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?
Well, I’m just a lurker here, and an ignorant one at that, and I don’t have a strong political label for myself. It depends on what context we’re talking about. I do know that I move further left the older I get (I was told the opposite would happen, but here we are).
I can’t speak for others, but for me, I have a strong distaste for conflict and for getting myself involved in other people’s business. I don’t actually want to be politically involved at all.
Really, what I want from politics is the right and privilege to be left alone, and I want that right and privilege for all others as well. That’s my utopia.
Sadly, the world is full of people who want to exploit others, coerce others, and extract wealth from others by any means necessary (not to mention dump filth into our air and rivers without restraint). And there are also control freaks with weird religious agenda and so on who want to exert control over other people’s private lifestyle decisions.
My politics isn’t about making people do something. It’s about making people stop doing something, basically.
I don’t know if I’m a socialist or not. My desire to curtail corporate power, and state power, comes from the desire to curtail exploitation and control-freakery, period.
What don’t want to do is to replace a Fascist dictator (who wants me at a factory stamping widgets for private profit) with a Communist dictator (who wants me stamping widgets for the state or whatever).
So, I don’t know. I have learned a lot from you guys though. Thanks for letting me lurk.
I think what’s ultimately going on is your feelings of alienation in the present capitalist system push you into an individualist direction. This is similar to where a lot of anarchists come from, but there are some false equivalences here, and some under-baked analysis of class, that lead to your wariness about socialism.
Capitalism and socialism aren’t systems because anyone wants them, but are economically compelled. Capitalists aren’t the masters of capitalism, but the best at gaining profits. Capitalism doesn’t care about what people want, it naturally selects for those best pursuing profits. Capital is a control system. For more on that, see Marx on Capital as a Real God.
Similarly, socialism is not when a big mean person tells everyone to produce widgets at the widget factory and the mean person eats all of the widgets. Socialism is when the working class is in control, and begins to orient production from the pursuit of profits to the satisfaction of needs. Markets and other diverse forms of property ownership can exist at less developed stages of socialism, as long as public ownership is the principle aspect, as control of the large firms and key industries means indirect control of the entire economy. Socialist leaders aren’t leaders because they want power, but are elected and chosen for.
I think you’d do well to research some of the tremendous gains of socialist states without the filter of anti-communist bias, which is omnipresent in the english-speaking world. Prolewiki has good pages on various socialist states that can serve as a good introduction, I also have an introductory ML reading list if you want to dip your toes into theory! Just the first section or even the first 2 works are enough for now.