Before we get started here, you are not required to spend time with your family if their behavior is toxic, abusive, or counter to basic human decency. Find your own family if this is the case. You also don’t have to talk about politics or anything else if you’re not up to it.
So you’re invited to Thanksgiving this year and you accept. After taking a deep breath, you buy a plane ticket, hop a train or pack up the car for Dry Gulch, Minnesota. You’re the family socialist, and this year you want to be mentally and intellectually prepared for That Topic. You know exactly what I mean. The “S” word will be said at some point by some racist Facebook uncle you haven’t seen in a decade, or your liberal sister-in-law trying to argue the police are “socialism”.
This is a survival guide for how to maintain your sanity, but also sharpen your own rhetoric to be more consistent, accurate, and possibly convincing. Your job is not to be “smart” or to own people, your job is to be correctly pointing out the inconsistencies in what has been presented to us as normal “common sense” ideas, and having a coherent, compelling narrative of the world. If you do that, you’ll be way more confident in expressing them with strangers.
You are engaging in the conversation to clarify the true definition of socialism and to critique capitalism’s failures. Not to be a smartass or a pedant, but to provide an alternate (and accurate) narrative for why their lives are so miserable. Whether or not they accept it or even agree is not up to you.
Tip 1: Know the Context of 2019 America
Thanksgiving is a bullshit revisionist holiday where we pretend our country isn’t built on murder, rape, and theft, but instead it was just a nice dinner party with Pilgrims and some sort of nondescript indigenous people. (Those tribes just sort of stopped existing, wonder how that happened?)
It’s one of the ultimate American myths, sidestepping centuries of destruction and genocide. But now you get to eat a dead bird with racist morons you can barely tolerate. Then millions will pass out watching a violent nationalist sport sponsored by professional shock troops for oil where large men slam into each other to get a small oblong shape across a line. The celebration of “bounty” and “harvest” is built on a destructive economic system doomed to destroy the ecosystem. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy that pumpkin pie!
Most people simply don’t care about history or politics or anything at all. They’re designed by capitalism not to care. That or they only think of electoral politics and the exhausting media environment around horserace political theater. They’re too overworked or stressed to really pay attention to what happens. No one cares about this stuff when they’re permanently in a state of hyper-anxiety that their life will fall apart after one bad medical test.
Those same people are smart but also politically illiterate. They’re wandering around in a self-imposed fog of myths and stories, infused with the lie of American exceptionalism and the dream of meritocracy. This is what you’re up against: tired, distracted people who scorn the idea of introspection or historical reality. They just want to stuff their face, watch TV violence, and fall back asleep. Your job is to break through that with a fresh take on the world that speaks to their alienation.
Tip 2: Know Who You’re Talking To
Racist Facebook Uncle, after bragging about his jetski dealership, deems anything left of turning welfare recipients into nutrient slurry as “socialism”. This is mainly because he resents the changing culture that has left him behind, and he has decades of Cold War propaganda backing him up. He is pointless to talk to, your response to him is merciless mockery of his dumbshit God Emperor being afraid of stairs, rain, and having a dick that looks like Toad.
There is no point arguing or debating him, he is simply to be mocked for the childish rube that he is. He has nothing to add. A simple way to mock is to just point out the obvious: almost nothing that Trump has promised has come to pass. No wall, no jobs, no rebirth. He’s a fraud, and your uncle is a sucker for buying the bullshit of a master bullshitter. His fundamental drive is to own and trigger you, so deny him that pleasure. You know exactly who he is, and he only has a vague, inaccurate conception of what you are.
Your liberal sister-in-law on the other hand is a different story. She firmly believes in the power of the Democratic Party to enact “real change”. She’s a Biden or Pete Buttigieg supporter, or undecided but likes Warren or something. She might be even be a diehard Sanders supporter. She thinks she’s on your side, but she’s actually not 100%. You are fundamentally different from her in that you use the actual definitions of words, and have a starkly different ideology. She’s not your enemy, but she’s also not your ally yet.
She uses the term “socialism” mainly as a good faith misuse to combat rightwing attacks on social services, such as roads or infrastructure. She’s likeable, pleasant, but wrong. The fact that she is willing to use the word “socialism”, even incorrectly, as a positive means she’s halfway to being you. Many of us used to be liberals, then realized the limitations of those things. (I certainly was.) A lot of times it was someone close to us that taught us or helped us see the capitalist barrier in front of us.
Tip 3: Know What You’re Talking About
The basic problem of talking about socialism is that not many people, unlike you, have a clear definition of what it means. It’s a heavily ideological word with a lot of cultural baggage.
Before you can define socialism for them, you’ll need to state what it is *not*. Socialism at its core has little to do with governments or nation states. Marx famously never articulated the form of government, only the form of material conditions. This is beneficial in that it provides a framework but also detrimental in that it can be exploited in bad faith.
Socialism is an intermediary stage between capitalism and communism. It is not a government or policy or social program. It has a concrete material definition. Socialism is when the means of production are owned by the workers who create the products or services, rather than the capitalist who owns the property and the means. It is a radical realignment and re-definition of “value”.
It makes much more sense if you view “socialist” as an insult or co-opting rather than a coherent ideology. What commonly people call “socialist” is actually social amenities or services based upon the taxation of capitalist activity. They can be redistributive, but not fundamentally changing who controls the economy. This incorrect definition aligns with any sort of corrective measure on capitalism being defined as an unfair control of personal autonomy. Freedom of the corporation and freedom of the person to, I don’t know, own Uberslaves or something is intertwined, because they’ve been duped. The police and military are not socialist because they are paid for with tax dollars.
The opponents of socialism, both conservative and liberal, can be so ideologically dedicated to capitalism it borders on a cult-like belief in its power. Their own identity is replaced with capital’s identity, so the corporation is also a person is also them. They are the brand and vice versa.
Their fear of a new, vibrant system where they have a stake in its success or failure is palpable.
Tip 4: Stoke Class Consciousness
American have so few rights in the workplace, no representation, and omnipresent propaganda about celebrity CEOs and wealth, that the concept of “owning” anything is especially alien to them. A good question to ask is “Who works more, you or your boss?”
Most people, regardless of their ideology, instinctively know that they work harder than their boss. They often have more tasks, more accountability, more stress. They are lower paid and asked to do far more than own a building or supervise a shift. They will often say “Well me, of course.” This is the beginning of class consciousness: the realization of the separation of labor. (I mean, they could also respond “The boss does!” in which they’re just a bootlicking simp and your job is now to mercilessly mock them for their ass-kissing.) The cult of American capitalism runs deep. It’s built into every dollop of our collective gravy.
Other good class consciousness questions to ask:
- What is the purpose of the American economy? What is the point of work?
- Who really has more in common in the American economy, you and a poor Republican/non-voter, or you and a rich Democrat?
- What is “money”? What does it really represent? Why is a dollar worth a dollar? What is value?
- Why is the owner of a business considered the most important, when they do not produce the value of that business?
- Why do you not get to vote for your boss, or collectively decide what to work on?
- Why are there so many in poverty but so few wealthy? Why is America wealthy in the first place?
- If working hard equals financial success, why aren’t there more millionaires?
- Why is there a minimum wage, but not a maximum wage?
- Why are there approximately the same number of jobs if the stock market climbs, but mass layoffs if it falls?
General Advice
Lastly, here’s some pro lifehacks for effectively talking about socialism with non-socialists during the holidays. Because this is a way that you, as a person, can do some praxis all on your own.
- Brush up on your reading. If you’re pressed for time or energy, get some audiobooks for your commute or some video essays. Here’s a good list to freshen up that mind palace.
- Avoid as much jargon as you can. You know the people you’re talking to. Find or develop a simple way to describe it with a real-world example.
- Don’t be an insufferable asshole to liberals with your brain smarts. You are in fact right, but you don’t need to be smug. Save that for your uncle. You’re not there to be a pedant, but to be confidently accurate.
It’s not an easy thing to talk to family about this stuff, considering socialism is so widely misunderstood and socialists so maligned and co-opted. You’re on their side (as members of the working class), even if they’re not on yours. You were probably once them.
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.