Question about Michael Moore: Having watched Capitalism: A Love Story recently, I noticed quite a few things in there that appeared to be leftist dog whistles, especially at the end. Is there a chance that Moore might be at least somewhat of a closet comrade, or am I just hearing what I want to hear?

I think his primary role is that of a propagandist, and I mean that in a good way, of course. His job is to highlight the hypocrisy and inherent unfairness of the system to ordinary people, and he’s been relatively successful at that. I don’t disagree that he’s genuinely democratic socialist, but if his message did suddenly become more radical and “outside the mainstream”, would he be able to reach as many people as he has been able to reach so far?

I definitely agree with your point here, but I also think that the form of the transition matters a great deal. I often wonder if a future transition to socialism might be served better by focusing on eliminating capitalist class relations as opposed to imposing central control over markets. In other words, a form of market socialism with layers of worker and/or community control over workplaces and the economy, as opposed to a top down state capitalist system. The idea being that as the economic sphere is democratized, decentralized and democratic economic planning would be much easier to implement.

Some potentially unpopular opinions I have:

• Identity and narrative are critically important topics for any left mass movement, and aren’t discussed nearly enough in spaces like this. This is especially true considering the current collapse of the establishment cultural narrative, which presents both an opportunity and an enourmous risk . If you’ve seen Hypernormalisation, than you probably understand what I’m talking about.

• We don’t have nearly enough discussion about our own personal experiences and emotions, and how they relate to how we see the world. It’s perfectly normal for these things to influence our views, of course, but I think that if we don’t self-analyze and discuss these things, it potentially creates a toxic environment for ourselves and others, and potentially leaves us open to manipulation.

• Even if it has no chance of succeeding as a means to achieve socialism, electoralism is still useful for the following reasons:

1. It provides a platform for organizing and spreading ideas.
2. It provides us a way to force a public confrontation with the ruling establishment and expose their hypocrisy in the eyes of the public, as Lenin has talked about.
3. It provides a front for more radical elements to do various activities like those I just mentioned, and gives them a sense of public legitimacy they might not otherwise have. This is why you had both IRA and Sinn Fein, PLO and Black September, etc.

I got some good news for you… This sort of exists already in Jackson MS, and is relatively successful so far: https://cooperationjackson.org/

Interesting. I haven’t seen this. I’ll have to watch it and get back to you.

So, just watched the video. It doesn’t seem like taking the money has changed their ideology in any way, since they are still very much anti-capitalist. It does seem like there might be a risk of dependency, but they appear to be pretty aware of that.

What I thought was interesting about the video is that Peter Buffett appears to be vocally anti-capitalist, which is a little strange. This article talks about it in more detail:

Unlike his billionaire father, Buffett is pessimistic about American capitalism. “We are in the midst of a collapse,” he says. He favors the small and local over the big and global, quoting Belgian designer Thomas Lommée, who says “the next big thing is a lot of small things.” NoVo funds think tanks like the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, named after the economist E. F. Schumacher, the author of the 1973 classic, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. “We’re trying to knit back together the community and the land that feeds us,” Buffett says. “If we can provide a non-prescriptive model, we can spread the word and likewise learn from other communities as well.”

Yeah, I’m skeptical too, but it does seem strange. He also doesn’t seem to be trying to appeal to leftists, so I wonder what his intended audience is.

I’ve noticed that with at least some right-wingers I encounter, since they are primarily concerned with protecting “tradition”, are more agreeable to arguments against capitalism that focus on the breakup and commodification of communities, families, etc.

Generally speaking, they see the things they care about being destroyed, but they don’t understand the real root cause, and so that makes them easy targets for people who want to shift the blame away from capitalism and the rich towards lgbt people, racial minorities, women, and other groups.

If you can successfully shift the blame back to the elites and the system that props them up, you might actually be able to get enough to begin to change their opinions on things.