@Dex Stewart
Marxism-Leninism was tested to destruction in the 20th Century. The people most enthusiastic about it are guys like
this, who make it obvious that they see themselves as secret police torturers and executioners once de RevoLOOshun comes, with big shiny badges, big shiny guns, armies of thugs at their beck and call, and scores to settle with everyone who ever made fun of them in high school. These are the “tankies.” They’re batshit insane True Believers, and that makes them dangerous, if also stupid and historically ignorant.
The second largest group are the ones who believe the promises of Infinite Free Shit for Everybody Forever and think that when de RevoLOOshun comes, they’re going to be able to sit around all day smoking weed and doing bad Soundcloud rap while somebody else works the twelve-hour shifts six days a week in People’s Glorious Tractor Factory #47. Or maybe robots will do all the hard, dirty, unpleasant stuff for them. Sure.
Both of these groups of Marxism enthusiasts think that once the dust settles, they are not going to be the ones who get handed a hoe and told to work sixteen-hour shifts digging potatoes. That’s gonna be for other people, you know, the stupid ones, the proles, who will clamor to support them and fight for them because this will be a better deal than they’re getting now. Neither group, for that matter, thinks that once the Party consolidates power and starts going down the list of Liabilities to the RebboLOOshun, their names are going to be at the top of the list of troublemakers to be liquidated. In Russia in 1918, “unhand me, you oafs! the Revolutionary High Council will vouch for me! this is all a misunderstanding! let me go!” were pretty common last words when the Chekha started kicking down doors and tying up loose ends, and when I say “tying up,” I mean burying them in shallow unmarked roadside graves.
Socialism is not a saleable brand, at least among people who know more history than you can get watching cartoons. It has immediate connotations of bread-lines, concentration camps, mass graves, and tens of thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the rest of the human race. Calling it something else might be a start, and maybe you should stop letting people like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJjLFnV3E7w be the spokesmen.