Hi Comrades

[Rainsborough]

Just a quick hello, and a little about myself. Been hanging around the fringes of Marxism for a long time, even as a kid I was often referred to as a 'bolshy git'. Stood me in good stead at Uni though, I soon found myself drawn to the left, originally to Anarchism, but couldn't quite get my head around leaderless revolution, found I agreed more with Lenin. Now I consider myself a Marxist-Leninist, and due to disability more passive than active.

Rainsborough.

[Veg_Athei_Socialist]

Welcome to Revleft:)!

[mollymae]

Welcome :D

[Q]

Welcome bolshy git :)

Do you consider the USSR as being socialist after, say, Stalin got power? I'm asking because you refer to yourself as Marxist-Leninist, being the in my opinion cynical state-ideology of the bureaucratic dictatorship of the Soviet Union that existed most of its life, while you're also (still? were?) sympathetic to anarchist ideas.

[Rainsborough]

Welcome bolshy git :)

Do you consider the USSR as being socialist after, say, Stalin got power? I'm asking because you refer to yourself as Marxist-Leninist, being the in my opinion cynical state-ideology of the bureaucratic dictatorship of the Soviet Union that existed most of its life, while you're also (still? were?) sympathetic to anarchist ideas.

Thanks,:)

You tell me. We live in a world were we have to put labels on everything, so that’s what I did. Maybe the label Marxist-Leninist was wrong, perhaps Bakunin-Leninist would be better, although there are probably many who will tell me that’s an impossible combination. As I said in my introduction, the idea of spontaneous revolution without leadership was an idea that I had great difficulty coming to terms with, and a subject that has started many debates, so at the end of the day I suppose I’m still an anarchist but one with a tiny authoritarian streak.


Rainsborough

[Q]

Thanks for the clarification. You will find many "Marxist-Leninists" on this forum, which are more commonly refered to (by the working class at large) as Stalinists, I just wanted to have that cleared out as there is a lot of confusion on the subject existing.

In my opinion the project for communism is about the most far reaching democracy as possible. This empowers the proletariat and puts the goal on our class becoming the new ruling class of society. I would think you'd have similar views.

Anyway, I'm ranting, just wanting to make clear the centrality of democracy is not a common line of thought among many "official" Marxist-Leninists.

[Rainsborough]

Thanks for the clarification. You will find many "Marxist-Leninists" on this forum, which are more commonly refered to (by the working class at large) as Stalinists, I just wanted to have that cleared out as there is a lot of confusion on the subject existing.

In my opinion the project for communism is about the most far reaching democracy as possible. This empowers the proletariat and puts the goal on our class becoming the new ruling class of society. I would think you'd have similar views.

Anyway, I'm ranting, just wanting to make clear the centrality of democracy is not a common line of thought among many "official" Marxist-Leninists.

Please tell me more about the 'project for communism', as i don't know anything about it.

Rainsborough

[Q]

Please tell me more about the 'project for communism', as i don't know anything about it.

Rainsborough

Well, there are many groups on the far left, having many traditions and, by consequence, many ideas about what the "communist project" is exactly. We already touched the "Marxist-Leninists", which see the USSR as run by Stalin & co as their rolemodel. Then there are the Trotskyists, which put a bigger emphasis on workers democracy as opposed to Stalinist ideas (I myself am in a Trotskyist group btw, so I might be a bit biased here). You also have the left-communists as a third main tendency. Then there are of course quite a few tendencies of anarchists (anarcho-syndicalists, mutualists, etc.).

Most groups put some emphasis on democracy. Few however emphasise it as the main objective of our class if we are ever going to get power over society and thus over our lives. In my opinion this is the crucial question in the last analysis.

One of the groups that do put this emphasis is the CPGB, which publishes the Weekly Worker (http://cpgb.org.uk/), which is one of the few papers on the left that is run as an open platform, which means it has generally a high quality of debate. This group doesn't really fall under any of the previously mentioned labels and considers themselves simply "Marxist". I'm not a member of it btw, but do find it interesting.

Again, ranting, I know.