chapotraphouse

That's been a lot of my experiences when I've gone the nice route.

Here it is:

yeah you usually have to build it up bit by bit too I've found, with foundational topics relevant to their lived experience. A topic at a time to build out the Marxist framework. It is why it is important to have studied and struggled with the theory enough to be able to speak confidently and coherently and formulate analyses in real-time on a given topic that is relevant to the living reality of the modern day (not just copy/pasting vulgarly from past writings to today as if conditions and circumstances are the same). You need people to accept basic axioms before building things out. And that isn't too hard in of itself. Working people I've found are in general very receptive to foundational principles like propertyless proletarian class position vs capitalist class position, wage labor, capital, value and surplus value extraction; because they live it every day at their shit jobs with shit bosses who do nothing while being paid the most and you can draw a pretty easy line with it. Richard Wolff has done this with a lot of people (though I disagree with him on further extents of his politics, his co-op market socialism stuff). Once they have an understanding of this basic essential axiomatic framework it becomes much easier to build on it and situate it in a historical continuity for them etc. and connect it to broader realities. And as always people involved in struggle with you by their side will be more receptive to having their consciousness heightened than otherwise.