Comradeship // Freechat

2583 readers

120 users here now

Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.

A community for comrades to chat and talk about whatever doesn't fit other communities

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

felipeforte@lemmygrad.ml

I feel like former socialists never believed in socialism that much (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For former socialists, there's one argument I see them use for why they are not socialist anymore.

That argument is that they felt guilty about wanting to push their ideology onto others and so they started believing in parliamentary politics again where every opinion is valuable. My dad who used to be an anarchist as a teenager used this reasoning, as well as one of my teachers.

But this argument doesn't make sense to me, because it makes politics into something which only revolves around opinions, while we communists and the capitalist class know it's about power.

I feel like these people never learned much about their ideology when they were socialists. I think I will never stop being a communist, I know too much.

Have you seen this reasoning yourself?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

When I see certain communist personalities in history who later become staunch anti-communists, I am led to believe that it comes down to poor theoretical formation or, as you and star have both mentioned, there was no interest or "belief" in Marxist theory in the first place. Or else, why would many Eastern Europeans who actually lived under AES and received formal education and a rigorous formation in Marxism, would overnight just go completely against it?

Some people have ideology tied to their emotions, which we all do to different extents and which can be useful when it comes to praxis and mobilising large masses of people. But emotions are not fixed and can fluctuate, which is why it is important to contain them within a theoretical framework. This is why I have been striving to read and study theory extensively; because, like you, I can't and don't want to see myself as anything other than a communist in the future.