How many communist workers actually exist?

[twenty percent tip]

I've been seriously considering this. I'm not talking about general leftism, which can be found amongst all kinds of people from the top to the bottom of society. I'm talking about genuine communists in the working class. How many actually exist in the world? How many workers are for the things laid out in the Communist Manifesto?

1. The abolition of private property.
2. The abolition of money and the market.
3. The abolition of the state.
4. The abolition of religion.
5. The abolition of the family.

Are there enough in the entire world to fill a taxi cab in New York?

Be honest.

I hope I'm wrong but unfortunately I don't think I am.

[Magón]

Clearly not enough. If there were enough, do you really think we'd be living how we are, in the way we are? No.

[Martin Blank]

Sadly, we are too few, and we constantly face pressure from the petty-bourgeois socialists to abandon our class and subordinate ourselves to their management teams.

[Stand Your Ground]

There's not enough out of the commie closet, yet. They need to unlock the door.

[Nolan]

More than you'd ever see on TV.

[La Comédie Noire]

What I can garner from your posts is you are a burnt out leftist/ activist who is looking for reassurance or trying to get us to doubt our own positions.

I've seen fragmentary expressions of consciousness especially from working class students, but nothing on par with what anyone would want. :(

I've also noticed a falling or stationary social mobility. Students who were going to 4 year colleges are leaving for the trade and community colleges because working class jobs such as nursing or electrical engineering offer better security.

I don't know how this bodes for the future.

[Spawn of Stalin]

This isn't something that a number can just be attached to, but there are many, we just don't see them because most of them exist outside of Europe and North America, the two places where like 99% of us are from.

[Savage]

There may not be that many workers that define themselves as communists but most leftist movements, regardless of their tendency have been met with support from those that they are intended to help. I think you'll find that most workers (in the west) aren't politically active at all, in countries victimized by imperialism there tends to be a lot more movement (unless your working in a sweatshop 24/7 or dying of starvation).

[ellipsis]

I am one.

[Q]

To give one concrete number: around 500 000 in the UK alone.

An English comrade told me once that the sectarian left act like revolving doors in a rather alarming rate. This doesn't however mean that once leaving the organisation, those people instantly become anti-communist though, most of the time they stick with far leftist ideas in one way or another for the rest of their lives. They just got disillusioned in the sectarian left and are often no longer politically active. So, while there are between 10 000 and 15 000 communists active today in the UK (ranging from anarchists to stalinoids), the actual number of people that have been in one or another of these groups throughout their lives would probably be more around half a million.

And this is just counting people that have been in one of the groups, potentially there are many more that very much sympathise with communist ideas. But even if we're talking about 1 million people, this is of course still a minority in a country like Britain.

On a related note, if the left ever could get its act together and form a class party around a common programma with an open debate culture, the total would clearly be far larger than the sum of its parts, as such a formation could and would appeal to exactly the wider layers in society and on the longer term build to a public communist awareness of many more millions.

[Rousedruminations]

I am two

[Die Neue Zeit]

Enter another, and I should have posted earlier.

[twenty percent tip]

I specifically said I wasn't talking about leftists in general or people that call themselves communists but rather working class people who are actually, right now, for ALL the measures laid out in the communist manifesto.

1. The abolition of private property.
2. The abolition of money and the market.
3. The abolition of the state.
4. The abolition of religion.
5. The abolition of the family.

So let's try this again.

I'm not looking for the membership rolls of leftist groups or the number of landless farmers fighting warlords in the periphery of capitalism.

How many workers do you know that support the abolition of religion? Of the family? Even "radicals" and "leftists" are often/usually conservative on these and other questions. Who in the working class actually supports all of these key principles?

Let's get down to an honest answer.

[gorillafuck]

I specifically said I wasn't talking about leftists in general or people that call themselves communists but rather working class people who are actually, right now, for ALL the measures laid out in the communist manifesto.

1. The abolition of private property.
2. The abolition of money and the market.
3. The abolition of the state.
4. The abolition of religion.
5. The abolition of the family.
Those things aren't all laid out in the communist manifesto. But there are more people than you'd hear about in the world why support abolition private property and capitalism.


I'm not looking for the membership rolls of leftist groups or the number of landless farmers fighting warlords in the periphery of capitalism.
Why do those people not count?

[Rafiq]

I don't see what's so wrong/unappealing about any of those.




1. The abolition of private property.

Abolition of private property does not mean taking away your car or your house, it means you can't own capital (means of production) privately.


2. The abolition of money and the market.

Again, you can't have Capital. And It doesn't necessarily outline no currency, but I don't see a reason for currency to exist.


3. The abolition of the state.

What's so unappealing about that?


4. The abolition of religion.

It won't be abolished, however most Marxists believe it will fade away on it's own through society's progress.


5. The abolition of the family.

Abolition of the family means abolition of family in it's current state. That doesn't mean abolition of family completely.

[BIG BROTHER]

I'm a worker and a communist. Does that count?

And you don't have to wait for all workers to become communists in order to have a revolution, its ussually the other way around.

Class struggle gets so intense that it leads to a revolution and during which worker's consciousness grows inmensly and very fast. That is when you would have millions of communist workers.

[Burn A Flag]

Honestly I think there are quite a few free thinking and leftist people. But it's still a very very small minority. Even if the USA, the citadel of world reaction, we still have a few communists (in fact many people on here) A large problem for us though is many of us live in suburban areas where there is NO political activity to get involved with and often nowhere near us to involve ourselves. Not saying you can't organize there but when you don't have more than 1 or 2 leftists it's hard to organize, especially getting past sectarian bs. If all the leftists in the USA lived in the same area, there would proabably be enough for a decent movement of some type.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I specifically said I wasn't talking about leftists in general or people that call themselves communists but rather working class people who are actually, right now, for ALL the measures laid out in the communist manifesto.

1. The abolition of private property.
2. The abolition of money and the market.
3. The abolition of the state.
4. The abolition of religion.
5. The abolition of the family.

So let's try this again.

Nah, let's not. Putting aside for the moment what you may or may not think is actually in it, the Communist Manifesto was written in a specific place and time, for a specific purpose...it's not the end-all-and-be-all of the communist project. In fact I think that you'd find few people knowledgable in this subject who'd say that it's Marx or Engels most important intellectual product. I think the pertinent question is: how many workers exist who actually support overthrowing capitalism and/or capitalist relations?

[Burn A Flag]

That is infinitely more important than things Marx wrote about what should be done in relation to the mid nineteenth century.

[MilkmanofHumanKindness]

Well, there are two ways that we can view the lack of Communist workers.

1. We can go cry about how the idea of a revolution is dead and how everything we do has no meaning that we have no future and Capitalism will win blah blah.

or

2. We can look realistically at the situation, and analyze:

A. What are the majority of workers? What do they actually believe? When you say Capitalism, you mean a very specific thing. When I was talking to some classmates recently most of them held the view that Capitalism = Democracy and small business. So we when we say workers are "Capitalist" we need to understand what Capitalism means to them.

B. Why do workers hold this stance on Capitalism? People think logically, and symbolically so an analysis of why workers support Capitalism needs to be taken. Logically, many individuals have seen Communism during their time fail to bring the fruits that it promised, the Soviet Union turned into state terror, China became an oppressive police state, North Korea... etc.

Almost all individuals view Communism as some kind of Snake Oil Salesman:
mVh75ylAUXY

Symbolically some images of the Cold War have been ingrained in the cultural mind of the western world. American planes providing food and aid to Berlin when the Soviet Union attempted to starve it. Tienanmen Square. Kruschev slamming his shoe down and screaming "We will bury you."

All of these images create negative connotations with the rhetoric of Socialism.

C. How can we change people's minds?

Well, we have to destroy the connotations people have of Socialist and Anti-Capitalist movements. People think we're authoritarian? Democratic meetings, public events, things that are fun it does us no good to be public if everyone thinks we're boring as fuck. If the image they have of Socialism is that it's some strict Stalinist nightmare, we have to illustrate that we have fun.

As for the logical arguments those can be addressed over time, I'm sure all of us can explain why Capitalism sucks in simple language.

Also, we need to avoid polarizing things, at least at first. There's no reason to go around calling cops, "pigs" or vandalizing shit. That just scares people away.

D. ??????????

E. Revolution!

So, do we surrender, or do we change tactics and stop doing boring things?

[Burn A Flag]

Yeah you're right, lots of people think communism "will take away their freedom" but what they fail to realize due to their political education is that the USA isn't free at all. Most people have decent civil rights. But little economic rights.

[Martin Blank]

I'm talking about genuine communists in the working class. How many actually exist in the world? How many workers are for the things laid out in the Communist Manifesto?

1. The abolition of private property.
2. The abolition of money and the market.
3. The abolition of the state.
4. The abolition of religion.
5. The abolition of the family.

As for organizations, our Party fits the bill. We only admit workers into our Party, and every one of us is a communist as defined by the Manifesto. And we can easily fill a charter bus ... and perhaps a couple more, if we include formal Supporters.

[sanpal]

Sadly, we are too few, and we constantly face pressure from the petty-bourgeois socialists to abandon our class and subordinate ourselves to their management teams.

It's one of the reasons why communist party of the USSR through the time became not quite party of proletarian consciousness. There was a process of urbanization and many thousands of peasants with its petty-bourgeois consciousness came to cities and became a workers and communists or got high posts in CPSU. (Btw Khruschov seems from peasant family if I'm not wrong)

[sanpal]

On a related note, if the left ever could get its act together and form a class party around a common programma with an open debate culture, the total would clearly be far larger than the sum of its parts, as such a formation could and would appeal to exactly the wider layers in society and on the longer term build to a public communist awareness of many more millions.

Vanguard is needed. Vanguard of intellectual workers.




stalinoid


:lol: cool name

[sanpal]

As for organizations, our Party fits the bill. We only admit workers into our Party, and every one of us is a communist as defined by the Manifesto. And we can easily fill a charter bus ... and perhaps a couple more, if we include formal Supporters.

Does your Party have a realistic programme for the transition period before these final aims in the Manifesto? Then you would get a very intensive traffic of mass of charter buses :)