How can we win people to socialist ideas?

The working class marching on Saint Petersberg in 1917 (photo: WikipediaCommons)

How can we persuade our friends and workmates to become socialists?

Many agree with us that it is not just bloodthirsty, corrupt or incompetent leaders that are the problem—the problem is capitalism itself.

Diagnosing the problem, however, is easier than providing the cure. People who hate Keir Starmer’s Labour Party might be more likely to put their efforts into the Green Party than they are to embrace revolutionary socialism.

This is because working class power to challenge the whole system is a potential—not yet a reality. The ideology of reformism tells us the best we can do is elect different leaders.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the multiple horrors we face. It is harder to envisage creating a completely different society.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels explained why capitalism feels inevitable.

They wrote, “Each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it has to give its ideas the form of universality and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.”

Today, as the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson wrote, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

But capitalism only emerged around 200 years ago. Feudalism lasted for over 1,000 years and no doubt felt just as inescapable.

The rule of kings was shored up from the pulpit and the prison cell. But they were overthrown in a series of revolutions.

Radical novelist Ursula K Le Guin observed, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

In every workplace, college or community there are people who look to the left, a few who look to the right. Most are somewhere in the middle.

The job of revolutionaries is to give confidence to those on the left to influence those in the middle and isolate the reactionaries.

In every situation, there are ideas that can cut through, that direct anger to those at the top of society and reveal the connections between different issues.

Socialist arguments matter. Convincing individuals to get organised and to commit to socialist politics makes a difference.

At the heart of every campaign, strike and movement is a debate between apathy and action, militancy and moderation.

The past, Karl Marx wrote, weighs like a nightmare on the living. The experience of past defeats erodes confidence and combativity.

But individuals can make a difference by explaining how defeats can be avoided and championing effective tactics.

Revolutionary ideas can spread to millions when large‑scale resistance erupts. Mass movements often appear to be spontaneous, lacking leaders and clear aims.

The revolution in Russia in February 1917 was denounced by the establishment as the “instinctive”, unthinking actions of the masses.

Leon Trotsky, however, argued that the revolt was inspired and encouraged by experienced socialists.

“In every factory, in each company, in each tavern, in the military hospital, at the transfer stations, even in the depopulated villages, the molecular work of revolutionary thought was in progress,” he wrote.

Trotsky observed how the ruling classes thrived on “inertia and automatism, nourishing themselves with the relics of worn-out ideas”.

In contrast, “Elements of experience, criticism, initiative and self-sacrifice, seeped down through the masses and created, invisibly to a superficial glance, an inner mechanics of the revolutionary movement as a conscious process.”

Today there is a growing hatred of imperialism and contempt for the institutions of society. It is possible those experiences are incubating the revolutionary consciousness of tomorrow.

Acts of collective defiance can break through the idea that capitalism is inevitable and demonstrate that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

And everyone who becomes a socialist can help to develop the revolutionary process in the heart of the working class.