this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
32 points (97.1% liked)

askchapo

22752 readers
323 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

My uncle asked me for a primer on socialism. I was thinking maybe Socialism Made Easy or Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Anything that might be better?

For context my whole family are through and through vote blue liberals. It's sad to say but most of them didn't even like/vote for Bernie during the primary cycles. They aren't really hardcore anticommunists though and have always been good on unions and labor generally, moreso the problem is really anti-Trump/pro-Dem brainworms. Maybe there's something more modern to share that I don't know of.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Frank@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago (4 children)

You might try the "Why women had better sex under socialism" article. It's shows very concrete examples of how socialist economics improved the lives of women in the relatively recent past and does rely on dense theory in the explanation. I think it could be a way to say "before I ask you to read the theory, let me show you an example of the outcomes of the theory so you know that the theory works and is valuable."

[–] CaliforniaSpectre@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

A really great article actually, was it only ever the article and not a book? However, I got to say that there still seems to be a lot of anticommunist priming in nearly every sentence. And calling women in communist state positions advocating for liberation "cultural imperialists" is a little over the top. I forgot what it's like to be in the weird in-between zone where you recognize socialism as a successful system that has already achieved great success for worker libration but still have to do the anticommunist song and dance to be "taken seriously", maybe even from your own perspective yourself.

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

Ghodsee is kinda weird like that. She's gotten better over the years (I think) but she had a vein of anti-stalinism that kinda tinted how she wrote about the USSR imo.

She did expand the article into a full book.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago

Oof. It's been a while since I've read it.

load more comments (1 replies)