We’ve reached the second iteration. There isn’t a lot separating us from the third iteration. And the material conditions were bad enough, at the latest, sometime between the first and the second iterations.
People know socialism exists. People are experiencing sufficiently bad material conditions that they want change.
People have picked up neoliberal ideas from living in a neoliberal society. These ideas give people a framework to process their material conditions so that they do not rise up in sufficient numbers. People need to learn that these ideas are part of an ideology designed to enrich the owner class at the expense of the worker class. Things will continue to get worse unless people understand that everyone needs to own their work.
This education is work that still needs to be done after hypothetically defeating the current fascist dictatorships and is probably part of what will be needed to defeat them.
I keep having this conversation with people and seeing the accelerationist line of reasoning, so I wanted to address it with a visual.
This is an anti-accelerationist meme. I thought that was mostly self-evident, but I suppose I should have spelled that out. Any ideology can be susceptible to accelerationism. The point of this meme was that socialists seem to still arguing that the material conditions are not bad enough. They’ve been bad enough for a while and there’s not a lot of room left for them to get worse before we get death camps. edit: typo
I haven’t met a lot of socialists into accelerationism, but then I stay away from tankies
I was recently discussing this with a user who does not strike me as a tanky. I can link the comment chain to you if you want, but it’s in my comment history. It’s not so much a case of full blown accelerationism, but it’s largely the same principle. Like the material conditions do need to be bad for people to want change in the form of new ideas, but we reached that point awhile ago. edit: typo
I didn’t check out the convo, but being an accelerationist does not just require observing that different circumstances produce different societies, or that people tend to revolt when things go south, but requires actually wanting things to get worse so the conditions will change quicker and people are more likely to revolt.
They are arguing that the reason we aren’t experiencing a socialist revolution now is that people’s material conditions are insufficiently bad and that things need to get worse. It’s troubling because I think it leads otherwise leftist people to sit on their hands and wait when there is a need for anti-neoliberal propaganda.
Which I would like to try to take a crack at next. I was hoping to motivate others to do the same with this post. Looks like I could use some work though, this meme seems to be have been so-so at best. It inspired some discussion at least.
Then what they are saying is straight up accelerationism. I’ve never understood that belief, as you aren’t really guaranteed that people will join the revolution on the side of socialism. Fascism f.ex often feeds rather successfully on discontent people
Edit: Not to forget the suffering caused by making things worse as well.
It is, but it’s coming from an otherwise socialist perspective.
In this most recent discussion, this is what it boiled down to.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25671921
how cruel and shortsighted