It’s finally happened. r/communism is formally a Gonzaloite cesspool. This happened after a few months of openly displaying the Shining Path hammer & sickle as the sub’s logo.
It’s finally happened. r/communism is formally a Gonzaloite cesspool. This happened after a few months of openly displaying the Shining Path hammer & sickle as the sub’s logo.
A deep distrust? Literally why? What’s so sinister about someone calling themselves a Marxist? I think it’s understandable in a world where words like “socialist” have been corrupted to mean liking Sweden and Bernie Sanders. If we’re talking about someone saying they support the shining path or some other esoteric stuff, yeah it might be cause for concern, but that concern I think should be a lot more to do with the boiling babies than simply with someone being specific about their political perspective/analysis. In fact I think being specific about one’s analysis being guided by Marxist theory is very valuable in a political landscape where the actual nature of communist theory and politics is so misunderstood.
To quote Lenin “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism”.
People who call themselves Marxists instead of just communists are generally Ultras and book worshippers. Someone calling themself a Maoist instead of just a communist is usually just domeone with dreams of living on a compound. I’m not gonna refer to myself as a Marxist Lenninist in order to be specific when I have no reason to, I’ll just say I’m a communist cause people understand that better.
Exactly, it can often be a sign of someone less concerned with communication and more concerned with letting everyone else know how special and big-brained they are.
I have found through experience that when talking to someone you dont know well Irl, having called myself these things before you get different reactions: anarchists, you are dismissed. Socialists, you are treated as a radlib. Communist, you end out with a real conversation. Going hyper specific type of communist makes you seem too involved in your bullshit to talk to. Even when I was an anarchist I referred to myself as a communist to non leftists cause it got the best engagement and chance to educate. A lot of non online people, especially older folk wanna hear you out when you say you believe in what they’ve been taught to fear and you’re here being the biggest sweetheart you can be. I’m trying to be a good representative
Exactly! You say you are a communist, most people in the west are shocked, as their image of a communist is some kind of nebulous villainous red army soldier, ready to appropriate their TV and their toothbrush for the revolution. So when you are just a regular person who is a communist and are willing to discuss communist ideas with someone, they are often quite willing to listen.
When you present yourself as a “Marxist” to the average person, they may not quite know what that means, and it implies that you are trying to distance yourself from being called a “communist”, like you are hiding something and being shifty about your true intentions, which ultras often make worse when they gleefully quote mine some obscure Marxist thinker to “dunk” on some random person who was just trying to learn about them.
The first conversation they come away with a better understanding of communism and might find themselves agreeing with the ideas talked about, even if they were “communism is still bad though” in the moment. In the second conversation they learn nothing except that the person they were talking to is a smug asshole who thinks they are smarter than everyone else, and that has something to do with communism, so it only makes their knee-jerk reaction of “communism bad” even stronger.