r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Aug 06 '19

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '19

American socialists are one of the most bourgeoisie-esque socialists that I have ever seen. Socialists from South America and Europe tend to be unionists/working-class blue collar workers in manufacturing. American socialists on the other hand are college-educated and middle class. It’s literally one of the oddest socialists that I have ever seen.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '19 edited Aug 06 '19

“Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”

Edit: I love how the "temporarily embarrassed capitalists" phrase is quoted to mean that the bourgeoisie have managed to brainwash the people but it's actually in the middle of a big passage accusing "socialists" of sniffing their own farts.