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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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are you aware the world of communication, identity and political decision-making resembles very little the world they were living in? Do you think a century of anti-communist propaganda does nothing and it will magically disappear if you state your identity hard enough? So egocentric.
Are you of the belief there was ever a time when the ruling class did not oppose communism with their full might? You think communism rose in popularity in Russia because there was no repression? Meanwhile Lenin was exiled?
No, communism will be opposed full force regardless of cutesty trying to shift terms around. The western left isn't toothless because it faces repression from the bourgeois organizations, the western left is toothless because it has no discipline to established party lines and nueters itself constantly.
The opposition was there, but the construction of a shared mass identity for workers was a viable strategy in the face of that specific environment, that now has changed. Political strategy is not a blueprint and just because it worked in a radically different environment, doesn't mean it's going to work again and, in fact, it failed over and over in the West for the last 40-50 years.
Identity is a primary driver of political participation and today almost nobody wants to be a communist: right-wingers because they are right-wingers, progressives because communists lost over and over, and even communist more often than not prefer to identify with a specific sect and present themselves as such. Just because an identity and a narrative worked once, doesn't mean they will work every time.
The idea that "historical marxists were right but this time it's different" is not a new or unique line. It's a common basis for revisionism which dates all the way back to early Leninism. I would also love to see this disciplined western leftist movement, because from what I see, western leftists have been trying your strategy of capitulations and reformism (in everything but name) since before Gus Hall cemented it in the 60s which is what led us specifically to this moment in which the movement has no teeth. The solution is not to defang even further by removing even the allusion to socialism.
Nobody wants to be a communist in the west because the western communist movement doesn't fight for anything. "Right wingers" and "progressives" don't want to be communists because we have allowed communism to become an ambiguous term for whatever they dislike, rather than standing firm and saying "we are communists we want x".
Have the workers been freed? Have the chains of capital been broken? If not then communism is alive and well, it just needs people willing to pick up it's banner and put in the work and stop throwing it under the bus every chance they get in efforts to capitulate to liberals. Mamdani winning while calling himself a socialist is proof that the banner itself isn't the problem, your asking us to retreat in the face of victory.
You should do some politics in the real world. You clearly leave in a fantasy made of theory books
This is the very same anti-intelectualist rot that stems from undisciplined movements with incoherent ideology. Theory is not "fantasy" it is a record of how prior movements used the science of Marxism-Leninism to shape the world and build successful communist revolutions. It is necessary if you want to do the same. You wouldn't criticize a baker for studying and applying chemistry to their craft.
Mamdani won the primary while identifying as a socialist, the fact you can somehow take that win and twist it into a negative, insisting we should abandon the label, shows that you in fact are the one who has abandoned reality for fantasy, the fantasy that the bourgeoisie has won a decisive battle against communism and our only remaining solution is to retreat onto their terms.
This is not the case. Organized, disciplined class struggle can, and will, break the chains of capital.
It's fun you bring this up because it's been a debate for a long time: baker theory and practice beats chemistry every day if you want to make nice bread. Baking and proofing are not exact sciences and in most scenarios, even industrial breadmaking, complete reproducibility is unfeasible. When it's achieved, it's achieved at the cost of making terrible bread.
Thousands and thousands before him ran for mayor under a socialist identity. He won because he built a strong infrastructure, he has good communication, he doesn't care about intellectuals and theory but actual, concrete problem as lived by people and not as investigated by sociologists. The same is true for Die Linke in Germany: decades of swinging around their socialist identity and no result. Purging the old ideologues stuck in their books and 6 months of building infrastructure for canvassing and they tripled their votes.
You know what's the cool part about this new way of doing politics on the ground? That most people are realizing they can leave behind opinionated communists: they make for worse organizers because they question everything and reason from prime principles, they have no leverage, and they have no positional power. We are just collectively moving on from the need of stale leftists to be involved at all. We will leave you larping on the internet, quoting dead people to each other while we do the work.
Funny how you nitpick the Baking example, and ironically prove the value of theory in doing so.
Chemistry is the science (Material Dialectical analysis) this is the basis for which all understanding builds. Theory is Theory, It's the observations of this science and it's relation to the real world conditions. Baking is the practice, if you ignore the science and the theory and just go off of vibes you will end up with a terrible result.
Thousands and thousands before him also ran not as socialists and lost. The point is that the label of socialism is not as harmful as you insist it is.
Building an infrastructure of ground work and communication among the masses is also not a lack of "care about intellectuals and theory" but specifically placing theory in action. This seems to stem from yet even more bourgiouse propaganda you have internalized, the idea that communism isn't a practical workers movement but one of feckless intellectualism. I know you'll hate this "quoting dead people", but as Mao said
"Such reconstructed knowledge is not more empty or more unreliable; on the contrary, whatever has been scientifically reconstructed in the process of cognition, on the basis of practice, reflects objective reality, as Lenin said, more deeply, more truly, more fully. As against this, vulgar "practical men" respect experience but despise theory, and therefore cannot have a comprehensive view of an entire objective process, lack clear direction and long-range perspective, and are complacent over occasional successes and glimpses of the truth. If such persons direct a revolution, they will lead it up a blind alley. "
Mao ~ on practice.
So the solution to that is to tell them they are right? When the socialist is directly providing you food, directly fighting alongside you for your right to be in the country at all or not be murdered by police, helping you understand and organize tenet rights, helping you unionize, etc then they no longer think that socialists are losers, they see the truth, that socialist are the ones who care and take action.
Again, so long as capitalism and it's inherent contradictions exist, communists will be there fighting against them, whether you personally recognize and like that or not.