s history. So far, my biggest problem with explaining communism to people is using communist terms, this throws them into a bad place and think my arguments are wrong from the get-go. But if I introduce something in a terms-neutral way, explaining in great detail instead of using descriptive communist terms, most people are on the same page (With some exception because liberals still believe in ‘personal freedom’, and it can be difficult to get them to track all the way from a ‘peoples congress’ to a party that only acts in the way the ->people<- want. Most people of western countries think that it’s basically impossible to build it, but would like it if it’s possible… Ugh these people need to learn about China…)
On the other hand…
If we continue to use terms like “Means of production”, “liberal”, “fascist”, “dialectics”, “materialism”, “reactionary”, “neocolonial”, etc. then people can look these terms up, read old books, and see that the arguments of communists/socialists of the past 200 years have been talking about this. It’s a powerful message to send, that this is not new, this information has been suppressed, that the red scare did actually control information and was just as authoritarian as any socialist country they’ve heard of, and these things are relevant and important to know. Connecting communism to historical events and ideas is important.
On the third hand…
This, of course, takes a lot of time. I’m a new commie and it took me a few months of just reading, listening, and studying before I even really uttered the word “communist” to anyone I knew. I just didn’t feel comfortable until I could understand enough to speak intelligently about it. Most people are not patient enough to do that, they want to scroll tik tok, facebook, twitter (or x), or reddit, or whatever they do daily, and not think about these complicated things. Most people get their “info” from these garbage sources, and it takes real effort, that a lot of people don’t have the energy to give, to understand these things.
As a final argument…
I don’t know if I want to sell a bunch of libs on the idea of robots building/running everything. See, like in the movie “Elysium” (Yes it’s a lib film, not communist, but it does give insight into the struggles of the global south from a lib perspective, and was actually inspired by the writer getting arrested in Mexico and seeing ‘the other side of the fence’ himself, and forcing some self-reflection about living in a rich place bordering poverty) a lot of those libs will see the shiny technocratic future of making their lives insanely, extremely better, but won’t extend that privilege to the global south. If we, as communists, sell them on this future, but then when we are in charge, do something like open our borders, or actually treat Mexico like human beings, or even build that technocratic future of robots building things, but we spread the wealth, and instead of making our lives 1000x better, we making the entire world 100x better, but maybe only make our lives 1.5x better, then those libs might see our work as a ‘failure’, or as a ‘compromise’.
Anyway TLDR: libs believing in a technocratic future prefer to see see themselves ->living<- on Elysium, having that personal medical machine keeping them young and pretty and acne free forever, instead of letting those medical machines heal disease worldwide, saving a billion lives.
I believe a movie that may not scare libs off is The Creator, which shows US imperialism against sapient robots and China. Such a movie might possibly chip away some of their imperialist mindsets, I hope. It’s now my top favorite movie of all time.