Building off this, people have to look at more than just the protests. “Radicals” shape the Overton Window, think Malcom X.

In a world where nobody protests and nobody is participating in radical activism, nothing changes. In a world where there are protests but still no radical activism, there is usually no change, though the media and capitalists will feign care and “listen to the issues”. When the protesters become the moderates, the ruling class finally cedes some power to stop social revolution.

In a world where there are only radical activists, no moderate protesters or passive bystanders, there would be social revolution, monumental change. This has happened before, and it’s why the ruling class concedes changes as the overton window becomes more radical.

To a lot of people this looks like “protests work!” but it’s not the protests primarily, it’s the threat of social revolution, led by the radicals and supported by the new moderate position of protesting against the status quo.

That’s a pretty idealist take in the grand scheme of things. We have hard data that public opinion has virtually no influence on what the law is.

https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

If it’s something capitalists really want, it’ll get put into law. In this case, it’s possible they actually don’t care to give the government the ability to surveil the public better, so it might be one of the very few things where public backlash could stop it (would actually need data to support this, not just some anecdotes).

Trying to apply this to the broader sociopolitical climate and saying “your voices do matter” is just too reductive. If it’s the public vs. the capitalist class in American “democracy”, the capitalist class wins every time.

"For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. "

It won’t always be the same ones so I’m unsure of what you’re asking. Which ones invaded the spaces I listed before?

For Revolutionary Catalonia it was the Nationalist Faction who overthrew them. They advocated for, and implemented, a form of national syndicalism that was “fully compatible with capitalism”.

For Red Vienna is was the fascists who overturned the socialist policies and returned the city to a state of capitalism, allowing land-leeches and other bourgeoise to return to continue exploiting the working class.

No economic or political system can be shown to be practically achievable before it’s been achieved. If you don’t think the following examples are examples of genuine socialism/communism, then that’s not an argument against the ideology.

We’ve had communists fight alongside other leftists. So revolutionary Catalonia was a functioning leftist space, meeting all the criteria to be called communist (classless/moneyless/stateless). It functioned incredibly well for a year before it was invaded.

If you want a longer, but smaller example, Red Vienna existed for about 2 decades and was a fully functional socialist space that improved worker’s lives before being outlawed by a regime change.

If your position is that imperialist capitalist nations will always invade/outlaw well-functioning socialist/communist systems, you can’t know that for sure, but it’s definitely a possibility. That doesn’t mean the entire idea is worth throwing away.

Your stance still needs to change then. Your issue isn’t comparing wage slavery with chattel slavery, it’s comparing slavery when the standard of living has improved.

Now this stance is still problematic, imagine we lost the civil war and the north became socialist, abolishing wage slavery. The south would have chattel slavery and the north would have no slavery. Now imagine the standard of living for chattel slaves vastly improved, and someone then tried to compare “modern day chattel slaves to wage slaves”. Your stance would then be this is wildly unfair to modern day chattel slaves because wage slaves had a worse standard of living, a position we both understand is ridiculous.

You know I’m a communist, and I’d actually wager we would agree on your stance here if you chose better words. What you’re actually advocating against is state capitalism, and we both agree it’s a horrific and unjust system.

Something I’ve noticed about “anti-communists” is they absolutely love taking the USSR, CCP, and DPRK at their word for what they are. When they describe themselves as communist/socialist, you take it as an undeniable fact.

Do you think the DPRK is a democratic republic? It’s in the name. Of course you don’t, because it’d be ridiculous to let an authoritarian regime change the definitions of words to mean whatever they want it to mean :)

Your original stance was that it is “problematic” to equate them. Do you think it was problematic for Fredrick Douglass to equate them? If not then your original position has to change.

We don’t have polling on prior chattel slave views on wage slavery, but since you’re making a habit of just going with your gut, I’ll do the same. I’d wager most prior chattel slaves would’ve been more than happy to abolish all forms of slavery (including wage slavery).