My therapist made a comment about how China is a failed socialist experiment because they have 2-3 year olds working in factories. I responded “So we’ve been told.” She looks at me like I’m crazy. (Not a great look for a therapist) “I’ve not seen any evidence of that.”
“Because they’re such a closed country!”
“Which means you have no evidence to your point either?”
“Well, missionaries… anyway!”
What does her faith line actually mean? Does she think you’re effectively a monarchist and it’s a question of having faith in a monarch?
No, I mean the thing she had said earlier about “If I had more faith in humanity, I’d be a socialist.” She seems to believe that socialism is the dictatorship of one dude and they’ll get greedy and corrupt and deplete national resources. In my head I said “It takes more faith to be a capitalist,” but that didn’t find its way out of my mouth.
That’s what I meant by “effectively a monarchist,” so I’m sorry for being unclear.
Speaking for myself, if I was confronted with a line like that, I’d simply say that I support democracy (majoritarian rule, which in our society necessarily means proletarian rule) and to the extent that a historical project wasn’t democratic, I don’t think that’s what we should do, but letting capitalists run society has the same basic problems as having any other type of minoritarian rule. “But what if people support something bad,” That’s what political agitation and education are for, you can’t depoliticize politics in a class society, but at least the people have a common class interest that encompasses the vast majority of the population and can be appealed to, unlike with a ruling elite.
Yeah. She made some comments about how she wishes everything wasn’t ruled by money, but even then she seems to be missing the big picture. I think she just doesn’t have a lot of politics besides the vibes we get growing up and doesn’t think that’s a problem. I get that about democracy and it necessarily being proletarian rule, but so many people have this thought that socialism runs counter to democracy because of that same vibes-based education. I think I’d have to do a lot of agitation to change her mind, and I’m just seeing her once a month to help deal with my anxiety and depression.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem like a great use of your time and I didn’t mean to sound like I was trying to explain socialism to you (again, sorry), I was just trying to think of a very succinct way of countering those sorts of lines.
Probably the most realistic solution is just to tell her that you don’t want to hear her opinion on socialism because you have such a limited time.
You’re good, no need to apologize! I’ll keep those responses in mind, though, because there are some people I’d like to turn left. Yeah, I just usually don’t bring up socialism because I know this is where it’d lead. I just felt like I should mention to her that I’m not just going to rot on the couch doing nothing, and that included bringing up the PSL. She did seem interested when I told her they did a lot of organizing in Minnesota.
Yeah, talking about being involved with an org is a totally appropriate thing to do, it’s her telling you that socialism is when dictator that’s not appropriate. It’s not like you’re particularly trying to radicalize her to begin with, you’re just talking about your own life.
A lot of people in western countries think socialism is basically a hippie commune where it’s all carrots and no sticks in society. And the system isn’t really changed by the revolution, it just has the currently bad parts ripped out: cops, prisons, bosses, ownership class, etc. are removed and society operates on trust and goodwill instead.
Imperial core-style anarchists unfortunately encourage this interpretation.
Under her understanding of socialism one would require a lot of faith in every one for an imaginary system like that to work.