You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.
I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.
I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.
Or you’ll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they’re not young anymore
I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.
We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
In aggragate, that’s the more reliable way to make a population more conservative, but remember that a reasonable portion of fascists in a society that is going in that direction are going to be people who either lost that or never had it and, in either case, blame some minority for that fact. (The majority are still people like you describe, though, the petite bourgeois, etc., who feel insecure in their holdings)
I agree if you mean neoliberal-conservative
Luckyyyyyy!
Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they’re working from the premise that you’ll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn’t true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can’t figure out why millenials aren’t getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.
Yeah, though there’s also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more, the idea being that you have less future to look forward to (since you’re closer to death than your birth) so instead you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it.
Oh yeah, that’s definitely why older folks are socially conservative, although usually when I hear people say this (and definitely in the context of this meme) they’re talking about becoming fiscally conservative.
All of that is the same here in Germany. Check out the stats on home ownership here… But oh man are the kids flipping to the AfD (far right nazi party) quick and in huge numbers. It’s scary to see.
Honestly, that makes sense to me. It seems like when economic systems start breaking down for people, they turn to populism. It’s either left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism, or right-wing populism, which scapegoats minority or immigrant groups. Right now, the youth in the U.S. are interested in left-wing populism, but right-wing populism (AKA Trumpism) is the only thing making it into the political mainstream.
German government should just ban the AfD and end with it.
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The Nazi Party being banned was good, just not enough
Fuck this “goody two-shoes” bullshit, ban and repress.
yup it applies only to the privileged class, and of course only people in that class would think that is the general experience.
I grew up in a rightwing household, and unquestioningly drank the koolaid until my late teens. The right’s bullshit eventually became impossible to ignore, so I dove right into the ‘both sides!’ trap and rode the Libertarian train for a while.
It became really easy to articulate what I didn’t like about the right; describing what was bad about the left was just echoes of Fox bitching about things like them voting on emotion instead of logic… but no real examples.
Around my mid-twenties I finally realized ^that was projection; then 2016 happened and holy shit they’re running Trump and Hillary?? Easily the two most hated candidates in my lifetime… against Gary Johnson - an admittedly goofy personality but likeable and most importantly not crazy, THIS IS THE LP’S TIME TO SHINE! …yeah they got 3% of the vote. We won’t ever see better conditions for a 3rd victory, so, pipedream shattered.
Guess I’ll have to just pick a lesser evil, so let’s see what we have to work with…
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there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war. Shave social services down to nothing so we can claim ‘fiscal responsibility’ which is good I guess (hey! eyes down here, we’re done talking about the war part), a blatant integration of religion and politics, and they want to make life as miserable as possible for my gay/colored/female/nonchristian friends. Fuck, that’s pretty bad…
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Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
So I start voting one issue at a time, crunching both options against eachother and choosing the one that’s best for the US. That way there’s no bias and I won’t be part of this tribal bullshit plagueing our politics… Weird, when I ignore affiliation and vote on policy alone, my ballot becomes solid blue. What are the odds of that?! Next election, solid blue again. And again.
My desire to be ‘independent’ on label alone is pretty much gone at this point, and I’m being more and more vocal about supporting leftwing policies. Family isn’t a fan, but they hit me with the shit OP is poking fun at - I only shifted blue because I’m poor! Once I make more money, just you wait and see, I’ll come crawling right back.
Now, I’m not rich or anything, but I’m (finally!) not living paycheck to paycheck. During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life. The thing that pisses me off about those socialized services is WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T EVERYONE HAVE THIS?! So wearing camo for 4 years for some reason got me this VIP tour of what we should should be doing for everyone.
I was a late bloomer, I got there. I haven’t missed a single election since 2016, big or small. Solid blue. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll even look up the voter registration of candidates for nonpolitical positions like judges, and red is a deal breaker.
The better off I become, the more blue I get. The notion of red-shift with income is trash.
Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
The DNC isn’t to the opposite of the GOP, they are aligned on the vast majority of issues and use the rest to yap loudly in disagreement. Dems aren’t left.
During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life.
Social programs aren’t socialized, that’s a bit of a misnomer.
However US Corporations that exploit US Workers and Workers abroad are subsidized, even for their losses. Us Taxpayers pay them while they exploit us further and Social Services get gutted and crumble. Gotta love neoliberalism, where socialized welfare is bad for workers, but good for corporations.
Edit: not actual socialism like worker owned, just socialized losses, as in the working class paying taxes foot the bill for the corporations benefit and privatized gains
Have you read Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism? It analyzes modern Imperialism, where workers in the Global North are both exploited by their bourgeoisie and yet benefit from the fruits of Imperialism, forming a labor aristocracy.
It isn’t Socialism for corporations, it’s Imperialism in action.
No, I have not. I’ve only touched on the book Consequences of Capitalism so far. Thanks for the req, I’ll check it out.
Socialism isn’t the right word, it’s not like they are worker owned in any regard. It’s just that the subsidies they receive for the benefit of their private business and profits for shareholders come from taxpayer money. Further redistributing weather to the wealthy at the expense of the working class Americans, and further enabling them to exploit us more. Their gains are privatized and their losses are socialized by the working class.
No problem! Lenin’s writing is very eye-opening as it’s Marxism applied to more modern, international Capitalism, but he may not make the most sense if you aren’t already familiar with Marxism.
I’m somewhat familiar with the principals, but not enough to thoroughly explain them in a casual conversation.
It’s definitely eye-opening to contextualize things like Nationalism, Fascism, Colonialism, and Imperialism within the Capitalist mode of production
Edited my comment to distinguish between genuine socialism and the welfare of corporations being socialized thru taxpayer money for their benefit and our expense.
You may want to swing back to Principles of Communism as well as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels, then Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price and Profit by Marx before getting into Lenin if you’re not confident in the basics of Marxism. Lenin is Marxism applied to early 1900s Capitalism, which has largely grown along the lines he analyzed and predicted (among numerous other analysis in theory and practice).
there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war.
The blue team is doing the same thing: burning through fossil resources in the name of war. The military complex doesn’t stop or change when blue or red are elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war
I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn’t a football match where teams compete against each others and “left” and “right” are two buzzwords.
https://archive.org/details/lawauthorityanar00kropuoft/page/n5/mode/2up
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Straight up I was conservative as a young teen, because that’s what EVERYONE was here in Utah when I was in the LDS church.
Now I just keep floating more and more left as time goes on.
I went from “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” in high school to liberal to communist to anarchist back to communist now I think I’m democratic socialist in my 30s? Just basic safety nets and unions, please.
Same homie. I can’t even imagine what it was like to be a leftist after 9/11. The whole fucking country was blood thirsty. Heard my friends say some of the most abhorrent shit, and just brushed it off as patriotism.
So fucking glad I found my way out.
I’ve only gone further Left.
How’d you get a picture of me?
my experience is the opposite
Yup but I have seen it in my peers unfortunately. Honestly though not in the ones who were actually passionate. Like the guy who started the environmental club is as left as he ever was but like the one friend I had I think just parroted what most of his friends said atm.
In the mid 20th-century, people reliably got more petty bourgeois as they got older.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000452
Yep, correlation, not causation. Getting older doesn’t cause it.
There’s a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.
Honestly, if your goals include conserving an inhabitable environment for the human race in the future, conserving a semblance of wealth for everyone but the top, like, dozen people on Earth, conserving the rights of workers and consumers against an overwhelming opposition, conserving democracy for future generations (and all that against the best efforts of a supposedly “conservative” party), your parents may have been right.
Eventually, it will overflow and you will become fascist
I am more conservative in the sense that I see things with more nuance. I understand societies are very complex systems in a fragile equilibrium and that my naive solutions to the world’s problems are not feasible.
And yet, each day I’m more convinced we need to eat the rich.
You’re bringing up a good point. People who say we’ll become more “conservative” are usually equivocating on the meaning of the word. It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and decide that global warming is a hoax, or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.
or that we should stop eating cats and dogs. Of course we’ll keep doing those things.
Wait, what?
The people who say you become more conservative usually mean that you will become more well off. And indeed when they earn their financial freedom, they want to protect the status quo. So they start seeing others as threats: be it young people wanting more rights, employees wanting fair salaries, immigrants coming for your hard earned money, everyone is a threat. This is the how the mind of an unempathic person works.
I’m old enough now that I’m more financially secure than I ever have been before, and I still think we should tear it all down and create a more equitable system for everyone. Perhaps I’m in the minority though for people my age.
Politicians sew division, fear, and hatred knowing that this will allow them to continue fleecing everyone who works for a living. We should never forget that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
I am becoming more annoyed by young liberals as I get older but I’m sure as shit not turning GOP conservative.
I don’t know what it’s like to live under communism, but I do know what it’s like to live under capitalism and it’s grip tightens more and more with every passing year.
I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, was there any communist country which wasn’t also both a dictatorship and poor?
Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it’s always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things… there’s also war, and that applies to most of them too.
I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like, was there any communist country which wasn’t also both a dictatorship and poor?
Most steadily improved their material conditions and did not have dictatorships.
Pretty hard seeing the good and bad of communism when it’s always alongside the two worse things that can happen to a country.
Explain, please.
P.S. Wait, actually not the two worse things… there’s also war, and that applies to most of them too.
Are you saying most Communist countries intentionally started wars?
Most didn’t? Can you give a few exemples then?
You don’t start a war unintentionally… but i didn’t say start, just being in a war.
Also i don’t imply it was because of communism, my point is that, how can we judge communism if other devastating sociological factors are involved.
Now, i don’t have a point if you say most of them were better for it, but i don’t know any who did so i’d love to educate myself…
A few examples include the USSR, Cuba, PRC, etc. Life standards dramatically improved, life expectancy doubled in the USSR and PRC and jumped around half in Cuba, literacy rates jumped to 99%+ from less than 50% prior, education access, healthcare access, food access, housing access, all dramatically improved. Wealth inequality also fell down dramatically.
Here’s an example of wealth inequality over time in Russia:
And how the Soviet Democratic process functioned:
Are you a commie?
Most of us here are communists. Anti-communist platforms like reddit already exist.
Holy cow you people are real. Wild
Have you read my comment?
I know capitalism don’t work, everybody does now.
That has nothing to do with the fact we didn’t manage to have one successful exemple of communism either…
Wrong, from the link I posted:
Capitalist hegemony has short-circuited people into buying wildly illogical and ridiculous propaganda like: “Lift yourselves up by the bootstraps” (which shows the almost religious power of capitalist propaganda, that the impossible can become possible), or “Communism doesn’t work”, when in fact Communism did work extremely well.
Examples from this post by /u/bayarea415, Stephen Gowans - Do publicly owned, planned economies work, Ian Goodrum - Socialism vs Capitalism and quality of life, and yogthos’s USSR acheivements post about the USSR specifically:
- USSR had a more nutritious diet than the US, according to the CIA. Calories consumed surpassed the US. source. Ended famines.
- Productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. It was illegal to hire others and accumulate personal wealth from their labor.
- Had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century after Japan. The USSR started out at the same level of economic development and population as Brazil in 1920, which makes comparisons to the US, an already industrialized country by the 1920s, even more spectacular.
- Free Universal Health care, and most doctors per capita in the world. 42 doctors per 10k population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US.
- Had near zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. The “continuous” part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.
- USSR moved from 58.5-hour workweeks to 41.6 hour workweeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960
- USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996., 2
- In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67.
- All education, including university level, free. 2
- 99% literacy.
- Saved the world from Fascism, Taking on the majority of Nazi divisions, and killing 90% of Nazi soldiers. Bore the enormous cost of blood and pain in WW2 (25M dead), with the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare.. An estimated 70% of Soviet housing was destroyed by Nazi invasion. Nazis were in retreat after the battle of Stalingrad in 1942, a full 2 years before the US landed troops in normandy.
- Doubled life expectancy. Eliminated poverty.
- Combatted sex inequality. Equal wages for men and women mandated by law, but sex inequality, although not as pronounced as under capitalism, was perpetuated in social roles. Very important lesson to learn.
- Combatted Racial inequality.
- Feudalism to space travel in 40 years. First satellite, rocket, space walk, woman, man, animal, space station, moon and mars probes.
- Soviet power production per capita in 1990 was more than the EU, Great Britain, or China’s in 2014.
- Housing was socialized by localized community organizations, and there was virtually no homelessness. Houses were often shared by two families throughout the 20s and 30s – so unlike capitalism, there were no empty houses, but the houses were very full. In the 40s there was the war, and in the 50s there were a number of orphans from the war. The mass housing projects began in the 60s, they were completed in the 70s, and by the 70s, there were homeless people, but they often had genuine issues with mental health.
- 66% of Russians polled in 2015 want the USSR back. The story is the same for all the former eastern-bloc countries: 72% of Hungarians say their country is worse off now than under communism, 57% of East Germans, 63% of Romanians, 77% of Czechs, 81% of Serbs (for Yugoslavia), 70% of Ukrainians, 60% of Bulgarians.
When it is claimed that a system works, we should ask, who it works for. Capitalism benefits a tiny number of rapacious capitalists, to the detriment of the rest of us, while Socialism works for the masses.
For an overview of the soviet experiment, watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut.
Also read this great article by Stephen Gowans, Do publicly owned, planned economies work?. Audio on youtube
Bonus vid about cyber-communism: Paul Cockshott - Going beyond money.
More sources: Socialism Crash Course, Socialism FAQ, Glossary.
That’s all awesome. So it’s still around, right? It didn’t collapse within one generation or anything, did it?
It was overthrown by the USA, as the USA strangled most attempts worldwide in their cradles also.
Primarily via the arms race in the USSR’s case. You can read more about that here:
Thanks for your reading of Gabriel Rockhill. I’ve seen some of his interviews, and they are impressive.
That’s a yes, it collapsed within one generation. Such an outstanding method of government!
If all it took, according to you, is one department of one nation to bring it down, it was not strong.
But we both know that’s not why it collapsed.
A US sponsored executive coup is not equivalent to collapsing due to its own problems.
Capitalism doesn’t benefit the vast majority of us. But the purpose of capitalism is to enrich a fortunate few at the expense of the rest of us who will be reduced to perpetual wage slavery until we die. Capitalism is working a treat in that regard.
If something, as years roll on talking to people with different experiences enriched me as a person.
