I imagine there are things y’all agree on re: the economy; where do you start to diverge?
Like I imagine you both agree that problems exist in the current system, since many people are suffering.
I imagine y’all agree that every corporation wants to maximize profits, which means that (all else equal) they want to 1) pay their employees less, 2) have employees work longer hours, and 3) charge the maximum possible price for all their products (I like to say “the perfect price for the company is when you wouldn’t buy it if it were one penny more”).
I think they’ll likely agree that there’s no “enough” profit - the line must go up forever. You can point to the pursuit of infinitely increasing profits as a driver of services getting worse. Netflix is my go-to, where a company launches a good product, takes over the market, then slowly starts turning the screws to increase profits (price increases, carrying fewer shows, cracking down on password sharing).
If you can get them to agree that capitalism puts profit over people (which you can get to by connecting the dots on things they already believe), then it’s an easy step to “I think that’s bad, and that society should prioritize people over profits.”
It’s likely that they believe that too, and their pushback will be about the details of how to run society that prioritize people. And you agree with that - it’s hard! That’s why there’s so much disagreement on the left! The thing that unites us all is that we want to replace capitalism with something better, but we also agree that how to do that is THE question. Lots of smart people have thought a lot about it, and lots of people have tried different things, but there’s not a consensus on how to run things. Hell, tell them that they might come up with the “correct” approach, but probably not without considering what other folks have thought and tried.
At this point, you can start deworming around AES states, from the perspective of “they tried replacing capitalism with something better, what can we learn from them?” It’s useful to reach agreement that capitalists will want to capitalism to continue, and have a vested interest in portraying alternatives to capitalism as bad.
China is a good example to use: “they’re straight up kicking USA’s ass in the trade war, high speed rail, green energy, patents, etc etc. Why?” You’ll hear the same tired script - don’t directly oppose it. Reference that the US wants to portray China as bad, and agree that China wants to portray itself as good. I like to lead into deworming explanations with “reality is somewhere in the middle of these two” - it engages their critical thinking and is an emotionally safe way for them listen to an alternative perspective.
Accept that they will not end the conversation with “wow, you were right and I was wrong!” Brains don’t work like that. Your goal is to give them an alternative explanation, then let them come to their own conclusions. Your goal should be to relentlessly focus the conversation on where the two of you agree, to be genuinely interested in their thought process, and to neutrally present contradictions for them to chew on after the conversation is over.
I wrote some more details on my general approach here.
I don’t think we should give up on individuals because we’ve reduced them to their class interests. Class interests are an influence, but not a determining factor in ones beliefs. My class interests are opposed to socialism, but I am fighting for it because making the world a better place is more important to me than getting more commas in my bank account.
As a group, capitalists can be counted on to behave in their collective interests, but individuals have complex motivators and internal contradictions that they haven’t questioned. Most people want what’s best for most people, and most people would be willing to give up something in order to help others. At very least, there are selfish reasons for making the world a better place (note: kurzgesagt).
Very few humans will look within themselves and say “I would rather a hundred people starve than I suffer the slightest inconvenience” (if so - yikes). On the other hand, I think they won’t say “I would rather starve than be a slight inconvenience to a hundred people.”
Capital would rather a hundred people starve than grow profits slightly slower, but almost all individual capitalists would choose humanity when directly presented with that trolly problem. The evils of capitalism are emergent properties of individuals operating in a system that influences them to put profits over people. Each individual makes morally compromised but understandable “business decisions” to maximize profits, and don’t see themselves as THE problem.
Even for those people, pitching a world where they didn’t need to compromise their morals is worthwhile. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could focus on making a good widget, instead of pushing to hit next quarter’s earnings target?”
I think this is an interesting post on capital itself having material interests, and individual capitalists merely being vessels to carry out those interests.