We have an "employee" bulletin board with anonymous postings on whatever the topic of the moment happens to be. (There's a fair amount of free speech, but we are discouraged from bringing up political topics in email or on the bulletin board for fear of creating turmoil and making the workplace uncomfortable. I kinda get that and have been stifling myself)
This month's bulletin board topic was "Books we're going to read this summer"....and people put up index cards with the title and sometimes author of the book. Nominations ranged from "Atlas Shrugged" to "Capital in the 21st Century." I had a strong feeling that some of the books people were mentioning were not so much books they were planning to read as they were books they wanted others to read (agitprop). Which is fine.
Friday, I happened into a conversation with two programmers...which quickly wandered into why objectivism isn't a philosophy, what philosophy is, who did I think was the greatest philosopher (Marx)....we all drifted our separate ways.
Later that afternoon, I noticed that one of the participants in the conversation was posting his index card on the bulletin board for summer reading. On it was printed in red sharpie: "Marx for Beginners."
It never ceases to amaze me how open a lot of people are to talking about socialism although they will never bring up the topic themselves. I grant that this is the Bay area and that I'm dealing with a lot of very smart and very well educated people....still....
Joanna