I hate the whole publicly traded model of companies. I hate capitalism. But have to engage in trading stocks (I mostly do Mutual Funds and a small quantity of direct stocks) so that my money doesn’t lose value by sitting in a bank or cash.
Same thing with credit cards, don’t like taking loans and getting marked on a centralised list for that but it’s a safer option than using your own money.
Fortunately I don’t do crypto so that’s a plus.
this is Tailism, plain and simple. we won’t ever unite the ‘workers of the world’ by adopting less rigorous theory and softening our platform for the benefit of whatever portion of the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ is more centrist/fascist than right/fascist, especially if we are trying to ‘appeal to their material interests’. the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ do not have the same material interests as the proletariat, they are in fact diametrically opposed. first world workers at least, especially ‘labor aristocracy’ or ‘petty bourgeoisie’ will necessarily have a decrease in their material comfort and economic ‘well-being’ in the case of revolutionary world communism, they have an unequal share of the world’s wealth as imperialist citizens. any bourgeois class traitors should be using their unearned wealth for the cause, not to grant them the most comfortable life they can get under the circumstances. if you are investing a bunch of money, put it towards strike funds or something, not just your retirement.
You’re right, the petty bourgeoisie will have to work with the proletariat to abolish their class, just as the proletariat will have to work to abolish our class. They will have to work against their interests as capitalists. This has happened before and it will happen again, because if revolution is to happen it will be a necessity. So “appealing to” material interests as capitalists is impossible, I agree. But unless you plan on guillotining millions of people, there will have to be an appeal to a material interest that emerges as a contradiction to their interests as capitalists, that will emerge from the struggle for revolutionary conditions. So you caught me out on a technicality, but my point still stands. The mass movement will include people who are from the petty bourgeois classes, unless you disqualify them from it on essentialist grounds. If you can’t deal with contradiction in your analysis then you’re not doing critical analysis, you’re participating in an aesthetic.
the point i meant to make is that class traitors cannot be motivated by material gain, because they will never get it under communism. we have to unite everyone that actually does stand to gain to implement communism, diluting our methods and platform so that lanyards can stay comfy is not communism. no one is disqualifying class traitors, but they absolutely cannot be primarily or even partially motivated by material gains for themselves, because they will choose capitalism over communism every time in that case, they will misinterpret theory and dilute the cause and message. paying into your 401k for your retirement is not revolutionary, it is normal selfish behavior. it doesn’t disqualify you from participating in revolution, but is not itself a revolutionary activity.
Only if you limit “material interests” to the realm of capital. As materialists, we only deal with material interests, and those interests include the realm of social interests.
But I can think of historical examples too. During the Minneapolis uprising of 1934, the Teamsters shut down all trucking within the city that attempted to ship goods without the truckers union. One of the groups that emerged was petty agricultural producers that trucked their own agricultural goods to markets. The Teamsters gave these petty producers passes to truck their goods, which while keeping the food supply for the city available so that people wouldn’t starve, it also split these petty producers from the reactionary forces. I can think of a more recent example in Seattle with the campaign to pass a $15 minimum wage. small restaurant owners were allowed a few years to implement those changes whereas other cities which required an across the board implementation for small businesses as well as large ones, the campaigns failed or were quickly rolled back. And no, neither of those movements were revolutionary (though the teamsters rebellion was pretty spicy) but they were progress for workers that was only successful by splitting the petty bourg by making concessions to their material interests.
And maybe this is where we diverge as communists, as I don’t see a road to actual communism that comes from an uncompromising adherence to the maximum program. Its politics all the way down.
My point in the post above is more directed toward the creation of a socialist material interest that supercedes capitalist material interests, but I can support both perspectives given the right historical circumstances and a powerful materialist dialectic