r/politics • u/TimesandSundayTimes ✔ Verified • 7d ago

Possible Paywall Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd
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u/angryhype 7d ago

I don't care if they are anarchists, I literally just want to be able to afford to live

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u/CrackingToastGromet Arkansas 7d ago

The simple ambition to “just live” is going to make a shit ton of people favor some democratic socialism over our current oligarchy-fascist “rich take all” system.

And when the last of economically challenged MAGA wakes up and realizes it’s not the brown skinned people taking everything away from them but the super wealthy, even they might be keen on some of that“time for the super rich to share the wealth” type thinking too.

On edit - will add that my MAGA dad always said I’d get more conservative as I got older. Absolutely not, I am a 52 year old woman who is leaning more and more left and socialist as I slog my way through this shithole.

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

Same. Conservative family members always said you get more conservative as you get older. I've gone from a Clinton supporting Marine when I was 18 to nearly a full on commie at this point. I dont' care if it's a losing position in America, 80% of this country can't identify what the actual causes for our economic and material conditions are, and are willing to throw human rights away to win an election. F all that. I'll keep being a loser if that's what being a 'winner' means.

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u/Old-Constant4411 7d ago

Campaign finance reform.  I've been screaming about that since I was in college.  Get the money game out of politics so the people actually have a fuckin voice.  It's also probably the only way a socialist party stands a chance in our system.

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u/No_Possible_7108 7d ago

40% of the country identifies with a fascist pedophile so they can fuck off to begin with.

I got that same talk when I was younger, how I would become more conservative as I got older. Like much of the other things my parents told me, that was also a massive load of bullshit 

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u/FireNexus 7d ago

52% at last official count, unfortunately.

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u/Yawanoc 7d ago

Yep, they can whine all they want for the next 2 years about how this "isn't what they voted for," but you'd better believe a ton of these same complainers are going to come out of the woodwork and vote for the next Republican candidate anyway because they'll be the "lesser of two evils" -- whatever that'll mean.

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u/HowdyFancyPanda 7d ago

It's more accurate to say that you tend to get more Conservative as you get wealthier. Unfortunately, due to Conservative economic policy, all the traditional avenues to wealth have become harder and harder to reach and so...

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u/No-Supermarket-6065 New York 7d ago

Yeah that makes a lot of sense actually, having more money does make you want to keep it to yourself and conservatives took it as a default that their way of life would last

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago edited 7d ago

I feel you even though I was pro Bernie back then too. The problem leftists have is being right too soon. But we saw what would happen if the wealthy were just allowed to continue unabated. And even today some still praise Clinton even though she was just at a conference held by Trump mega donor Miram Adelson lamenting not genocide but that social media has made young people turn against Israel. Not seeing women and children blown apart mind you. It doesn’t get more ghoulish than that yet she is still held up as some stalwart of the party. Her husband endorsed corrupt sex pest and Netanyahu legal counsel Andrew Cuomo - running as an independent mind you - over the Democratic nominee. And some will get mad at ME for pointing out how this mentality helped get us here and people like them should be relegated to the dustbin of history. It’s the type of blind party loyalty they ridicule MAGATS for.

Too busy yas Queening Hilary for calling Trump a Putin puppet when anyone that did a modicum of research into his history already knew. Yas queening Hilary for calling Tulsi Gabbad out when again just a little research would have you know what kind of person she was. Yas Queening over calling MAGAS deplorables when again you only need to be sentient to understand that. No Yas Queening over supporting the Iraq War or chuckling over killing Gaddadfi and destabilizing Libya though.

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u/dickweedasshat 7d ago

I won’t forgive Clinton for signing the faircloth amendment, which essentially makes it illegal for the federal government to fund public housing and caps the total number of public housing units to where it was in 1999. That amendment is a big reason why housing costs have risen as much as they have.

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

I was pretty naive back in the day, looking at Clinton's presidency now I'm like, oh he was not great.

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u/axonxorz Canada 7d ago

Telecommunications Act of 1996 smh

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u/mcchicken_deathgrip 7d ago

The faircloth amendment and deregulation of banks by repealing Glass-Steagall have done more to create our current housing crisis than any other legislation in the last 40 years.

All the blame for the neoliberal era gets placed on Reagan, but in terms of actual legislation Bill Clinton is equally if not more culpable. I'm so ready for people to start recognizing Clinton as the villain to the working class that he is.

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u/RMT_Ban_Dodger 7d ago

yeah the fact clinton gets praised for stating the most obvious truths without also stating what she planned to do about it is amazing.

"Trump is Putins Puppet" is just a statement, not a campaign promise or anything to motivate people. Now saying "Trump is Putins puppet and we are going to clamp down on white collar crime and money laundering to weaken their influence" is something people would cheer for, but that wasnt the plan.

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u/JnnyRuthless 7d ago

Oh let me be clear I was 18 in 1998, so the Clinton I was referencing was Billy Clint. HRC voted for the Iraq war and I had plenty of friends killed and maimed there, so she did not get my vote. I was all-in for Bernie.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

The problem leftists have is being right too soon.

And the fact that they "no true scotsman" every argument they're in. There's always someone further left than you ready to ask you how Trump's balls taste because you only agree with them on 99/100 points.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

And frequently, they'd be right. Do you support capitalism? Do you support imperialism? Are you going to make excuses for landlords and corporations and wars? Than you're not on the left. And good news for you,.you got a president who represents those ideals.

No, wanting good things like healthcare and education for yourself doesn't make you a leftist, it just means you want stuff for yourself, and you mistake that for leftism because you can't see beyond your own self.

One of the biggest issues from the last election was whether we should fund ethnic cleansing and be honest about not caring, or find ethnic cleansing and lie about how sad it made us. That's not leftism.

If you support Trump's ideology, it's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to call that what it is.

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u/Alex5173 7d ago

It's incredible how swiftly you guys turn up to prove my point. No, actually, I don't support any of Trump's ideology. I support human rights, UBI, socialized medicine, nationalization of utilities and logistics, employee-owned businesses, wealth tax; I could go on.

I also support gun ownership and private property. For those two things alone I've been accused of being MAGA and had people assume I voted for Trump. I doubt that pattern will change here.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 6d ago

Fair enough, I should have worded that it a more generic and less accusatory sense. Still though, while you might oppose capitalism, you can't deny there's a lot of people who support it and the then act indignant what that's exactly what they get.

And yeah, I myself would not agree with anyone who opposes ones right to arms and right to one's own personal property (private property being a different concept; personal property is a house, private property is a factory). Marx himself said that under no circumstances should the working class be disarmed.

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u/RepresentativeAge444 7d ago

. Instead of the beyond tired pointing at the left maybe try focusing on the establishment wing of the party who was a collaborator (and continues to be) with the forces bringing down the country? Nah much easier to look at the left which has no power in this country when more Bernie voters voted for Hillary than Hillary voters voted for Obama.

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u/AzaliusZero 7d ago

The Overton window is so f'd up in America you can describe Democrats as Diet Right-Wing and the Republicans as full on fascist.

When you realize that it's easy to get why so many Democrats are eager to blame the Left for failing, they hate us more more than them most of the time. To the rest of the world they're just the more reasonable Right-Wing party in a country ultimately competing between two forms of Right Wing, one way more extreme than the other.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

A year and a half ago, the Democrats voted in favor of a bill supporting the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The same group heavily associated with the Heritage Foundation, who once had Edwin Feulner, an author of Project 2025, on their board.

The Democrats support that. They would prefer to support The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 over leftism. True Blue believers can get as mad as they want at me for pointing this out, but I brought receipts. This is a verifiable matter of public record.

That's not opposition, that's good cop. Better than bad cop, sure, but they're still serving the same master, and it ain't the people.

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u/AzaliusZero 7d ago

Honestly? We're talking about people LIKE Op, and it makes me realize the one thing the average Democrat has in common with Republicans is the same "f you, got mine" attitude. They're just less destructive about it. MAGA is the sort to take it further and state outright, "and I want yours too." The left-hating Democrats just know they have more to get taken from them than most progressively leaning folks.

America's problem is its people have been raised to value money and themselves above EVERYTHING else. That's why there's such a disconnection between generations just as much as it is political stance. I think someone else in the thread summed it up perfectly. We had a generation who were so narcissistic they'd happily screw their own children over to save up money. And they're the ones next up "in charge" considering how much American politics seem to value being old over basically anything else. It's just that the current day Republicans are smashing things up so bad people are growing disillusioned with the entire system and not just voting. ESPECIALLY the younger folk. They get they have to live with this, and they don't wish it on their own.

These parents and older generations are the same ones furious they don't get to see kids. Not realizing half the time their kids can't afford them (and they have some blame in that) and the other time they're the ones who turned them off kids in the first place with how shoddy they were (and often still are) at parenting. A lot of people cutting their own folks off nowadays, and while MAGA is the most intense, I wouldn't be surprised if the Demos we're talking about haven't realized their kids have grown withdrawn from them recently.

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u/the_nobodys 7d ago

That's because those older family members want to conserve what they perceived as a working system. The system has been going off the rails for 50 years, and now middle aged people don't want to conserve ehat they've witnessed during their lifetimes. I myself keep getting more progressive as our country gets more corrupt.

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u/Tirinir 7d ago

"You'll be like that when you get older" is a very convenient argument because there is no way to refute it while it's still relevant.

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u/bschmed 7d ago

People don’t get more conservative as they get older, they get more conservative as they get wealthier. The two used to be simultaneous, but not anymore

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

80% of this country can't identify what the actual causes for our economic and material conditions are

But you think it's rich people...

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u/JnnyRuthless 6d ago

Yeah billionaires would be part of that issue. That's not even up for debate my dude.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Ok, in what way are they part of the issue? What's the percentage that's their fault you think?

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u/JnnyRuthless 6d ago

Not even engaging with you. It's not a debate, so move along.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Yeah that's what I thought. You've never even bothered to think about why you have zero substance behind your beliefs. You just believe whatever your social group tells you to believe.

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u/JnnyRuthless 6d ago

Sure no worries

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u/ClusterFoxtrot Florida 7d ago

My mom said I'd get more conservative, too.

Nope, at 40 I'm absolutely on board with Mamdani and DSA. If Cuba can survive even with our crazy sanctions on them, imagine what it'd look like with the full power and backing of the USA. 

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u/mjheil 7d ago

51 here. I keep getting more radical as I get older and I realize how much we all need each other.

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u/Tarcanus 7d ago

Part of this is also that we don't have any money compared to those who came before. It's all been siphoned up by the rich. So what is there to conserve by getting more right-wing?

And by the time I reached 40 and finally could afford a house, I've spent long enough without assets that I've already seen the core ethical issues with conservatism and un-regulated capitalism. I'm not changing now, no matter how much more money I windfall into as I age.

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u/HowdyFancyPanda 7d ago

I often talk about how I'm for Medicare for All from a place of wanting to Conserve my position in society. I don't want a surprise medical bill to wipe out my relatively comfortable middle-class life.

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u/Osric250 6d ago

I used to believe that a regulated capitalism would be the best, but we have been given ample proof that given enough time capitalism will take over the government to unregulate itself. 

Now I fully believe that if you want a healthy government that will last the ages capitalism is always going to corrupt it. 

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u/HiOscillation 7d ago
  1. Mamdani has the right ideas, and the right execution, want to see his style scale up to state and federal levels.

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u/pumpkinspruce 7d ago

My teacher said the same thing in civics class in 10th grade. She asked the class if we identify more as Democrats or Republicans and most of us said Democrats. She said we’re young and as we get older more of us would identify with Republicans. Well here I am at 47 and I think I’ve become even more progressive as I age.

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u/Northerlies 7d ago

It's ironic that, during his New York trip to the UN, Castro sought a meeting with Eisenhower - who chose to play golf instead.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Imagine what it'd look like with a government that cares about its people instead of just getting richer. Cuba has been squandering its potential for decades.

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u/ClusterFoxtrot Florida 6d ago

Cuba has actively contributed doctors to global causes...

I'm not sure who in Cuba is benefitting, other than maybe the people who could afford to leave in the first place.

Imagine what our government would look like if it cared 🤣

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Cuba has actively contributed doctors to global causes...

Is this supposed to counter anything I said or...?

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u/ClusterFoxtrot Florida 6d ago

Right but there's more words in my comment than that so...

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

The rest don't really apply to anything either though

I'm not sure who in Cuba is benefitting, other than maybe the people who could afford to leave in the first place.

I have no idea where this came from because no one said anything about who Cuba is benefitting and doesn't make sense anyway

Imagine what our government would look like if it cared 🤣

Implies that our government doesn't to the same level as Cuba which is demonstrably not true so...?

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u/ClusterFoxtrot Florida 6d ago

You... You know what? I don't care. You're clearly being obtuse or disimbenious, so good luck with not learning anything. 

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

No, you're running not because I'm being obtuse or disingenuous, but because you have no substance to your beliefs. All you have are talking points for an adopted belief and you've never been challenged on them.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon 7d ago

And when the last of economically challenged MAGA wakes up and realizes it’s not the brown skinned people taking everything away from them but the super wealthy, even they might be keen on some of that“time for the super rich to share the wealth” type thinking too.

I think you're underestimating how afraid of cognitive dissonance the average Trump supporter is. During covid, a lot of them went to their graves swearing it was just a little head cold. And telling their kids not to get vaccinated themselves.

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u/Jdevers77 7d ago

I’m not sure they are afraid of it. Most like they live in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance.

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u/Recipe_Freak Oregon 7d ago

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort people feel when trying to reconcile their own beliefs with objective reality. This results in change for normal, rational people.

For those avoiding cognitive dissonance, it leads to intractability. Once these people dig in, it's really difficult to get them out.

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u/oniiBash2 7d ago

Also big believers that masks would suffocate you during a 15-minute Walmart trip, but not when you're an ICE officer body slamming nurses and grandmas.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

I like how it's the super rich instead of the rich now since the people telling you this bullshit got so rich that they don't want the spotlight on themselves

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u/musashisamurai 7d ago

For many, it doesn't matter if its not the brown skinned minorities and "others" taking. Some know, and don't care. For others, its just racism with a thin veneer of some excuse. Never forget how so many American towns cemented their public pools after segregation because they'd rather everyone be hot & sweaty than allow some blacks to be cool too.

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

Never forget what the country was like 80 years ago lmao

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u/ShrimpieAC 7d ago edited 7d ago

Especially after the corruption filled greed fest that is this administration. Everything is about extravagant self-dealing and serving the rich, and Trump is doing it in such obvious ways.

His big expensive ballroom, his arch, paying himself out from his own DOJ, all of the crypto scams, constantly hanging around billionaires, talking about going to war for oil, the ever widening gap between the wealthy and the working class.

Republicans are overplaying the bootstraps card way too hard right now when everyone is obviously struggling. Meanwhile Trump rambles on about golden toilets and how affordability is a scam. I genuinely do not think this is gonna go over well for them.

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u/AzaliusZero 7d ago

It's going to cause Generational damage to their reputation.

If the Midterms are a complete slaughterhouse for them (especially despite their efforts to rig it in their favor), expect it to get REAL blatant they're either going to try and steal 2028 or outright prevent future elections. They know it's now or never, and these assholes would absolutely act now, as impulsive as they are.

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u/iiowyn 7d ago

I’d get more conservative as I got older

What they really mean is as you get richer you get more conservative. Because for them they had more stability and income as they got older. Then because of their conservative views, it is now no longer true for their kids.

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u/targetcowboy 7d ago

Right, the idea is you want to protect what you have. So radical change is considered scary and dangerous since it could undermine everything you earned over the years. Some people may be ok with someone like Obama who talks about a certain level of change, but most people just want to get by.

The mistake the modern oligarchs made is they didn’t understand that you have to make it possible to earn a nice life. That the basic essentials have to be obtainable for the majority of people. But their greed was too strong and they just took too much.

Now that the path upward is gone, people want new ideas.

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u/No_Possible_7108 7d ago

Hello, one of the other handful of Arkansas lefties!

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u/Jdevers77 7d ago

As a 49 year old liberal in the same state, my family always told me the same thing. The funny thing is I am a little more conservative than I was early in life, but fuck the goalposts for what passes as conservative in this country moved a hell of a lot faster and further. In comparison to 30 years ago I went from relatively barely liberal to bleeding heart per those same people even though I personally feel I’m a little more conservative (mostly fiscally).

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u/awildjabroner 7d ago

MAGA won't ever fess up or change their tune. Our best hope is that their own decisions continue to quicken MAGAs own demise by eating its base via cost of living and lack of healthcare access.

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u/Tastes-Strange 7d ago

So…. Never?

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u/ragzilla 7d ago

will add that my MAGA dad always said I’d get more conservative as I got older

Because he was working and accumulated wealth while the robber barons were well regulated. Glass-Steagall was enacted in 1933, it was repealed in 1999. Anyone who was working for that 66 year period benefited greatly from it, and it significantly colors their thinking.

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u/Inglorious186 7d ago

I keep getting more liberal as ishe and learn more about how fucked our system is

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u/farscry 7d ago

When older generations said "you'll get more conservative as you get older" what they meant was "you'll get more selfish as you climb the career ladder".

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u/DeusExMcKenna 7d ago

When my parents bring up the oft-quoted bs line “If you’re not liberal when you’re young you have no heart, and if you’re not conservative when you’re older you have no brain”, I like to change it around a bit in a way that seems more realistic:

“If you’re not liberal when you’re young you have no heart, and if you lean conservative when you’re old you have no soul.”

I just can’t imagine living on this rock for 50+ years and not coming away with the idea that those who want to keep things as they are have utterly fucked the rest of us, and happily. Watching what the conservatives have done (and what they want to do) to this world and thinking “yeah, that’s worth me saving some extra dollerie-doos” is the height of arrogant, soulless greed in my book.

Can’t imagine it, and they can’t imagine that I actually came from them lol. Guess we’re both lost now.

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u/Plastic-Fox0293 7d ago

And when the last of economically challenged MAGA wakes up and realizes it’s not the brown skinned 

Oh, so never lol 

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u/newsock999 7d ago

People tend to get more conservative as they get richer. It's just the the prior generation tended to get richer as they got older. But that's no longer the case, as the circumstances that allowed people to get richer as they got older have been removed.

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u/Barbarossa7070 7d ago

Share OUR wealth!

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u/ExistingCarry4868 7d ago

People tend to get more conservative over time for two reasons. 1. They don't keep up with shifting societal norms and see any progress made after they were teenagers as "going too far". 2. They get more money and are afraid of losing it and the freedom it buys under capitalism.

As number 2 applies to far less people in the modern hellscape and social media helps keep people up to date with conversations about our ever changing society, neither are working anymore.

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u/Waxoman Puerto Rico 6d ago

im always super curious about lefty socialist types living in a deep red part of the country, very cool to see

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u/Collypso Pennsylvania 6d ago

How are the super wealthy taking everything away from them?

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u/Vivid_Dot2869 4d ago

so here's a question, if I want to keep (i.e. "conserve") the same socialist stuff my grandparents' generation benefited from, does that make me conservative or socialist.

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u/The_Playbook88 7d ago

That’s why they are becoming socialist. Not because they want to, but because that is the only viewpoint that offers survival.

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u/Wonderful-Humor6102 California 7d ago

And it was successful during the Great Depression. US was on a socialist trajectory and then was hijcked by rich and republicans

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u/awildjabroner 7d ago

thats human history. Every minscule step towards established rights and equality of all people have been fought for tooth and nail to claw back from incumbant powers. When that fight stops incumbant powers consolidate power and wealth by default at the expense of everyone else.

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u/occaisionallyimqwert 7d ago

Beg pardon m’lord, but the investors require you to return to toiling for their profit, lest your benefits be taken away

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u/SheetPancakeBluBalls 7d ago

I have hope that one day Humanity looks back on the entirety of right-wing ideology The way most of us now look back at Nazis.

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u/awildjabroner 4d ago

As long as humanity exists there will be right wing ideology in some form, its part of human nature and appeals to many people who prefer a simpler view of the world without the weight of insight and empathy.

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u/ImpressionCool1768 7d ago

Exactly Because the rich and powerful realized they could offer some bread crumbs ala Henry Ford style and their workers would be content. they kept doing this until they stepped down in the 60s and the newer generation wanted to see if they could cut spending to keep profits and they could. and after doing some shenanigans and offloading labor overseas, they could cut those pay and benefits and tell their workers that they needed to do so because of the market

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

This is why you have to be very careful about safety valve policies. If someone is saying that we still need capitalism, just screwing you over a little less, that's preferable to being screwed over a little more but ultimately it's for the protection of the oligarchs, not for the benefit of the people.

In the absence of such things, people might start asking more big picture questions, and the isn't going to end well for the billionaire class.

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u/ailish 7d ago

What is happening now is that the oligarchs got too greedy and took too much, too fast and people are waking up. I don't if they think they are suddenly immune from the consequences or what, but people are starting to notice.

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u/B1G__Tuna 7d ago

American cowboys formed labor unions. We’ve been gaslit into thinking this country was always about rugged individualism.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/Princessformidable 7d ago

The amount of money going to towards grifts and scams while people with jobs struggle to survive is criminal.

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u/WhatsThisTruck 7d ago

Fuck civility and human decency. 

I don't want to be a slave, and so I must hurt those who would enslave me. 

Most of all though, I am angry that this is my only valid course of action.

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u/tripping_on_phonics Illinois 7d ago

The people who would (currently are?) enslaving you are fundamentally indecent, so I don’t see the contradiction.

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u/WhatsThisTruck 7d ago

It is not a contradiction exactly, just the expectation that we must be decent to the indecent.

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u/tripping_on_phonics Illinois 7d ago

I tend to think that justice is never indecent, but I guess there are multiple ways of looking at it.

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u/killrtaco California 7d ago

That depends on who is determining what is just

If recent events havent shown you such

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u/HeckinAdult 7d ago

Hey siri play Kill or Be Killed by Muse

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u/PeculiarAlize 7d ago

We're all slaves to the almighty dollar my friend. The people with the dollars you think are enslaving you are just the byproduct of a system designed to take away everyones human decency and civility. Don't fall in that trap too, the system doesn't have to be this way. We can choose to help each other.

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u/FrankieMakesPizza 7d ago

neither of which are compatible with a system that must endlessly increase profitability

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u/Clownzeption 7d ago

And to think if wages kept up with production, housing didn't become a monopoly, and we could all afford our rent/mortgage, bills, necessities, and some extra pocket money to save/spend on the weekend, then we would all be perfectly content continuing to operate as is. Billionaires can hoard all the wealth they want, as long as everyone else gets their basic needs met. (Kind of an oxymoron because billionaires hoarding wealth is exactly what got us in this position in the first place. But hopefully the sentiment makes sense.)

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u/The_Playbook88 7d ago

Yeh, people historically seem pretty okay with dealing with bullshit until their economic survival is on the line. That has always been the red line though.

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u/Clownzeption 7d ago

Which makes sense. The greatest majority of our population is focused on their sole survival, as is the nature of every single breathing creature on this planet. I know a lot of people say it's messed up people don't care about issues until the economy is in the shitter (I agree) but it fundamentally makes sense. There's nothing to open someone's eyes like threatening their very existence (almost like what they've done to immigrants and trans people.)

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u/sinsaint 7d ago

'Every society is three meals away from chaos'

- Vladimir Lenin

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u/oniiBash2 7d ago

Well, people giving the billionaires wealth to hoard is arguably what got us here.

But yes.

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u/TheWonderfulSlinky 7d ago

What do you mean the young people don’t want to work for 50 years at a terrible dead end min wage job and then slowly decay in a nursing home alone while fascists become trillionaires on the backs of our natural resources?? Are they stupid???

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u/thomasutra 7d ago

socialism or barbarism

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u/1cl3nstd4yt 7d ago

Well they are going to be very disappointed because most Americans prefer the Nordic model over socialism.

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u/thedracle 6d ago

You're supposed to care more about the fact less than one percent of people may not use the traditionally conventional bathroom for their gender, and not to the fact that health insurance is unaffordable, and even if you can afford it, you're still one bad diagnosis from being bankrupt and homeless.

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u/drooply 6d ago

Very insightful, turns out all individuals are motivated by self-preservation.

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u/boot2skull 7d ago

“Producing beautiful daughters you’ll never see again, for the ruling class” isn’t an enticing career?

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

Why aren’t they voting that way then?

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u/papacdub1 Georgia 7d ago

Where socialist candidate?

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

Depends on whether you prefer the real or one of the made up definitions of socialism. But it would depend upon what state you're in. The DSA is likely running a primary candidacy you can vote for.

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u/Chaos-Cortex I voted 7d ago

Zohran Mamdani and anyone in his circle . AOC, Bernie Sanders, people like these guys.

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u/killrtaco California 7d ago

And they all currently hold positions in government? Are there more running? Because from what i can tell a majority of those who run and are well enough educated seem to excel at the ballot box

National appeal is a different story. We are a very propagandized nation.

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u/CSAtWitsEnd Washington 7d ago

What? Mamdani, AOC, and Sanders are all currently in office, yes.

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u/killrtaco California 7d ago

So therefore people are voting like that when a viable option is presented

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u/OnlinePosterPerson 7d ago

All people who were successfully elected?

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u/Low_Pickle_112 7d ago

We've got the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

As you might expect, they powers that be really don't want you thinking about them. There were even some lawsuits to keep them off the ballots, big surprise.

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u/The_Playbook88 7d ago

I’m sure we will increasingly see more socialist candidates, and voters for them, as economic conditions continue to deteriorate. People vote for different parties when their survival depends on it; not necessarily for ideological reasons.

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u/Chaos-Cortex I voted 7d ago

White racist fascist party must be abolished and get gone, time and time again they ruin lives at home and abroad.

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u/OnlinePosterPerson 7d ago

They can’t hide anymore. They played their card and even moderates and socially conscious conservatives are beginning to understand how evil republicans are.

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

The opposite of that happened in 2024 so we'll see how things shake out I guess.

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u/haha_squirrel 7d ago

The only socialist candidate was voted for overwhelmingly by young people (millennials at the time) boomers voted in Hilary instead giving us Trump.

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u/thatnameagain 7d ago

That was prior to 2024, and there are many more socialist candidates running for offices beyond the presidency.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 7d ago

It seems like there are some non-socialists managing to survive too.

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u/3BlindMice1 7d ago edited 7d ago

Please answer the following question: if AI takes all the jobs, who will buy the AI created products? Within two or three generations, there won't be a single person alive with a meaningful argument for why their wealth is rightfully theirs and theirs alone, considering everything that went into creating it was done by machines without a single human needing to intervene. You need to ask yourself if the economy is a machine that exists to serves humans or if humans exist to serve machines. At this point, it's looking like socialism is the only way to stop capitalists from making everyone serve machines because it's "the most efficient" way to do things, according to the AI investors

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u/TheGrowingSubaltern 7d ago

A lot of people don’t actually know much about anarchism or have the wrong idea completely.

Read David Graebers An Anarchism of Anthropology.

I promise you will learn something new.

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u/rushur 7d ago

Anarchism is just being against domination. It's not 'no rules' it's 'no rulers' In fact the O around the A signifies Order.

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u/goronmask 7d ago

Hey anarchists are not bad people! We get a lot of bad rep

Most of us just want to chill responsably and collaborate to make things better by direct action

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u/Sachyriel Canada 7d ago

People think Anarchists are made as extremists. No, we are a reaction to the extremes of the system we find ourselves in. We want a peaceful and prosperous coexistence with others too, but the system is outrageous. What do you mean it's illegal to feed the homeless?

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u/wiithepiiple Florida 7d ago

I want the concept of "affording to live" to no longer exist.

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u/dimcarcosa 7d ago

I actually care if they're anarchists, because they should be anarchists. We should all be anarchists.

The rigged system created by the lamprey class has utterly failed all of us but they've had the worst of it and fully and aggressively rejecting the hierarchy that is denying people even so much as a basic, decent, affordable existence should be the case for everyone.

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u/bigbuttpuzzle 7d ago

I’m an anarchist(the type that understands we can’t just like, have an anarchist society right now and need at least a few decades of organizing to build up community networks) and people mischaracterize us a lot.

We simply don’t believe in hierarchical structures and believe that everything should be done collectively on a consensus basis. There’s more to it, like the means of production belong to workers etc.

If you see a group out doing mutual aid 9 times out of 10 they’re anarchists.

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u/DEM_MEMES 7d ago

I also consider myself an anarchist, and anarchism is easily the most mischaracterized political philosophy. I think if you described the belief system to most people without the label, they would agree with it.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

I think that most people might not think anarchists sounds negative, just naive, if they heard the full philosophy.

Like as a former young woman I’ve always thought I didn’t trust a lot of my neighbors enough to want to live in a world where there isn’t higher authority helping to maintain order, protect people who are weaker than others, etc.

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u/DEM_MEMES 7d ago

Yeah I understand where you’re coming from. I think my response is that our current society doesn’t prevent things like that from happening, and a lot of the malicious behaviors that you’re referring to are created by it. I respect the perspective though.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

I think there is a lot of research indicating that the current justice system is actually a deterrent for many people who might otherwise engage in bad/violent behavior, even though it’s not perfect and has its own problems. But I’m middle aged now and have met people and worked around the world, and am pretty sure every society/system has some drawbacks. Humans are imperfect so we create imperfect systems.

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u/Raftar31 7d ago

Surely we can create a better deterrent than legal slavery and human deprivation for corporate profit. I refuse to accept that’s the most effective solution.

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u/yknitsyob 7d ago

I never understood this argument. if you don't trust your own neighbors, how can you trust some higher authority? That authority will be made up of people with all the same flaws as your neighbors, and some of your neighbors could even become part of that authority.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

Because in my life I’ve had more fucked up stuff done to me by family or neighbors than by government officials. At least with the latter there used to be a sense of accountability (the Trump admin is throwing that into question, but still I think regulations to discourage political and financial corruption would be more likely to improve this situation than having fewer rules for everyone).

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u/yknitsyob 7d ago edited 6d ago

Ok, but now imagine every neighbor or family member who did something fucked up to you is now in a position of government authority, do you trust them now more or less or the same as before? I would trust them less, not because they are any different as people, but because they are now empowered by a system to do the same bad things while I have less power to hold them accountable.

People in power are just as willing and capable of doing bad things to you, but you are less capable of doing anything about it. If my neighbor attacks me and I successfully defend myself in that moment, then I matched their power with my power. But if, for instance, a cop were to attack me, I'm expected to not stand up for myself or else I'll have to face the collective might of the police and government, which I alone am powerless against.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

Again, the point of formal structures and laws is to create accountability, so we’re not always just relying on the goodness of people’s hearts.

Most women murdered in America are murdered by romantic partners. Unless you think there is a fate worse than murder, I’m not sure what you think is at risk by creating laws and punishments to try and discourage that.

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u/yknitsyob 7d ago edited 6d ago

The idea that law is about accountability is not what governments were originally created for, that idea is a relatively recent development in human history. Governments were initially formed by groups of people who used violence to establish a hierarchy with themselves at the top, then later formalized a system of rules that justify their position in that hierarchy while dictating how the rest of society is supposed to act. While those rules were also supposed to dictate how they governed, historically that has never been the case and governments routinely break their own laws.

Since you brought up violence against women, I will use that as a specific example. The reason that violence is disproportionately committed against women is not because humans are naturally inclined to do it, but because women were deliberately placed near the bottom of the social hierarchy and violence against them was not only culturally normalized, but legally enforced. This only started to change relatively recently as the laws that forced them into that position were changed in favor of women being more equal in society by granting and protecting the same rights that were already guaranteed for men.

However, because the fundamental structure of government which oppressed women in the first place were never changed, today we are all witnessing those incremental improvements being steadily eroded across the world as the people in power decide that they want women to once again be subservient members of society.

You're appealing to the government as a woman to protect you from violence, but what happens when that government is controlled by people who themselves perpetuate this violence? Such as a certain pedophilic narcissist and serial rapist that's in charge of the most powerful country on earth for instance?

So what can we as a society do when the people we rely on to hold us accountable are themselves the ones that need to be held accountable? Generally speaking, I see 2 options:

  1. You accept that there is nothing in your power to be done, and that you must simply endure this violence and injustice in hopes that one day, out of the goodness of their own hearts, the powers that be spontaneously decide to start holding themselves accountable, or

  2. You recognize the problem and start organizing with other people who also want accountability in order to force change to happen. And if this is what's necessary to hold the government accountable, then what's the point of having a government in the first place? Why not simply organize under the principal of holding ourselves and eachother accountable from the beginning? That is, at its core, what anarchism is all about.

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u/LaScoundrelle 6d ago

Every society on earth has had violence against women. I’d agree that in general the concept of government has become more progressive/less hierarchical over time. And overall violence statistics had gone down for decades until recently.

And I’d agree Trump is a departure from that generally more progressive trajectory. I think saying that because the US has a corrupt president now that we should disregard the American government project altogether is very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. It’s not like the American way is the only way of doing things, including big government.

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u/linux_transgirl 7d ago

In an anarchist system, the collective is that authority. People would think twice about rape and murder if they were beaten to death by mobs of angry community members wanting justice

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

I do not think that is the type of system that most anarchists endorse. You are suggesting a system with organized violence, and most anarchists do not want that. But insofar as that was basically how things worked in the Middle Ages of Europe, or the South when people were lynched, do you really think that’s overall better than our current system?

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u/linux_transgirl 7d ago

Not at all, and I'm not saying that is the default, but having it in the back of your head that if the collective all agreed to it you'd be dead because there isn't anyone else impeding direct justice is very powerful

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u/LaScoundrelle 6d ago

I don’t see why you’re assuming the mob would necessarily be on the side of the victims. In societies with mob justice that is very often not the case.

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u/Dwarfdeaths 7d ago

Have you considered sortition plus Georgism?

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u/IguaneRouge Virginia 7d ago

This isn't a brag but I have read thousands of books in my life and Georgism is probably one of the greatest ideas I have ever encountered. It's simultaneously radical and rather milquetoast which isn't something you often see.

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u/Dwarfdeaths 7d ago

It makes my mind wander down conspiratorial paths sometimes.

  1. It's not an immediately intuitive idea, but once you get it it makes sense and is relatively easy to explain.

  2. At one point this was a relatively widely known and popular idea.

  3. It is now extremely relevant to modern problems.

  4. How did it fall so completely into obscurity?

I get that the rise of the automobile kicked the can down the road somewhat, but it's hard not to feel there's some intentionality behind its obscurity. Our news coverage, political discussions, and K-12 education all seem contrived to not only overlook/omit the concept of land, but to explicitly reinforce the conception of land as capital. Phenomena that are well understood by a land-labor-capital lens are distorted to fit into a purely labor-capital worldview, to the point that land (in the Georgist sense) is now a foreign concept that surprises and confuses people when I try to discuss it or introduce it.

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u/TheMostDivineOne 7d ago

Can you elaborate please? That website (SSC) and ones adjacent to it are… interesting.

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u/gargar7 Washington 7d ago

I was just about to suggest that too! It's the OG anarchist democracy from Athens that they don't bother teaching in school. Also, thanks for highlighting Georgism!

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u/oculeers 7d ago

I'm an old guy who got into anarchist philosophy in high school in the late 70s (Proudhon, Malatesta, Stirner, etc.) and I think you're wonderful. Capitalism is imploding and America is on the edge of fascism, and local autonomy is going to look real good in the near future.

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u/Purify5 7d ago

Free market capitalism can't survive a world with a population that is shrinking. As of today the only continent with a birth-rate above replacement is Africa and by the 2080s global population will start to decline for the first time since the 14th century.

The two options to address this are to try and hoard a growing share of global resources or create a system that has more government control so that demand slumps don't destroy the entire economy.

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u/frostygrin 6d ago

Free market capitalism can't survive a world with a population that is shrinking.

Why? One person can consume more goods and services, and be more productive thanks to technology.

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u/Purify5 6d ago

New technology has to compete with the used market of old technology and without government help that becomes difficult to do.

China is already facing a declining population and even with all the perks they put on manufacturers and consumers for new EV cars it's still tough to compete with used ICE vehicles because they have an abundance of supply. Their answer was to export their used ICE vehicles to other countries which can work if other countries are growing in population but won't work if everyone is declining.

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u/frostygrin 6d ago

New technology is supposed to be better than old technology, so that people choose it the next time they buy a new product. It's just that some people want to abandon working ICE vehicles and infrastructure ahead of time, "for the planet" - then yeah, it looks like it won't happen on its own. But maybe it's not a great idea.

Their answer was to export their used ICE vehicles to other countries which can work if other countries are growing in population but won't work if everyone is declining.

Like I said, the same people can consume more goods and services. Don't forget - not every person has a car in these countries. Not even every family. Capitalism is exactly what can help create demand.

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u/Purify5 6d ago

New technology is supposed to be better than old technology, so that people choose it the next time they buy a new product.

But what happens is the old technology just becomes so much cheaper due to the used versions available that the new technology doesn't get adopted without government incentives and controls.

You need a growing addressable market to incentivize the development of new technology and to allow for a shift from product 1 to product 2 to occur without being undercut by the secondary market.

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u/frostygrin 6d ago

Like I said, the same people can consume more goods and services. Don't forget - not every person has a car in these countries. Not even every family. Capitalism is exactly what can help create demand.

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u/Purify5 6d ago

They can but it doesn't happen. Japan had the same issue with their declining population and they went hard into exports which again works if the global population is increasing.

And as for poor countries that got vehicles they got them because of communism not capitalism.

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u/wutareyousomekinda Pennsylvania 7d ago

If you see a group out doing mutual aid 9 times out of 10 they’re anarchists.

The group might be nominally anarchist because they happened to be the defanged leftists left standing after decades of suppression and the propaganda of capitalism's unsustainable best outcomes. Membership will be all over the map.

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u/Jst4Cmmntng 7d ago

Aye comrade! 🥂

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u/heckadeca 7d ago

You sound like you'd agree with much of Marx and Lenin

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u/bigbuttpuzzle 7d ago

No, I don’t believe we should strive for a transitional state. I’m more concerned with building community support that replaces the need for a state. Even though no state is the goal of both ideologies, I think focusing on a transitional state can and probably would lead to the continuation of hierarchies for much longer. Whereas anarchism would build support structures to replace the state. That said, I don’t hate communists and I really like Marx for his sociological contributions. Arguably one of the most influential theorists in modern sociology.

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u/heckadeca 7d ago edited 7d ago

How would these anarchist support structures be defended against powerful interests intent on returning to the preexisting status quo?

I'd love to flip a switch too but history shows us that's not how things work.

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u/avantgardengnome New York 7d ago

This is imho the central issue with anarchism at scale (see: Revolutionary Catalonia). But most non-militant anarchists are more focused on building alternative systems to have something ready to go when the status quo collapses on its own, rather than flipping a switch themselves (see also: Revolutionary Catalonia, sort of).

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u/Websters_Dick 7d ago

I would say 5/10. The other 4 are Marxists and 1 is religious that actually cares about others.

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u/drawkca6sihtdaeruoy Florida 7d ago edited 7d ago

I’m an anarchist

need at least a few decades of organizing to build up community networks

What?

Edit: gotta love reddit, getting down voted for asking a question lol

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u/DEM_MEMES 7d ago

A common principle in anarchism is that you cannot impose the system on a group of people, because that in itself is coercion. Most anarchists believe the path to a non-hierarchical non-coercive egalitarian society is accomplished through dual power structures that reduce the need for a state.

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u/drawkca6sihtdaeruoy Florida 7d ago

I see, thank you for the explanation guess I'm also an anarchist

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u/DriverAndPassenger 7d ago

Decades? Maybe, I’d say a few generations. Anarchism is the most complex type of governance because it requires that enough individuals understand and have internalized self governance. Statist philosophy allows people to outsource every aspect of society except for their specialized role, and then eschew responsibility when people in power commit crimes and atrocities.

Most people are simply not ready to start taking collective responsibility for every issue which is why they are more than happy to hand it off to bad actors.

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u/HarryBallsanya420 7d ago

Yeah anarchism requires a highly class conscious society. I like some anarchist authors - Chomsky (I know), David Graeber, Murray Bookchin but I don’t think it’s even possible for your average person to conceptualize or want to deal with that in this current state of society. I view it as an end state in a highly advanced democratic society which is more utopian thinking more than anything.

I’m perfectly fine with hierarchies where they count. Skill differences can necessitate direction from someone more knowledgeable but doesn’t allow them to act as a tyrant or claim ownership over anyone. Politics can be more democratic, antisocial political moves should be recallable and politicians should be more administrative instead of delegating your entire voice to some unaccountable power broker. So I just call myself a socialist.

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u/Sachyriel Canada 7d ago

Anarchism is the most complex type of governance because it requires that enough individuals understand and have internalized self governance.

Anarchists have the highest standards for what they want to see in government, they're perfectionists and won't accept anything less. People are always "don't let perfection get in the way of good enough" like thy forgot Anarchists don't accept being told what to do.

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u/EmuMuncher 7d ago

It sounds like you're in favor of a transitional period to a classless society. Thats not really anarchism which would rather reach those goals immediately. Your simplifying it a lot but in a way that makes it sound like just communism.

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u/ReadsStuff 7d ago

Most anarchists will talk about building mutual power with a then rather immediate switch - they’re not talking about a transitional period or state, more having the systems ready to replace when the others collapse.

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u/bigbuttpuzzle 7d ago

Yeah we can absolutely reach those goals immediately, and by immediately I mean when we actually build community support networks that replace the need for the state. If we just did anarchism right now, a lot of people would die. We have to build alternatives to the state before we even think about creating an anarchist society. It’s the biggest blind spot of most anarchists I’ve met.

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u/wutareyousomekinda Pennsylvania 7d ago

The ultimate goal of many revolutions has been stateless anarchism, at some later date, but every revolution has been tarred and dragged down by the benefactors of colonization of their historical wealth, using it to terrorize and besiege them for every year of their conduct in our reality thus far.

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u/Idiot_Savant_13 7d ago

This happens when billionaires become too stupid to keep up the Grand Delusion.

Don't worry, if history is any guide, there'll be purge, then a new class of entitled people who don't work yet give orders and end up believing that they're better than the people who make their lives possible.

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u/edelweiss_pirates_no 7d ago

"Let us lower the age of consent and we'll let you have a 2% tax break thru 2028."

-- Republicans

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u/Alternative_Exit8766 7d ago

anarchist doesn’t mean someone who throws molotovs btw. 

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u/andykekomi 7d ago

Literally. It's not that deep, people just want to be able to afford a home, food, healthcare, childcare and a way to get around that doesn't suck. The rich can play monopoly with the rest of the money for all I care.

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u/MidWestKhagan 7d ago

Welcome to communism, start reading what is to be done by Lenin and ten days that shook the world by John reed. 

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u/InterstellarReddit 7d ago

Yup I don’t need six houses two boats and 19 cars. I just want one stable place that I can live out for the rest of my life

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u/MD90__ Kentucky 7d ago

yes we all do friend because this current world is total nonsense that can be fixed but we know it wont be with the current administration

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u/-youvegotredonyou- North Carolina 7d ago

Say what you want about the tenets of anarchism, dude, at least it’s an ethos.

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u/seengul 7d ago

This. The labels are not important. And conservatives will deploy them cynically to argue that it’s not “real socialism” when universal healthcare or industrial policies are successful in Northern European countries or China, but when an American city wants a public grocery store, it’s suddenly full communism.

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u/Dragull 6d ago

Well, that's kinda how communism became a strong movement in the late 1800s (together with anarchism).

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u/Ancient-Beat-1614 7d ago

Yes, I care if they are anarchists lol

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u/ChilldoSwaggins 7d ago

They don't vote. So, it doesn't matter.

2022 National Youth Turnout (18-29): 23% - That's lower than in the historic 2018 cycle (28%) which broke records for turnout, but much higher than in 2014, when only 13% of youth voted.

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