Reply To: Satire and counterpropaganda.

Incremental change in society’s belief systems, yes, as long as it’s towards understanding that socialism (a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with production directly to mean people’s needs not sale or profit) is both desirable and possible and that capitalism cannot be reformed to work for the majority. In a sense, that’s what we are in to. That is the real issue in what you call the “ideological war”.

Incremental change to remove capitalism begs the question by assuming that capitalism can be changed incrementally into either into socialism or to work in the interest of the wage working majority. Experience as well as theory have shown neither to be the case. The Social Democratic and Labour parties of Europe tried to gradually change capitalism but ended up by being gradually changed, by the experience of running capitalism, into common or garden parties of capitalism (as you have recognised happened with the Labour Party).

A campaign to get people to change their belief system to believe that capitalism can be reformed in their interest would, if successful, lead to disappointment and bitterness because capitalism can’t be reformed in that way. It would have better been spent in trying to incrementally change people’s ideas towards understanding and wanting socialism.