this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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Or because they recognize that optics affect the reception of the message and with America pumping out decades of anti-communist propaganda during and after the cold war, using Marx's language will get you ignored at best by a lot of people.
Marx didn’t use the term “late-stage capitalism”. Nor even “late capitalism” which, at least has a proper definition and some theory behind it. “Late-stage capitalism” is an undefined internet term from the last 10-15 years
Certainly not “Marx’s language”
We shouldn't concede defeats to the anti-communist witch hunters in any field, especially language. To do otherwise would be implicitly accepting their worldview as the correct one. Instead we should dismantle the weak supports for their anti-communism / anti-marxism in the first place, which isn't difficult for any person whose attention can be drawn to the mass suffering capitalism causes.
It takes a bit more effort to engage with people using language that will be more likely to reach them but if you want to get someone to understand, and are capable of it, speaking to them in their native tongue is more effective. When talking to someone who has never been given a basic understanding of communism, or who has been given an intentionally misleading false understanding, while you have, you can say things that do not translate because you are effectively speaking a different dialect of English from them. When you say 'I'm a Stalinist-Marxist Communist,' that translates as 'I am a genocider-terrorist mother-fucker.' They are less likely to understand you than a person from Kazakhstan because at least the Kazakh hasn't been trained to hate you. Learning to say things in the local tongue is the only way to bypass the filter long enough to get them to learn the better definitions of all those words.
Meanwhile in the real world, even libertarian cato institute found that communism and socialism are popular among anybody who's not a fossil https://www.cato.org/blog/new-poll-nearly-half-americans-dont-know-what-americas-250th-celebrating
Not only that, but the numbers are rising since their poll last year https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much-thats-problem-libertarians-must-fix
So, it's pretty clear that there is no optics problem in practice. The reality is that liberals are just opposed to socialism because they represent the left wing of fascism.
The optics isn't for people who are already saying they like socialism. It's for the people who recognize the Democrats aren't meeting the moment but still think socialism is when taxes.
Who cares about them, the polls I linked show that there's already a critical mass of people who support socialism. These are the rational people to focus organizing efforts on.
Because voting has been historically the most effective way to defeat fascism.
Got'eem
So your plan is to get the people who don't care enough to vote, to show up with a gun?
No, only an absolute imbecile would suggest that. My plan is to educate people and do what I can to help organize people outside a rigged political system in order to build an actual worker movement with teeth such as MAS in Bolivia. This starts with building unions, mutual aid groups, tenant organizations, and so on.
So again, you can't get them to vote, but they're going to mass organize.
Somehow people in other countries manage to do it, but I suppose it's always possible that Americans are a special breed of stupid.
"You can't get them to vote for genocide, but you think you can get them to organize against it?"
Uhhhh yeah man, pretty much
Why would people who want socialism vote for people maintaining capitalism? Why would you equate participating in bourgeois elections as an indicator of motivation of all political action?
There's ~40-50% of US potential voters who don't vote for various reasons- Living in a state where the results are almost guaranteed, being alienated from politics in general because of the distrust in our government as a whole, leftists who don't vote but are politically active in other ways, etc. There's also people who do vote because they feel like they have to vote against the worse choice. If only all this alienation and lesser-evilism and feeling ineffective politically could be siphoned into a mass movement that helps all of us. Capitalism cannot be "fixed" if a group of people who don't vote suddenly start voting. That's pure fantasy. But it seems people who believe this would rather hope for a fantasy situation than actually looking at reality and adjusting their strategy to make things better. Otherwise, you'll just delay necessary change and feel resentment toward people who couldn't convince you fast enough.
You seem to think that people refuse to vote because they don't care. If 2024 showed us anything, it's that people actually care a great deal more than the liberal zionists were expecting, and are willing to exercise their leverage about it.
Those people are already much closer to showing up with a gun than any liberal who thinks that participating in civic rituals is the be-all end-all of political action.
Voting for capitalist parties isn't praxis, you dunce.
I sympathize with this argument, but think that it's relevance is mostly behind us. People will only believe what they're told to believe and hate what they're told to hate as long as they buy in to the ideology, as long as their ruling class provides enough comfort to keep them satisfied and distracted. Now that capitalism is failing to do that, people are explicitly looking for alternatives, and in a time like this it does us no favors to hide. Now is the best time to be an out and proud communist.
For a lot of people, you're right. For a lot of other people, the alternative they're looking for is fascism. Not explicitly-normal people don't consider themselves fascist. But they know America is no longer working for them and the fascists are telling them who to blame and presenting a bold vision for the future. For the same reason the fascists can't publicly call themselves fascists, the communists and socialists should be careful who they use that label with. Many still think any socialism will mean they pay more in taxes. If you present them with socialism, you will have to dispell a bunch of myths before you get to what you actually think should be done. You'll be on the back foot. Once they warm up to the ideas you propose, pull back the curtain and say what you've been talking about. Know your audience, I guess is what I'm saying.
We're in the tail. The cold warriors are dying, but not dead. Their legacy will remain for a while longer.
Their legacy may remain, but every day that legacy gets more tattered, tarnished and stained in the public eye. The current crop of capitalists may not realize it, but right now they're some of communism's best ambassadors.