Hello comrades!

I'm an engineer in California in the IT industry. Back in the 1990s, I tried to unionize us while we still had a voice. Unfortunately, no one listened and now most of the jobs were sent to sweatshops overseas. I am a member of the IWW and the Socialist Party of the USA.

Great to be here!

Glad to have you aboard and hello from Oregon here.

Welcome comrade! I live in the Ukraine and although I've known about this site for years, it still surprises me the amount of socialists there are in America. I always thought that being labeled communist in America is sort of taboo. Does being communist in America affect the way people look at you? Does it make finding a job harder or something? Most of the time I keep my communist sympathies to myself. I find no point in discussing it with people who mostly don't even understand it. When I do bring it up I get bombarded with the same nonsense about communism being evil and people not wanting to be equal so on. Some of their arguments do make sense and I personally agree with some of it. One of the main reasons communism failed in my opinion is due to people's indifference to the betterment of mankind and people being self centered. I've lost faith in humanity over the years. What does IWW stand for? Give us the perspective from California. Hope you like it here.

We're taught to not care or think about humanity as a whole. Indoctrination is an important facet of social control. And yes there are many more American communists and socialists than any figure would lead you to believe. We're just kept behind closed doors for the most part.

Welcome taverner, Okie-Commie here.

Taught by whom? Marx? Lenin? Who should we think or care about? The proletariat I know. Nobody else? How should we think of humanity?

Taught in school and by society. Only by seizing the power of the state can we re-orient indoctrination into a proletarian direction.

Welcome to the S-E, taverner. Sorry for your position but it was expected considering the realities of globalisation.

Welcome, comrade.

Yeah - even though we have "Freedom of speech" try getting a job if your political activities are known by your employer. The funny thing is that if you talk to a lot of Americans, a lot of us hold socialist beliefs, but have been conditioned so strongly to always view socialism and communism as "evil"

As a teenager, growing up during the waning years of the cold war, I knew that much anti-soviet propaganda meant someone wasn't telling the truth. "Methinks they protesteth too much" comes to mind.

If censorship and propaganda is not explicit, it works far more effectively.

Welcome to S-E

Hello comrades!

Glad to be here and I didn't know that this forum exists! Glad that it does!

I agree that Americans doesn't openly announce themselves as communist or socialist. I don't tell anyone that I am socialist because in general, people in United States, think that communism or socialism is bad. I think that they have one point of view from certain point that they were taught.

Thanks to my World History teacher, he asked me one good question in the class as he asked everyone. The question was "What do you think of Adolf Hitler?" As expected, everyone said negative remarks about him. The teacher said that everyone was wrong. I didn't understand why my teacher said that. He gave me his point of view that Hitler just did his job as best as he can. He led Germany to highest point of the Empire - The Third Reich. I realized that there is more than just one point of view. So I research more about socialism and realized more facts and I am more open and try to understand more of this. Glad that I like being socialist.