this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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me_irl
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Maybe the solution is to just... stop saying its name?
If the ideas are extremely popular, but the terminology is extremely unpopular, the solution seems obvious. Cut it out with the scary Marxist words and express the ideas in less vilified language.
That's been my approach with face to face conversations with some of my more right leaning (idiot) coworkers. Never, ever use the word "socialism". It'll scare em off. Describe its components and it's amazing how much of of it they're just on board with cuz it makes sense.
And that's usually where I leave it... hopefully the seed takes root and they realize on their own later that all these awesome sounding things wrapped up into one package is socialism, but if it comes from me they'll reject it immediately.
Tell em you heard Dump is becoming socialist by collecting money from everyone to support the Epstein class. Actually don't use his name at first and say you heard politicians are starting a socialist movement to take everyone's money and redistribute it to the people who own things so it can trickle down again.
Sounds like the old fashioned Capitalist solution of a RE-BRAND is called for.
Well just call it Neo-Socialism, fuck it up a little so it isn't perfect and doesn't work as promised, but still makes money for the wealthy, and struggle with the poor implementation for another century, before we have another Civil War.
That's called social democracy and we tried that already with FDR and the New Deal. There were 2 compromises; stay capitalist but with high taxes on the rich and heavy regulation, and make sure black people can't benefit from the social programs.
Those 2 compromises doomed the project because after the civil rights movement successfully forced the government to extend benefits to black people the business community (which remained powerful because of the former compromise) was able to use the racist backlash to dismantle the social safety net and eliminate the taxes on the rich almost entirely.
If you don't curtail the power of big business they will seize upon every opportunity to undo whatever progress you've made, and racism provides them a perfect opportunity.
I fully agree that the reconfiguration of our government will include the basic axiom that the government's and money supply's primary objective is to serve the people, not business or the wealthy.
Those entities will be made to understand they operate their businesses and fortunes at the pleasure of the American people, and the moment they start using their money to benefit themselves at the expense of the Citizens is the moment their corporations are seized by the government to be operated for the benefit of the nation, their fortunes confiscated, and the Capitalist criminals imprisoned.
After that, the rest will fall in line quickly. They work for us, not the other way around.
We've had periods in the US where the government passed powerful anti-trust legislation, broke up monopolies, and even nationalized certain industries. It should be clear from the current situation that this state of affairs didn't last. As long as the underlying economic system allows people to accumulate wealth and then leverage that wealth into power no reforms that oppose the interests of big business will last. Even the Nordic social democratic countries are constantly having to fight austerity policies pushed by their business communities.
The only way to break this cycle is by collectivizing the means of production and abolishing private property (in Marxian economics this refers specifically to the means of production being privately owned and involved in an economic enterprise employing wage labor). I personally believe that social democracy can be an important step in the right direction, but if we stop there it just won't last.
Liberalism tried that, it turns out it is just capitalism but with a few extra bonuses for the haves and a bit extra oppression for the have nots. It's feel good capitalism. It's also why people will argue about whether Nordic Capitalism is or isn't Socialism. Just because they don't call it socialism. But they have universal healthcare, progressive social rights, strong worker unions, universal free education. BUT, they don't socialize the means of production, thus it is not socialism.
It turns out, that if a country historically gets rich enough from pillaging and plundering poorer countries, you can fake all the popular progressive policies without actually going into actual socialism. See also, Switzerland, or “never ask a Swiss bank how they got so rich”.