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
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.