Like many of you, I’ve had to spend a lot of time with family over the last few days. For me, it’s been day and night with my dad’s side of the family. The class background of this side of my family range from cousins who make well into six figures and a couple who have large homesteading operations to an uncle whose net worth is somewhere north of $40 million. Every single one of these cousins is set to inherit millions (and I want to clarify, this is NOT my own situation as while my dad had tremendous privileges, he didn’t leverage those into making any real money. I’m not inheriting anything and will likely be supporting my parents when they are old).
In past years, when we’ve gotten together politics is often avoided. That hasn’t been the case this year. I was taken aback by just how often communism, socialism, Mamdani (we don’t live anywhere near NYC), and “unfair taxes” came up. These people are not “liberals” in the sense that most people outside of here mean it, they are all full-blown conservative reactionaries. For reasons around protecting my physical safety, this is not a group of people with whom I share my politics; I’m pretty adept at avoiding these discussions and usually just gray rock folks when I’m stuck in them. I typically just listen and observe.
I’ll be honest, it was pretty demoralizing up until last night (and I’ll get to why things changed last night shortly). To regularly hear people who don’t have the slightest clue what they are talking about, and to speak with such confidence about things I know are not just wrong, but go against everything I believe in all with the constant hum of Fox News on in the background… it was wearing me down. Just to give you a few examples:
A cousin who is in her 40s and has never worked but owns 2 houses and three cars was talking about the time she lived in Russia for a couple months a few years ago. She had nothing but bad things to say about the people there, and everything was the fault of communism. Just completely talking out of her ass. People are rude because life was so bad under communism. People don’t know how to think for themselves because they weren’t allowed to do so in the USSR. No one will ever share food because they all starved before capitalism came in. On this last point, another cousin asked if there was a huge famine right at the end of the USSR. That was a bridge too far for me, I had to chime in to say that she was thinking about the 1990s, after the USSR fell,and how destroying the socialist structures that were in place in order to bring in capitalism is what really did the damage. On this point, family didn’t really respond and moved the conversation in a different direction, but I get the feeling my point was treated wit h skepticism despite the fact that these family members know that history is my thing. The American overconfidence in topics they know nothing about is real.
The topic of estate planning and taxes came up, too; I think because some of my uncles have been talking to their kids about their plans for when they die. One of my younger cousins – who is not rich herself but set to inherit enough to have her set for life – had to ask her dad “OK, but what do you think will happen to your estate if there’s a socialist revolution in this country? Will they just take everything? I really think that could happen here, I think that’s close”. While normally that would give me a lot of hope, since the petite bourgeois appear to be scared, I know what this cousin actually meant was “what happens if AOC is elected president and the Democrats win the house and 60 seats in the senate in 2028”.
Lots of other examples. Talking about how “socialism never works” so of course Mamdani is going to ruin NYC. Utter contempt for the idea that anyone who claims to be a “democratic socialist” could win any election in the US. Completely dismissing the idea that the economy is anything other than going great right now, and the people who are complaining that they can’t afford a house are all just lazy poors.
Then last night, that richest uncle paid for us all to have a private room at the most expensive restaurant in town. The display of excess in the restaurant was topped only by hearing conversations about the kinds of things my family was spending money on. All of these things I’ve mentioned had an effect on me. It made me feel isolated, sure. But worse, it just made me feel like the future we want to build is just so far away.
It all felt suffocating, so I told my wife I needed some time, and asked if she could watch the kids. I stepped out onto this empty patio. Taking a few minutes away from these people by myself really helped me see things clearly. I know a lot of what I’m going to say is honestly not particularly insightful. But it felt that way at the time to me, and I wanted to share in case it could help someone else here:
These people are the enemy. They are disproportionately represented in my family but it’s likely you know someone like them. They’re the ones who would have fought in the White Army. They would have supported Franco or Mussolini or Chang Kai-Shek to the hilt. They speak with confidence about things they know nothing about because seeing the world as they do justifies their entire existence and everything they have.
Let the demsocs worry about winning them over; being a revolutionary communists means we don’t need them - in fact, we will stand opposed to them from the other side until the revolution is won.
We can argue over where “the line” is. Maybe it’s the top 10% of wealth holders. Maybe it’s anyone who doesn’t live paycheck to paycheck. Or maybe for a more “Settlers” line, it’s most of the white working class plus the bourgeois. Wherever you want to draw that line, you are on one side and there’s a whole group of people on the other side. You’re not going to convince folks on the other side of the line that socialism is the correct path, of course. But you shouldn’t even worry about their thoughts and opinions; either directly through them or through their media. Maybe it’s actually a good thing they have warped views of reality, it might allow our work to go unnoticed for longer. They are blinded by their own self-interest. They surround themselves with media and opinions that reinforce that self-interest because it soothes them. And because we live in a society of such deep capitalist hegemony, all their uninformed, distorted opinions on socialism get treated like gospel. But it’s all a facade. Don’t let it get you down. Spend your time and mental energy among the workers, understand their concerns about their lives and show how socialism is the only answer. Do that while these bougie and middle class assholes comfort themselves with lies about socialism, and they won’t even see it coming.
Everyone say it with me: On it's worst day, Cuba is a better country than the United States will EVER fucking be.