Most Accurate Label for my Views

[Cody_2ZZ]

Hello all, excellent forum here. I've been lurking for quite some time and finally decided to join. I've done a decent amount of reading and other research on leftist politics but my main introduction to leftism was in the form of Marxism, more specifically Marxist literary theory (I'm a college student). I'm trying to hammer out exactly where I stand and I thought maybe you guys can help me.

My personal political views break down like this:
I believe in personal freedom and direct democracy.
I believe Capitalism to be inherently faulted and corrupt, and that Capitalism in practice really brings out the worst in men.
I think Marx's views on how society is structured to be spot-on. The whole economic base-ideological superstructure appears to be the way our western societies really function.

Those are my most essential beliefs. What do you think? I feel that I lean towards a more reformist democratic socialism rather than a revolutionary approach.

[Rjevan]

First of all: Hi and welcome!

I feel that I lean towards a more reformist democratic socialism rather than a revolutionary approach.
Seriously? How do you think reformism could possibly work as you yourself just stated that "capitalism is inherently faulted and corrupt" and that Marx's "economic base-ideological superstructure" view appears to be correct? The latter should tell you that our political system is controlled and dominated by those who hold economic power, do you really think they would just sit and watch us getting elected (and who controlls the media, supports and sponsors the bourgeois parties and politicians?) and step by step taking away their power base? This view implies that we live in a genuine democracy where your vote matters, the state and its institutions are neutral entities which can be used by everybody and that everybody plays by the rules. All of these assumptions are plainly wrong from a Marxist point of view.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Comrade, welcome to the forum.

My advice: don't worry about giving yourself an 'ism', it doesn't really matter at the moment! If I were you, i'd browse the politics, learning and theory (and philosophy, if you're so inclined) sub-forums on this forum. They tend to be the most informative for new comrades.

I also strongly, strongly advise that you head over to www.marxists.org and perhaps take a look at the following authors for starters:

Marx and Engels (definitely read the Communist Manifesto, several times, and think about what it means)
Luxembourg
Bakunin
Kropotkin
Liebknecht
Kautsky
Lenin
Stalin (read some of his interviews, they are quite interesting, in particular the Marxism vs Liberalism one with Wells)


So you might want to start with the Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels, and then perhaps the ABC of Communism by Nikolai Bukharin and Preobrazhensky:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/index.htm

Good luck;)

[Tommy4ever]

You sound like a communist. It just isn't quite obvious what sort of communist you are.

Anyways, welcome Comrade!

[punisa]

I feel that I lean towards a more reformist democratic socialism rather than a revolutionary approach.

There is nothing wrong with reformist approach, I too believed that such a way was feasible.
But the more you learn and more you get deeper into politics, you soon realize that revolution is the only option.

[PhoenixAsh]

Hi and welcome,

Its not really possible to tell what your tendency is based on just these statements. However, if you do not think that the current system can only be altered towards Marxism through revolution and needs an evolutionary change you might be a democratic socialist (different from a social-democrat).

[Cody_2ZZ]

Rievan:

I understand what you mean. I want to clarify that I do NOT believe we live in a true democracy. That's an entirely different issue but it seems most like a Plutocracy than anything. What I meant by reformist was that I don't think violent, dramatic revolution will ever last in a meaningful way.

El_Granma:

Thanks for the warm welcome :) Thanks for the links. I've actually been to that site and read through some of their material. I've also read the communist manifesto several times. I have a ton of more reading to do. I've only recently really gotten into thinking about these things. I grew up in a staunchly conservative family and the thought of actually reading communist literature was completely foreign to me. The more I read and understand, the more I see that it would be entirely beneficial for the working class (where I come from) to stop voting in plutocrats and start keeping their own interests in mind.

I don't mean to digress but it seems totally strange to me that so many of the American working class is so conservative economically. They don't seem to realize that they continuously vote in leaders that DO NOT have their best interests in mind. I think it comes from the very American notion that if you REALLY work hard and try your best, you can be rich too, which is totally untrue.

[Cody_2ZZ]

I would agree that my views appear to be more socialistic than communistic, although I have heard widely varying explanations on what the differences between them really are.

[progressive_lefty]

Rievan:

I understand what you mean. I want to clarify that I do NOT believe we live in a true democracy. That's an entirely different issue but it seems most like a Plutocracy than anything. What I meant by reformist was that I don't think violent, dramatic revolution will ever last in a meaningful way.

I would mostly agree with your post. I think a reformist attitude is quite smart, because if there were to be a revolution or a chance of a revolution the biggest mistake communists could make is to alienate people. I find it frustrating that some leftists seem hell bent on trying to scare people. I remember going to a protest rally with my friend about a non-economic issue, and he wanted to leave when a local revolutionary communist group starting handing out red flags to protestors. It is bizarre, and a perfect example of alienating a potenital supporter of communism - especially when the protest rally was essentially about an apolitical issue. Some revolutionary communist groups seem to be more hell bent on carrying big red flags, then trying to communicate with the general public about what communism and what the benefits are to it.

I personally believe in a reformist attitude, isn't there many pro-Chavez people on this forum?

[Dumb]

Those are my most essential beliefs. What do you think? I feel that I lean towards a more reformist democratic socialism rather than a revolutionary approach.

You probably mean that you favour an incremental, rather than revolutionary, approach. My understanding is that reformism is the advocacy of reforms to capitalism without ever abandoning the capitalist framework per se; is that what you're advocating, or do you intend to say that you favour a gradual, democratically implemented abandonment of capitalism en route to socialism?

[dernier combat]

What I meant by reformist was that I don't think violent, dramatic revolution will ever last in a meaningful way.
We communists view revolution as simply one class overthrowing another. In the case of working class revolution, it involves putting workplaces under democratic control by their workers (in effect ending their employers' and managers' control of their workplace and their labour and abolishing the capitalist's private property rights) and creating direct democratic ground-up institutions of workers' self-government in the form of popular assemblies (both phenomena are observed in every attempt by the working class to take control to date). There is nothing inherently violent about the concept of revolution itself. Violence will only come in the form of reaction by the capitalist class (i.e. deployment of military and riot police) or from the working class only if violent bourgeois reaction is anticipated in a given circumstance. We definitely don't anticipate violence during/as a result of the revolution to involve anything near the scale of the Russian civil war.

Also, my two cents: that stuff you mentioned about "not lasting" is pseudophilosophical rubbish with no material basis.

[TC]

Don't label yourself - labels contribute to dogmatic, sectarian idolization of specific dead figures and historical movements at the expense of free thought and critique. Think for yourself and stay open to new ideas.

[ZeroNowhere]

With these things, I think that when you find the place, you'll know it to be such. Most labels express not simply a collection of disconnected beliefs, but rather a (more or less coherent) whole. This will (eg. in the case of Marxism, revisionism, left communism, etc.) be based on a certain analysis of how the world is. As such, it's probably best to read around a bit, and if you find an analysis which seems more or less watertight to you, then you can figure out what is to be done. Generally, where there's an analysis, someone's already taken it to its logical conclusion as regards action, and that's where the label comes in. There are various labels, some including names of people (eg. Marxism, De Leonism) and some not (eg. anarcho-syndicalism, left communism), and the only real difference between them is that the former generally sound better (the former also often have more interesting histories, with both 'Marxist' and 'De Leonite' having originated as insults and being adopted in response.)

Alternatively, there is a tendency based on simply determining what kind of socialist society would seem the nicest to live in or most morally right, and that is called utopian socialism, closely related to Tugan's 'ethical socialism' and revisionism.

[Impulse97]

Welcome! Here's an excellent website and an excellent part of said excellent site.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm


What is Communism?

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.



What is the proletariat?

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.[1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm#nb)



Under what conditions does this sale of the labor of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place?

Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor.



What will this new social order have to be like?

Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.


Granted, this is only a small part of a long article/essay/written work thingy. Here's some about Luxembourgism from Wikipedia.


Luxemburgism (also written Luxembourgism) is a specific revolutionary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution) theory within Marxism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism), based on the writings of Rosa Luxemburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg). According to M. K. Dziewanowski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Kamil_Dziewanowski), the term was originally coined by Bolshevik (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik) leaders denouncing the deviations of Luxemburg's followers from traditional Leninism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leninism), but it has since been adopted by her followers themselves.
Luxemburgism is a Libertarian socialist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialist) interpretation of Marxism[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)] which, while supporting the Russian Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_%281917%29), as Rosa Luxemburg did, agrees with her criticisms of the politics of Lenin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin) and Trotsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotsky); she did not see their concept of "democratic centralism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism)" as democracy.



The chief tenets of Luxemburgism are committed to democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy) and the necessity of the revolution taking place as soon as possible. In this regard, it is similar to Council Communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Communism), but differs in that, for example, Luxemburgists do not reject elections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election) by principle. It resembles anarchism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism) in its insistence that only relying on the people themselves as opposed to their leaders can avoid an authoritarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian) society, but differs in that it sees the importance of a revolutionary party, and mainly the centrality of the working class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class) in the revolutionary struggle. It resembles Trotskyism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism) in its opposition to the totalitarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism) of Stalinist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist) government while simultaneously avoiding the reformist politics of Social Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformism), but differs from Trotskyism in arguing that Lenin and Trotsky also made undemocratic errors.


Luxemburg criticized Lenin's ideas on how to organize a revolutionary party as likely to lead to a loss of internal democracy and the domination of the party by a few leaders. Ironically, in her most famous attack on Lenin's views, the 1904 Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy, or, Leninism or Marxism?,[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourgism#cite_note-0) a response to Lenin's 1903 What Is To Be Done? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_To_Be_Done%3F), Luxemburg was more worried that the authoritarianism she saw in Leninism would lead to sectarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism) and irrelevancy than that it would lead to a dictatorship after a successful revolution - although she also warned of the latter danger. Luxemburg died before Stalin's assumption of power, and never had a chance to come up with a complete theory of Stalinism, but her criticisms of the Bolsheviks have been taken up by many writers in their arguments about the origins of Stalinism, including many who are otherwise far from Luxemburgism.

Hope this helps! Also, I wanna second what TC said, don't rush to label yourself and if you do, try to refrain from sectarianism. I've changed my tendency at least half a dozen times over the past few months so don't worry if you can't make up your mind. :D

[Dumb]

Don't label yourself - labels contribute to dogmatic, sectarian idolization of specific dead figures and historical movements at the expense of free thought and critique. Think for yourself and stay open to new ideas.

What if I want to be a TCist?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Sounds ilke a very good start, cody. I grew up in a pretty right-wing, middle class family myself, so I know what it's like.

[Impulse97]

Sounds ilke a very good start, cody. I grew up in a pretty right-wing, middle class family myself, so I know what it's like.

Me too, except my moms a liberal and so is her sister, but everyone else is a conservative. Sucks hardcore...