like i know these people are technically meant to be our allies because they don’t own the means of production, but how the fuck do you spend more than my family’s annual income on fast food? how are we meant to find common ground with people who are able and happy to do this?
edit: turns out this is a repost. sorry. but still, i standby my disgust
Guy seems to be a shitty person and wage thief from other context provided in the comments. Also, terrible taste in food.
However, without that context and going by the post comment, it really seems a bit like unproductive bucket-crabbing and othering of fellow working-class people for winning the genetic lottery and not being born in poverty in a shit, hierarchical system based on inequality. Basically, to me, it seems like doing the work of promoting division in the working-class for free.
Should someone stuck under the thumb of an agricultural or meat processing plant wage-slaver think the same of yourself? World’s shit enough without the in-fighting.
Dunk on this guy because he’s a wage thief or has no culinary taste, not because he makes at least enough to rent a cardboard box in a nice part of Stockton.
If he was sharing this like “hey look at this” maybe, but they say “wow I had NO CLUE”
Who the fuck doesn’t realize theyve spent more than 25k in 1 year, thats more than I make even!
Solid point. Makes me think the original post was intended as something like a “humble brag”. I highly doubt that anyone making less than 7 figures is not going to realize that they spent $25k.
I wasn’t trying to other anyone, i was being kind of genuine: how are we as communists meant to find common ground with people so disconnected from the concept of economic hardship that they can throw money around like this? normally you can communicate your ideas to people and be understood (even by conservatives if you phrase it right) because at the end of the day, most people under capitalism are fucked over and living under capitalism sucks, but for this guy it presumably doesn’t suck. how do you get it through to someone like this that the current system is unbearable? because surely it doesn’t feel unbearable from where he’s standing.
I’m a leftist (anarchist) and have experienced poverty, middle income, and various places in between. I have colleagues that absolutely don’t notice that they’re being fucked and have made organizing a pipe dream because of it (might be a good change to come from the LLM parasitism but I’m not holding my breath).
I’d suggest that, in many cases, we can’t. It’s like a cult for some, being in denial that the rug can be yanked out from under them inspite of numerous examples in the last decades, and they may never snap out of it until they get burned. Others may be well aware or open to learn. Best to build postive mutually-supportive community, educate, and welcome those that wish to help.
What I’d say is a good thing to keep in mind is that all working-class people, regardless of income, face some kind of struggle. Economic, health, family, or any number of other things. If it weren’t known that this guy was a shit person with shit taste, I could think of a number of reasons from my experiences and those of people that I’ve known that could result in similar expenses.
For example, if one were a sole provider, with a disabled spouse, needing to commute 3-4 hours to afford to support their family in a high COL area, I can see such costs being accrued as it would be the only way to keep everyone fed.
That’s one of the “lovely” features of the currently widespread economic systems, wherever your income lands, there’s something waiting to worry about to keep you from spending too much time thinking about reorganizing society to allow everyone to benefit from technological advances, rather than a hereditary oligarchy. Solidarity is how we win.
I think most bourgeois class traitors come to the left of their own accord, they aren’t really convinced by anyone and we don’t need to make any effort to attract them, they are very rare anyway.
In terms of the middle class, their privelege has been a product of the material abundance brought about through Western imperialism, they are all going to be squeezed into the lower socio-economic working class in the near future, as the system continues to cannibalise itself. Really the main aim just has to be establishing class consciousness and organisation among the working class. That way there will be a pre-existing narrative for these downwardly mobile people to integrate with and understand their situation through.
It’s very hard to convince people who are materially wealthy to align with such a radical cause as Marxism. The only real avenue I could see is perhaps through presenting a very socially liberal Marxism (anti-drug war, pro individual freedoms, strongly anti-climate change, internationalist etc.), basically building Western Marxism in line with social/cultural liberal values and concerns even whilst our economic values are solidly Marxist. Basically the opposite of what class reductionists think we should do. That ought to be our strategy on an ethical level anyway, but I think the strategic value of such an approach is often underestimated.