In the mid 20th-century, people reliably got more petty bourgeois as they got older.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000452
Yep, correlation, not causation. Getting older doesn’t cause it.
There’s a much better correlation between wealth and conservatism than age. Almost like those who begin to benefit from the system of oppression are incentivesed to keep it going.
If something, as years roll on talking to people with different experiences enriched me as a person.
my experience is the opposite
I was slightly conservative when I was young. Now I don’t know what political orientation I have
Many of us realized that the simplistic labels don’t apply. We have views on issues, some of those views are quite clear and others less so, but you can’t capture our positions in a few words.
Any opinions at all?
they probably are too privileged or can’t form an opinion by themself
Quite rude towards a total stranger simply admitting they don’t know something yet, but okay.
Honestly, if your goals include conserving an inhabitable environment for the human race in the future, conserving a semblance of wealth for everyone but the top, like, dozen people on Earth, conserving the rights of workers and consumers against an overwhelming opposition, conserving democracy for future generations (and all that against the best efforts of a supposedly “conservative” party), your parents may have been right.
What if my goals include family values, such as opportunity for my kids to earn a good living, live a long and healthy life, enjoy the environment, in a world better than the one I had?
Then you have to join in the fight for those things and educate yourself. This world is not getting better, and the reason for that is the productive political economic system in which we live.
I have the same values and I am a Marxist communist. That means I work for political struggle with the systems that oppress and exploit to for improving conditions for all, and also work to try and educate workers about the class dynamics of this struggle, and the revolutionary potential of the working class.
I have become aggressively more anti-capitalist as I’ve grown older. At 56, with a nice professional career mostly behind me, I am vigorously ANTIFA EAT THE RICH ACAB.
Well some people never learn I guess.
Some of us learn better lessons.
I am becoming more annoyed by young liberals as I get older but I’m sure as shit not turning GOP conservative.
The people who told me that were 100% boomers. There’s that idiotic saying “if you’re not liberal* when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no brains” ok boomer.
Note this is using the US meaning of liberal, not to mean “capitalist”.
The one I’ve heard replaces “brains” with “money.”
To the point at least. The impression I always got was that it was meant to imply you’d have money by then and not want to pay taxes.
I’m pretty old. Not very old, but old enough to be a legal adult. And I’m possibly the most liberal person in my family. I’ve been this way for years.
Liberal, or left?
A bit of both. I also don’t like capitalism.
Don’t really see how you can be both tbh
They don’t have to be entirely mutually exclusive. Though I imagine the most consistent form is just a left-facing liberal: like one that values philanthropy.
Though I have argued that some kinds of anarchists can embody this unholy fusion by way of contributing to society by removing themselves from it. Kind of requires rural homesteading in my experience, having known a few folks that I think could be defined that way.
…Though those homesteading types are often prone to going all sov-cit or worse. Also based from experience.
you’re left or you’re not, you’re a plain liberal
Got it.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.
That and the lead poisoning.
Luckyyyyyy!
I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.
I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
In aggragate, that’s the more reliable way to make a population more conservative, but remember that a reasonable portion of fascists in a society that is going in that direction are going to be people who either lost that or never had it and, in either case, blame some minority for that fact. (The majority are still people like you describe, though, the petite bourgeois, etc., who feel insecure in their holdings)
I agree if you mean neoliberal-conservative
I assume they meant conservative, not fascist.
Or you’ll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they’re not young anymore
I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.
We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.
I became much more progressive after living in a “blue state” for much of my adult life. It’s hard to miss that the most successful economies in the us are also the ones who pay most attention to quality of life. We can look at the contrast in our neighboring states, and see the advantages brought by near universal healthcare, investments in an excellent education system, care about the environment, higher minimum wage, support for unions, and so much more
If you’re referring to Nordic Social Democracies, they fund their safety nets via Imperialism, they can’t exist without impoverishing and exploiting the Global South. It’s the epitome of the Labor Aristocracy.
No, sorry,I was being us-centric - it seemed like that’s where the thread was.
As one very specific example, when COViD funding for school lunches ended, some us states decided to no longer provide free school lunches. Massachusetts passed a “millionaire tax” and funded free school lunches out of that
As a slightly older example, Massachusetts passed effectively universal healthcare coverage, signed into law by governor Mitt Romney, and later served as the model for the Affordable Care Act
Looking at school system ratings by us state, I see what looks like a strong correlation between excellent schools and a stronger economy.
It’s the same issue as the Nordics, the US is a de-industrialized nation that makes the bulk of its profits off of Imperialism.
Statement unclear whether increased conservatism is the natural result of property/capital or if property/capital are merely requisite.
Not communism, but Putin.
This is the Maga flag. This is the “new conservative party”
What are you talking about?
Trump is a Putin puppet.
The Russian flag may as well be the MAGA flag
The flag in the screenshot is of the USSR, ie the Communists, not the Russian Federation. You do know that, right?
I do.
Poor commenting on my part.
Some part of me would want to argue ‘that’s still Putin’s flag, he’s reinstating Cold War & KGB mindset’ but honestly, he’s taken things far beyond anything his predecessors did.
All that saying means is that some people are willing to change their moral compass according to situational convenience
Yeah I think they misunderstood what was happening cause they were getting wealthier as they got older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
There are plenty of nerds that are super conservative about their fandoms and what is allowed to happen with them and same for all kinds of niches but the idea we would get more conservative with money really assumed we would accumulate more of it and assets. But what people do have is their apps and thoughts and those… Those people will be just as conservative as the boomers are about their money as they get older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
Isn’t that plainly false? When I was in college, and just after that, I had almost no money, so I was incredibly protective of my stuff and things I considered mine. Later my income went up, so I didn’t need to worry about it as much. Surely many other people have had similar experiences.
I’ve been incredibly broke before and I think it’s different kind of protective. I’m frugally protective at trying to keep something working but that’s a different kind of possesive.
Of course you will care about food when you are starving. And you won’t care about scraps and leftovers when you are not.
But like that was a change of not being afraid to lose something you can rebuy. I’m sure their is plenty of non disposable items that you would have and ideals that you hold onto as truths about yourself. And im sure you don’t viewing housing and transportation as disposable.
I grew up in a rightwing household, and unquestioningly drank the koolaid until my late teens. The right’s bullshit eventually became impossible to ignore, so I dove right into the ‘both sides!’ trap and rode the Libertarian train for a while.
It became really easy to articulate what I didn’t like about the right; describing what was bad about the left was just echoes of Fox bitching about things like them voting on emotion instead of logic… but no real examples.
Around my mid-twenties I finally realized ^that was projection; then 2016 happened and holy shit they’re running Trump and Hillary?? Easily the two most hated candidates in my lifetime… against Gary Johnson - an admittedly goofy personality but likeable and most importantly not crazy, THIS IS THE LP’S TIME TO SHINE! …yeah they got 3% of the vote. We won’t ever see better conditions for a 3rd victory, so, pipedream shattered.
Guess I’ll have to just pick a lesser evil, so let’s see what we have to work with…
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there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war. Shave social services down to nothing so we can claim ‘fiscal responsibility’ which is good I guess (hey! eyes down here, we’re done talking about the war part), a blatant integration of religion and politics, and they want to make life as miserable as possible for my gay/colored/female/nonchristian friends. Fuck, that’s pretty bad…
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Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
So I start voting one issue at a time, crunching both options against eachother and choosing the one that’s best for the US. That way there’s no bias and I won’t be part of this tribal bullshit plagueing our politics… Weird, when I ignore affiliation and vote on policy alone, my ballot becomes solid blue. What are the odds of that?! Next election, solid blue again. And again.
My desire to be ‘independent’ on label alone is pretty much gone at this point, and I’m being more and more vocal about supporting leftwing policies. Family isn’t a fan, but they hit me with the shit OP is poking fun at - I only shifted blue because I’m poor! Once I make more money, just you wait and see, I’ll come crawling right back.
Now, I’m not rich or anything, but I’m (finally!) not living paycheck to paycheck. During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life. The thing that pisses me off about those socialized services is WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T EVERYONE HAVE THIS?! So wearing camo for 4 years for some reason got me this VIP tour of what we should should be doing for everyone.
I was a late bloomer, I got there. I haven’t missed a single election since 2016, big or small. Solid blue. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll even look up the voter registration of candidates for nonpolitical positions like judges, and red is a deal breaker.
The better off I become, the more blue I get. The notion of red-shift with income is trash.
Well said!
Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
The DNC isn’t to the opposite of the GOP, they are aligned on the vast majority of issues and use the rest to yap loudly in disagreement. Dems aren’t left.
During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life.
Social programs aren’t socialized, that’s a bit of a misnomer.
However US Corporations that exploit US Workers and Workers abroad are subsidized, even for their losses. Us Taxpayers pay them while they exploit us further and Social Services get gutted and crumble. Gotta love neoliberalism, where socialized welfare is bad for workers, but good for corporations.
Edit: not actual socialism like worker owned, just socialized losses, as in the working class paying taxes foot the bill for the corporations benefit and privatized gains
Have you read Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism? It analyzes modern Imperialism, where workers in the Global North are both exploited by their bourgeoisie and yet benefit from the fruits of Imperialism, forming a labor aristocracy.
It isn’t Socialism for corporations, it’s Imperialism in action.
No, I have not. I’ve only touched on the book Consequences of Capitalism so far. Thanks for the req, I’ll check it out.
Socialism isn’t the right word, it’s not like they are worker owned in any regard. It’s just that the subsidies they receive for the benefit of their private business and profits for shareholders come from taxpayer money. Further redistributing weather to the wealthy at the expense of the working class Americans, and further enabling them to exploit us more. Their gains are privatized and their losses are socialized by the working class.
No problem! Lenin’s writing is very eye-opening as it’s Marxism applied to more modern, international Capitalism, but he may not make the most sense if you aren’t already familiar with Marxism.
I’m somewhat familiar with the principals, but not enough to thoroughly explain them in a casual conversation.
It’s definitely eye-opening to contextualize things like Nationalism, Fascism, Colonialism, and Imperialism within the Capitalist mode of production
Edited my comment to distinguish between genuine socialism and the welfare of corporations being socialized thru taxpayer money for their benefit and our expense.
You may want to swing back to Principles of Communism as well as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels, then Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price and Profit by Marx before getting into Lenin if you’re not confident in the basics of Marxism. Lenin is Marxism applied to early 1900s Capitalism, which has largely grown along the lines he analyzed and predicted (among numerous other analysis in theory and practice).
Thanks for sharing! I feel like this is representative of a small but important political group recently.
there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war.
The blue team is doing the same thing: burning through fossil resources in the name of war. The military complex doesn’t stop or change when blue or red are elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war
I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn’t a football match where teams compete against each others and “left” and “right” are two buzzwords.
https://archive.org/details/lawauthorityanar00kropuoft/page/n5/mode/2up
I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn’t a football match where teams compete against each others and “left” and “right” are two buzzwords.
No offense but I think OP has a better grasp of this than you do
So, what do you think is happening in Palestine? In Lebanon?
You’re acting like that’s the only policy point that exists. There are meaningful differences in other areas. I don’t have enough non-propagandized information to argue for sure that there are differences in the middle east war department, but the parties certainly aren’t the same on all war-related matters (see Ukraine/Russia as an example). Their rhetoric is different for the middle east but again I can’t speak for their actions. And obviously their non-war policies are drastically different.
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This looks more like a tankie cat.
What even is a tankie to you? Are all Marxists tankies?
