Joe_Germinal
16th January 2010, 00:46
Hello,
I'm a graduate student from Albany, New York, USA. After cutting my teeth in the Boston area which had a fairly vibrant (for an American city at least) leftist scene, I find myself living outside Albany where the left is decidedly less organized and more demoralized.
I come from a leftist family, both sets of grandparents were refugees from European fascism who met in the CPUSA in the late 40s and early 50s. My parents were intellectuals with vaguely socialistic commitments, although since their divorce my father has tacked to the right (Bernie Sanders type American social democracy) and my mother back to the firmly Marxist wing of left.
As for myself, I read a copy of the Communist Manifesto my grandmother gave me for my 13th birthday around the time of the protests in Seattle. It's arguments struck me as basically correct and I took to reading more works by Marx and Engels. When I was 15, the US launched its bloody imperialist invasion of Afghanistan and I became active in the anti-war movement getting my first taste of practical political work. Around the same time I read Lenin, whose analysis I found helpful in understanding that invasion.
Throughout high school and college, I studied all the luminaries of the broad left Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevara, Kautsky, Bernstein, Bakunin, Goldman, Kropotkin, etc. as well as historical events from the English Civil Wars to Spanish Civil war. This, combined with practical political work helped me formulate my present political position which I would describe as anti-Revisionist Marxism-Leninism in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. I share with many an appreciation for the contrubitions of Mao; however I find the Three World's theory to total opportunist lunacy.
My major complaint with most hitherto existing anti-revisionism is its tendency towards sectarianism. While I think the debates between and among Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, etc. are important intellectual tasks, I also believe we far too often let these disputes hinder effective and coordinated practical action to oppose capitalism and imperialism. I find that far too few comrades remember that Lenin struggled for 9 years between making the ideological break with the Mensheviks and the definitive organization break with the Mensheviks. Indeed, only after the Mensheviks continued to support the Provisional Government was the break seen as indefinite.
As a contributor to this community, I hope to live up to these anti-sectarian principals while helping to defend and develop the Marxist-Leninist line in debates which I hope will remain amiable.
Thanks,
Joe Germinal
I'm a graduate student from Albany, New York, USA. After cutting my teeth in the Boston area which had a fairly vibrant (for an American city at least) leftist scene, I find myself living outside Albany where the left is decidedly less organized and more demoralized.
I come from a leftist family, both sets of grandparents were refugees from European fascism who met in the CPUSA in the late 40s and early 50s. My parents were intellectuals with vaguely socialistic commitments, although since their divorce my father has tacked to the right (Bernie Sanders type American social democracy) and my mother back to the firmly Marxist wing of left.
As for myself, I read a copy of the Communist Manifesto my grandmother gave me for my 13th birthday around the time of the protests in Seattle. It's arguments struck me as basically correct and I took to reading more works by Marx and Engels. When I was 15, the US launched its bloody imperialist invasion of Afghanistan and I became active in the anti-war movement getting my first taste of practical political work. Around the same time I read Lenin, whose analysis I found helpful in understanding that invasion.
Throughout high school and college, I studied all the luminaries of the broad left Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Guevara, Kautsky, Bernstein, Bakunin, Goldman, Kropotkin, etc. as well as historical events from the English Civil Wars to Spanish Civil war. This, combined with practical political work helped me formulate my present political position which I would describe as anti-Revisionist Marxism-Leninism in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. I share with many an appreciation for the contrubitions of Mao; however I find the Three World's theory to total opportunist lunacy.
My major complaint with most hitherto existing anti-revisionism is its tendency towards sectarianism. While I think the debates between and among Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, etc. are important intellectual tasks, I also believe we far too often let these disputes hinder effective and coordinated practical action to oppose capitalism and imperialism. I find that far too few comrades remember that Lenin struggled for 9 years between making the ideological break with the Mensheviks and the definitive organization break with the Mensheviks. Indeed, only after the Mensheviks continued to support the Provisional Government was the break seen as indefinite.
As a contributor to this community, I hope to live up to these anti-sectarian principals while helping to defend and develop the Marxist-Leninist line in debates which I hope will remain amiable.
Thanks,
Joe Germinal