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.
Knowing that there are alternatives should, in theory, be enough for the purpose of getting their foot in the door to learn more. People do need to learn more, but the issue is that most people seem to have little interest in doing so despite knowing there is an alternative they could learn more about.
This is the roadblock that stops people from going further and it’s not an accident. People have been subjected to neoliberal propaganda that pushes an owner class first economic model. There are underlying assumptions people have that the extractive economic institution of capitalism is the only model that can work. When, in the US, we have known since monopolies starting forming at the start of the 20th century that capitalism is a zero-sum winner take all system that isn’t sustainable. That’s why we regulate anti-competitive practices to try to prolong the inevitable. edit: typo