How did you get interested in Communism?

[Nox]

What was it that sparked your interest in Communism?

I became interested in the idea of Communism while studying the Soviet Union in school. I did some further research on Communism at home and I really liked it. Unfortunately, I still haven't read any books on Communism as do not want my family to find out about my beliefs, and I can't stand reading books on my computer :D

[RedSonRising]

I moved from a very underprivileged neighborhood of mostly Blacks and Latinos (my own family being from Colombia), and moved when I was 14 to a rich white neighborhood, and was shocked at the differences, and started questioning them. I felt isolated as a Latino, and began to have disdain for mainstream US culture while trying to learn about my people's own history. After I started thinking in terms of class structure, I realized that there is no such thing as a "poor country" or a "rich country", and that ruling classes exist basically everywhere. I knew the ills of inequality came from improper wealth distribution, and so I became attracted to egalitarian politics; I started reading about Che Guevara and the ideologies of Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism. It took off from there many years ago, and here I be.

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

i studied Russia, said was soviet union, did some research etc

funny part?
im upper class where i live.

[Apoi_Viitor]

Noam Chomsky :thumbup1:

[Binh]

Coming from a working class family living under capitalism in a city decimated by corporate greed is what sparked my interest.

[Catmatic Leftist]

After hearing about it smashed by American propaganda, I was curious to see what it was, since it had that air of taboo around it. It turned out to be everything that I wanted our world to be like. And it made sense to me, too.

[Dogs On Acid]

Out of curiosity I acquired class-consciousness.

Everybody told me the Soviet Union was an evil dictatorship, Communism was horrible and backward, and that we live in fucking utopia.

Then I heard about Laika, Yuri Gagarin, the fact that the S.U. were our allies during WW2, and other shit when I was a kid.

Hey if they got the 1st man into space they can't be that backward, and if we fought together they can't be that evil... Voila!

Opened a few books and turned red over night (not from sunburn).

Turned Red & Black a few months later (not melanoma).

[Fulanito de Tal]

I got into Russian history.

[L.A.P.]

I realized I'm just way too radical to grow up being a liberal all my life, so I read about several different ideologies and communism seemed to be the best. In a nutshell.

[Nox]

It's interesting that nobody has answered with "Arguing with Communists" yet, I know that there are a fair few ex-fascists, ex-cappies etc on this forum.

[La Comédie Noire]

My family is working class, my dad is a unionized public resvoir employee and my mom was a nurse, but then she got sick and died of cancer. The way she was treated by the hospital she worked for was horrible, making her resign her license and thus her benefits when she was obviously not in her right mind. Before that I had entertained the idea of communism, but thought "well we have it so good, so it must be good right". but then my mom's illness and death changed me forever. This was also about the time I picked up a book called "The Jungle"

[A Revolutionary Tool]

One day my sister and I were debating about gun control(she supports, I don't) and she said something about how we need to stop the violence. I responded by saying something like "Well if we were all equal instead of so many people being poor we wouldn't have so much gun violence." In a very negative tone she tells me "But that's communism." I was kind of stunned like wtf? Thought about what she said for a while and I couldn't believe that communism could be such a bad thing if it meant equality so I went to the library and picked up the Manifesto. So now I tell my sister it's her fault I'm a commie lol.

[Sensible Socialist]

I stumbled upon it, more or less. I was active on another forum for gaming, and in the off-topic section there would be debates about politics and such. For a while, I was the typical American Republican, until one time I came across a list of links for political websites. One of them was SocialistWorker, and I started reading it on a daily basis. I talked to some other people on that forum, and became aquainted with the ideas of socialism. It wasn't until I came here, however, and started to read and watch more that I discovered my political philosophy as it is today.

[o well this is ok I guess]

It's not exactly something I can pin point to any exact moment in my life.
I was honestly surprised when I was being accused of being red.

[#FF0000]

I started reading a lot of legitimate history after 9/11, since I kept hearing "THEY H8 US 4 ARE FREEDOMS" and as an 11 year old I was like "that's fucking dumb".

Eventually I read about communists, but I didn't really start reading leftist shit until a friend of mine pointed out that literally every time you mention communism, people bring out the exact same line.

[Aleenik]

It's interesting that nobody has answered with "Arguing with Communists" yet, I know that there are a fair few ex-fascists, ex-cappies etc on this forum.I'm interested to find out who the ex-fascists are. That is quite a dramatic change.

As for ex-cappies, aren't we all ex-Capitalist supporters?

[AnonymousOne]

I gave up Authoritarianism, at least from the state, since I was about 14 after having *gulp* read Atlas Shrugged. Like many involved in the heady days at the beginning of the internet and personal computing I was a definite libertarian, but after reading Rand I became an Objectivist, and as I've mentioned in other threads it hurt me a lot mentally and emotionally. I finally realized that a society where only a few "John Galts" got to rule over the rest of us made me sick to my stomach and I married my love of Freedom with Socialism.

I was an Anarcho-Collectivist for several years, until I stumbled upon Proudhon. Then I was just an Anarchist, now I find myself a Market Socialist, specifically an Anarcho-Mutualist.

RevLeft this past month has been good for me, it's forced me to think through what I believe and why I believe it and also help formalize my views.

[Pretty Flaco]

The recession hit my family hard. Things were already rough ever since we moved to the US when I was little... But when it seemed we were completely fucked, we got shit lucky. An old friend of my dad's offered him a job and help getting a decent house for cheap. He found us a nice house but it's sort of in the middle of nowhere, but we got it for nearly half of the original price. We went from a fucking trailer to a 2 story house. It has enough room for us to live comfortably now; we have 7 people in our family.
But the key thing is that even though we're closer to indy, we go to school in a suburb. And this is what shaped me, to see how these people grow up in such a nice environment with such a good standard of living with none of the problems associated with poverty.
When I moved I'll admit that for a while when I first moved I was a little depressed. I had left all of my friends and my whole life behind and now I had to make new. So I started reading. I never was a reader, but all of the sudden now I was. I read all sorts of books. Fiction books. History books. Political books. And as nerdy as this sounds, I ran into a book of "historically significant texts". In it were some articles on socialism and these intrigued me. So I tried to find out what socialism was. I didn't know what it was, but I thought it was bad. It was socialism after all. Later that view changed.
I used to want to fuck up rich kids cuz it was funny; none of them could fight cuz they never grew up fighting. Now I think, well maybe if we all had actual control over the way our lives were going we wouldn't have no reason to fight. All of today's problems, the problems I now associate from a capitalistic social and economic structure would be gone.

P.S. It's late and I feel like I just did a bunch a rambling. :rolleyes:



Long story short: stumbled upon socialism while reading and I was interested in what it meant, because I always associated it with something negative.

[Agent Ducky]

Well, "heard about it from a friend" is the closest to this, but how I became a commie is kinda weird. I had this online friend who was a communist. We both played (wait for it) RuneScape. Yes. I admit it (no, I don't play that anymore). We frequented the game's forums. So he encouraged me to make a thread urging a communist revolution within the game. It was mostly for lolz, and it was really fun to run around pissing people off calling them "comrade," and shit. I got a shitload of followers too >_>. Then I was doing more research to make my arguments more legit, and found myself fascinated with the whole ideology. I didn't actually accept it as my beliefs until I started reading revleft. :D

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Well, "heard about it from a friend" is the closest to this, but how I became a commie is kinda weird. I had this online friend who was a communist. We both played (wait for it) RuneScape. Yes. I admit it (no, I don't play that anymore). We frequented the game's forums. So he encouraged me to make a thread urging a communist revolution within the game. It was mostly for lolz, and it was really fun to run around pissing people off calling them "comrade," and shit. I got a shitload of followers too >_>. Then I was doing more research to make my arguments more legit, and found myself fascinated with the whole ideology. I didn't actually accept it as my beliefs until I started reading revleft. :DDude, I can't believe Runescape is still around. I remember playing it when I was 13!! That was nine years ago ...

[/off-topic]

[fionntan]

Born like this due to surroundings.

[Madslatter]

I grew up pretty bougie in a small poor town. I remember being unhappy as a kid (8 or 9) about the fact that a number of my friends couldn't do some of the fun stuff I could because they're families didn't have the cash. I asked my dad why everybody doesn't get paid about the same and we could all enjoy the good stuff. He told me that "people tried it. It's called communism and it didn't work." During my teen years I generally had progressive and anti-war politics, but didn't get any further besides thinking that Bernie Sanders and Russ Feingold kicked major ass in congress, but never looked beyond the Green Party for radical politics. After Obama reneged on his campaign promises (yeah, I guzzled his coolaid), I cut my final ties with liberalism and moved to democratic socialism and quickly moved down the Anarcho-Communism. I sat in the AnCom closet for a while first, so as to be taken seriously in arguments with my friends.

[jake williams]

It's a combination of two things.

One is I used to be active with the NDP (social democrats) and during elections I would go to events where candidates from different parties would be. I regularly met communist candidates there, I heard what they had to say, and noticed that it was very different from what the social democrats were talking about. The first person with whom I really got involved was a candidate for the Communist Party (though I actually first told him I'd like to get involved at an anti-war demonstration).

Two is I used to live nextdoor to someone who grew up in the ANC and talked about the couple years she'd spent in Russia in the 70s as the best years of her life. It was a bit of a different perspective on politics and it was definitely a nudge to end up very close with someone who is pro-communist.

So yeah, I grew up with communists in my life to turn to as my politics radicalized for other reasons (life experience).

[DarkPast]

I saw the grotesque injustices and inequality of the current system. I looked for alternatives, and found Marxism to be the most desireable (by reading books on communism).

EDIT: Oh, and I remember reading Animal Farm thinking the animals had the right idea at the beginning.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I moved from Labourism/Social Democracy to Marxism through a mixture of my own nous, studying the Soviet Union at school and being exposed to revolutionary leftism on here, in the news etc.

I then moved away from accepting vanguardism through my experiences in the UK activist scene of the past year or so.

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

I got busted as a "Danger to the Security of the State" and I've been trying to live up to that ever since.

[ColonelCossack]

parental indoctrination ftw

[pluckedflowers]

Probably the biggest direct influence for me was Marxist historiography, especially Marxist criticisms of postmodernism and postcolonialism, in addition to the great work done by Marxist historians like Robert Brenner and Christopher Hill.

My first interest in the left actually came from Simon Critchley, whose "Infinitely Demanding" greatly impressed me when I first read it. I didn't know what to make of Slavoj Zizek's scathing criticisms of Critchley at the time. Later, through my studies in history and historiography, I saw what Zizek had been talking about.

[Battlecat]

Well, during the GFC my history teacher tried to explain exactly how it happened. The reason he gave was something about the stock market and the way capitalism works. I asked "well, if capitalism keeps fucking itself to death, why don't we have something different?" He told me about communism, and how it was good, but failed due to human nature. I thought communism sounded.. natural, so I did research on it. Then I went through the early "militant Stalinist" stage, and got really into Che Guevara. Whilst researching him I was lead to thechestore and thus..

[Olentzero]

Well, we gotta dial the wayback machine to 1986 for this one. We're in the ascent of the Gorbachev era and all of a sudden the USSR doesn't look all that evil anymore, despite Reagan's early onset dementia-fueled rants. I picked up a dilapidated old Russian grammar book at a flea market for a buck and started teaching myself.

Other dudes at my high school gave me a bunch of shit and started calling me Communist, to which I finally replied "So fucking what if I am?" This blew their minds, and eventually one fellow handed me a copy of the Manifesto and said "Read this and see how bad it is." So during my religion class (sorry, forgot to mention I went to a Catholic boys' high school) I plowed through the book and came out the other side thinking "Fuck, Marx is a genius!"

So I started looking around for groups to get active with, and ran across the ISO in 1989. End of this particular story, but the beginning of a much longer one...

[Tim Cornelis]

An "anarcho-capitalist" turned me to communism, true story.

[CommunityBeliever]

My transition to communism was pretty gradual.

I was totally apolitical around 2008, and then I explored all the candidates for the 2008 elections. Only Ron Paul's speeches made any sense, so I quickly became a supporter of him and a became a believer in "cultural libertarianism," for example, I believed in the legalisation of marijuina, the right to own guns, etc.

Later on I got strong anti-corporate sentiments, I was like fuck Microsoft for their proprietary software and for what they are doing with Idiot Exploiter, fuck oil companies like Exon Mobil for supporting the Iraq War, fuck McDonalds, etc. Fuck the corporations.

Later on, it was Chomsky who really opened my eyes to "economic libertarianism" and made me a socialist. I read all of his books that I could get my hands on, and I realised that the state and capitalism are inseparable, that the founding father's didn't really believe in democracy, etc, etc. This all fit into my anti-corporate sentiments.

I didn't really became a violently revolutionary communist though until I read books like Confessions of an Economic Hitman (http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/1576753018) that talk about how "economic hitman" in conjunction with the CIA and the military fuck over most of the world for U.S interests, as well as War is a Racket (http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865) which basically says the same sort of thing.

Another thing is that I have always lived below the poverty line because my dad happens to be a cripple. We have never owned a car (I bike everywhere), or a house (we cram into small apartments), or anything along those lines. We just have money for food, water, some personal property like computers, etc and the rest goes to pay the fees.

In other words, we live like most proletarians. All this bourgeoisie talk about "upward mobility" is bullshit when you have to pay all your money just to live month to month, and then later on to pay off all your debts.

[Dogs On Acid]

My transition to communism was pretty gradual.

I was totally apolitical around 2008, and then I explored all the candidates for the 2008 elections. Only Ron Paul's speeches made any sense, so I quickly became a supporter of him and a became a believer in "cultural libertarianism," for example, I believed in the legalisation of marijuina, the right to own guns, etc.

Later on I got strong anti-corporate sentiments, I was like fuck Microsoft for their proprietary software and for what they are doing with Idiot Exploiter, fuck oil companies like Exon Mobil for supporting the Iraq War, fuck McDonalds, etc. Fuck the corporations.

Later on, it was Chomsky who really opened my eyes to "economic libertarianism" and made me a socialist. I read all of his books that I could get my hands on, and I realised that the state and capitalism are inseparable, that the founding father's didn't really believe in democracy, etc, etc. This all fit into my anti-corporate sentiments.

I didn't really became a violently revolutionary communist though until I read books like Confessions of an Economic Hitman (http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/1576753018) that talk about how "economic hitman" in conjunction with the CIA and the military fuck over most of the world for U.S interests, as well as War is a Racket (http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865) which basically says the same sort of thing.

Another thing is that I have always lived below the poverty line because my dad happens to be a cripple. We have never owned a car (I bike everywhere), or a house (we cram into small apartments), or anything along those lines. We just have money for food, water, some personal property like computers, etc and the rest goes to pay the fees.

In other words, we live like most proletarians. All this bourgeoisie talk about "upward mobility" is bullshit when you have to pay all your money just to live month to month, and then later on to pay off all your debts.

If you find the State and Capitalism inseparable, which I agree on, then why are you a M-L-M?

[CommunityBeliever]

If you find the State and Capitalism inseparable, which I agree on, then why are you a M-L-M? I don't see the contradiction between that belief and MLM. There can be a worker's state as Lenin proposed, and as the capitalists wither away, so to will the state.

[Smyg]

Anger at the system drew me to it.

[Dogs On Acid]

I don't see the contradiction between that belief and MLM. There can be a worker's state as Lenin proposed, and as the capitalists wither away, so to will the state.

It isn't showing any signs of "withering away" in China or Nepal. Much to the contrary. Same applies to the U.S.S.R.

I find State Socialism incredibly flawed and yet people still flock to it.

[Metacomet]

From learning about the messed up history of Latin America.

[Thirsty Crow]

Since I've been thinking about something broader than my immediate surroundings and immediate interests (let's say, about the world), so begining in high school, I found myself in vague opposition to business, especially business mentality and lifestyle (reinforced by finer points of my upbringing, for instance, by my mother's persistance on reciprocity and fairness in human relationships). It just didn't make sense to me why would I be forced to strive for hoarding up wealth if I wanted to enjoy life.
Then came the recognition of the other side of the coin (coinciding with my increased sense of individuality), the recognition of inequality and domination that is a precondition for wealth hunting.
So I read some stuff but never really managed to connect my thoughts with it, them being all over the place.

Then the struggle for the abolition of student fees came, and that was it for me, backed by increased financial problems and ever increasing need for work along studying. The experience of self-managed social struggle directly confronting the state and the interests its actions are based on got me to dive head first into the history and theory of class struggle.

[socialistjustin]

Got pissed off that the dems didnt put up a fight against Bushs surge plan in 2007. I started reading more Chomsky and it all went downhill from there.

[CommieTroll]

I'm interested to find out who the ex-fascists are. That is quite a dramatic change.

As for ex-cappies, aren't we all ex-Capitalist supporters?

Ex-Fascists? Well I used to read a lot about Adolf Hitler and I was fascinated by WWII, I read Mien Kampf and in Mien Kampf Hitler mentioned that the two biggest threats to Austria were Marxism and Jewry, I believed none of this crap but I was interested in Marxism as I never heard of it before. I used to joke around about Nazi beliefs because it caused so much controversy and that was funny to me. In school I always read ahead of my class and eventually stumbled on The Great October Revolution and I was fixated on Lenin and the Worker's Revolution, eventually I started reading more red material and on famous Marxists such as Marx, Guevara, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky & Engles. Now I'm one of those evil Reds (as my grandfather puts it:laugh:). A friend introduced me to Revleft and now here I am.

[Crux]

Grew up with my mother, who, for most of that time was unemployed, well she still is moving through different job programs. So, not by global standards, but by swedish standards certainly i've grown up poor. Both my parents are left-wing. These thing's no doubt influenced me. I was also inspired by the French Revolution, which led to a very brief and misguided embrace of liberalism, before I could connect the dots. I did have friends that inspired me aswell.

[piet11111]

In history class we where being told about WW1 and we learned about the Russian revolution and Lenin and how he was inspired by Karl Marx and then where explained the basic ideas of Marxism.

I remembered that during the napoleonic time russia was an extremely backwards country so i asked how they managed to beat the germans in WW2 then i was informed about the 5 year plans and their initial success in industrializing the USSR and i then asked why the western world never had national development plans.
My teacher explained the capitalists personally owning the means of production and that they need to follow the markets to determine investment and expansion of production.

The idea of a planned economy being superior and the equality of all never got out of my head.

[Ocean Seal]

Falling for the American propaganda, becoming an anti-communist, finding out what communism actually was, hearing the "like it or leave it" argument (America), realizing why my parents left Latin America (imperialist capitalism) thus invalidating that argument. Then I became a communist. Then I saw Capitalism a Love Story, which made me decide to join this website, and then become a more active commie with more research to back up what I believed in.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

In geography class in elementary school we had this project to write a little book/report on any country in North America. At that time the Elian Gonzalez affair was happening and inspired me to write on Cuba. I even included a section on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Geography / social studies was always my favorite class back then and I was obsessively into studying maps and flags. I guess noticing the differences between the older maps and newer ones (reunification of Germany, break up of the USSR, I also had this old tin piggy-bank globe where half of Africa was "French West Africa", etc.) just made me curious about all of that as well.

I think the first time I learned of Karl Marx was playing the video game 007 Goldeneye for the nintendo 64. There were these pictures of him on the walls in that level where you're escaping from Soviet interrogators and my dad was like, "oh hey, Karl Marx" or something.

When I was like twelve I went to Mexico, which let me make a lot of social observations, but was also when I got my first Che t-shirt. A while later that led me to wanting to know more about him than just "he was a revolutionary", so I did research and eventually I discovered Che-lives (old revleft) and started to read more theoretical Marxist literature.

[KevlarPants]

My family on my mother's side has a long history of communists, and they were the ones who practically raised me, so I pretty much grew on communism. Folks kept telling me I was a communist, even though I didn't really know what it meant.

When I was older, I kinda took it more to heart and started reading up on it, and now here I am. Still learning how to defend my beliefs, though.

[WyoLeftist]

Being from Wyoming, I started out as you're typical "My dad was a 'publican, Ima be a 'publican!" I devoured any politically themed book I could get my hands on. By the time I was 16 I was reading Murray Rothbard, and purchased a compilation of writings by him and a group of people titled "Right and Left." The more I read about "old right" "new right" and "old left" and "new left," the more I began to sympathize with the so-called "new left."

That, and I'm sure my dad being a unionized railroader and taking me to his union meetings as a young child and high school student had nothing to do with it, haha!

[Zav]

I became interested in Communism when I realised that democratic labor unions couldn't take the place of local governance.

[L.A.P.]

Capitalism a Love Story,

*high five* same here.

[Susurrus]

I think reading wikipedia was what first got me interested in communism. It was a few years ago, and I started as a Leninist(never a Stalinist, knew enough about him to hate him), without really knowing what it meant, or really much of anything about communism other than it meant common ownership of property.

Then I explored other political ideologies, and came out of that a fascist(a non-racist of the pre-Mussolini Italian tendency, never any sympathy for the nazis), before realizing that corporatism was not a solution, and returning to a vague communist tendency.

Then a line from V for Vendetta("this is not anarchy, this is chaos") got me thinking about anarchism, and doing some research I found out about anarcho-communism. I had finally read the Communist Manifesto a little before this, and at this point I actually began to read political books and started the process of fleshing out my politics to what they are now.

I found Revleft at that stage, thought it was cool and made an account, then forgot about it until a few months ago when I rediscovered Revleft, and was able to understand it better with my political knowledge. The End.

[Frank Zapatista]

Hmm, difficult question, I answered reading books but that's only part of it. Like most people, my political ideology was formed through personal experiences, everyday life etc. I was always interested in politics, describing myself as a liberal when I was younger (my parents are conservatives), I found myself more radical in opinion than most of my other friends (who were also liberal), In a few years time I came out of the closet (and experienced the backlash of it) and also read the Communist Manifesto, all these things combined influenced my Communism.

[Pretty Flaco]

A lot of you guys flip sides faster than the democrats. ;)

Before I became associated with marxism I would say I "don't give no shit" about politics, but I preferred the republicans because the family I have over here all don't like the democrats... Which leads me to the question:
Why do so many union folks in the US prefer republican over democrat? Or is this just my personal experience and not true?

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

And then one day...


http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd258/TheOrangePress/Zazzle/Marxijuanazazzle.gif

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I'm interested to find out who the ex-fascists are. That is quite a dramatic change.

As for ex-cappies, aren't we all ex-Capitalist supporters?
Well I don't know if I could be considered a fascist for what I believed but when 9/11 happened that was basically when I took an interest in politics. I was young(only 3rd grade) when it happened and easily manipulated by my racist Grandpa. So I thought we should be nuking the Middle East because they hated us all and we just needed to go to war and get some revenge. I'd say I was basically a Tea Party person before the Tea Party came around but I wasn't very religious. Like American libertarians who wanted war.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

A lot of you guys flip sides faster than the democrats. ;)

Before I became associated with marxism I would say I "don't give no shit" about politics, but I preferred the republicans because the family I have over here all don't like the democrats... Which leads me to the question:
Why do so many union folks in the US prefer republican over democrat? Or is this just my personal experience and not true?
It's been true with my experiences a lot of the time too. It's always been either because they thought Republicans would bring jobs back home or because they really didn't care about the economics of them. Instead they focused more on the issues like abortion or gay marriage.

[XenoLair]

When you grow up in a home with a mom cursing at the "new" system and always saying the "old" one (Yugoslavia) was better you soon start researching stuff and you basically have to be the biggest asshole not to agree with it.

One must also ask himself why, when every single person on the street he meets says that the USA are the most evil country on earth.

I guess I was born in the right location and time to escape being brainwashed.

[North Star]

When I was 9, I found this tin in a store with Soviet art on it in a constructivist style glorifying workers. I thought it looked cool. I think my dad explained to me what it was and said communism didn't work. Not that he was a rabid right winger but this was literally 3 years after the USSR collapsed. But I was fascinated. By chance I soon after found in my dad's book collection (he was a high school history teacher) Lenin for Beginners which was styled like an informative comic book. Being a comic nerd I was immediately drawn in. It was a pretty sympathetic account of Lenin, but not quite as nuanced as the recent Lenin scholarship from people like Lih.

[Magón]

I got into Communism when I was 11 because there was this 14 year old girl at the time, who was into it, and so I told her that I was a Communist to impress her. Kinda worked for me, I got to hang around her and her older friends for a bit, smelling all their pretty scents and talking like I knew what the fuck I was talking about.

My best line was: "CAPITALISM IS RAPING ME!" But I didn't know what Capitalism was really, or Rape was either really at the time. It got them to laugh though.

Seriously though, that's only half the story. My parents are Commies, and so I grew up with the whole mentality for my whole youthful life with them, and that's mostly what influenced me into the whole Radical Left.

[Psy]

In the early 1990's I was in a piracy clique that got me thinking why should I pay for anything. I saw all the anti-piracy talk and how it was stealing from workers so I decided to look deeper into value to see how me pirating movies hurts workers yet buying legal second hand copies somehow put money in the pockets of workers and just how much money went into the pocket of worker when I bought new. This led me the Marx where I learned the Motion Picture Association of America was full of shit and that didn't care about protecting jobs with their anti-piracy efforts.

[Leonid Brozhnev]

The video game Red Alert made me aware of Communism existed when I was like 9. It started off as an interest in the Soviet Union... I was only 5 when it collapsed so I don't remember a thing, I don't even remember any commotion about it. My interest gradually moved more towards Communism itself when I was 16-17, then when I was 19 'Farepak' the hamper firm collapsed leaving my already poor family out of pocket even more whilst the Director ran off with a tasty sum of money. I was exposed to first hand how much bullshit this system could throw at working people who did not deserve it, I think my mother got a cheque back for £5... having given them £500.
This was coupled with my first job which I also started round about the same time... my boss was like something you see from a satirical cartoon. He'd pass me and shout 'WORK FASTER!' or 'WORK HARDER' in my ear... also 'MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND GET ME A COFFEE!'. The guy was a dipshit. I had enough one day and stuck a Tea Spoon in my boxers then stirred his coffee with it... made me a feel a little better. :lol:

[Logico]

This is my first post and I suppose it's a fitting one.

I would say I became class-conscious by being exposed to socialism through struggle with socialists during the anti-war movement starting in 05 (which has unfortunately fell flat as of late). That coupled with some intellectual curiosity lead me straight to Marx. I then began reading other Marxist writers and as well as Hegel to better understand some aspects of Marx's critique. I would say I was a pretty progressive Democrat but clearly wasn't thinking on the appropriate level. I found the socialist critique of capitalism to be devastating and became passionate about finding out possible alternatives. For a while I considered myself largely influenced by anarcho-syndicalism and called myself a proponent of it. Now I'm more interested in helping to build a revolutionary party much on the model of Lenin's democratic-centralism.

I'm surprised to see that not a lot of people here became class-conscious through struggle but began to become involved only after having taken a Marxist position. But then again this is not an organization but a forum.

[Tifosi]

Football, mainly watching Livorno.

[Catma]

I always thought it was wrong that some people should get more than others, when all work needs doing. I felt sick at the fact that I was expected not only to sell most of my time just to be able to live, but that I was expected to ENJOY this, and not be angry about it - this is what EVERYONE does, why aren't YOU happy with it? I was always very unhappy that technology wasn't used to reduce work required, but instead just wound up forcing people to do useless tasks and whore themselves out in the process, trying to convince themselves, and some unfairly powerful hiring entity(or rather, the aggregate of ALL unfairly powerful hiring entities), that they have value.

I don't remember when I heard about Communism, but I definitely agreed with it from the start. I assumed for a long time that the Democrats were leftists, and were simply losing the battle. In the 2006 elections, I remember Ned Lamont being ignored, and even AFTER HE WON THE PRIMARY, failing to receive any real Democratic Party support. Lieberman won that race, when he should have been shamed out of it. But that was ok because we took the house. ...with which, we did nothing.

2008, Obama, 60 in the senate, house in control. Watching the cabinet and administrative appointments was heart wrenching. One or two good people were nominated out of dozens, and they never made it to office. Almost no important laws were passed. EFCA didn't pass because of... Joe Lieberman, who should have been run out of the party on a rail several times. And I began to see that was exactly how they wanted it. Always an excuse. I'm sure they were fucking dismayed that they actually had 60 seats.

A lot of study since then has explained why this is the case. It isn't really obvious at all. Far too many people put their hopes in the party and are unable to break away ideologically. "Failures" are always attributed to bad luck and incompetence.

Well, now the party is shedding even the semblance of Liberalism. I wonder how far right they can go before a significant amount of people wake up. Too goddamn far, is the answer.

TL;DR, my nature made me a communist sympathizer, but it took the Democratic Party to make me a communist.

[Dogs On Acid]

I always thought it was wrong that some people should get more than others, when all work needs doing. I felt sick at the fact that I was expected not only to sell most of my time just to be able to live, but that I was expected to ENJOY this, and not be angry about it - this is what EVERYONE does, why aren't YOU happy with it? I was always very unhappy that technology wasn't used to reduce work required, but instead just wound up forcing people to do useless tasks and whore themselves out in the process, trying to convince themselves, and some unfairly powerful hiring entity(or rather, the aggregate of ALL unfairly powerful hiring entities), that they have value.

I don't remember when I heard about Communism, but I definitely agreed with it from the start. I assumed for a long time that the Democrats were leftists, and were simply losing the battle. In the 2006 elections, I remember Ned Lamont being ignored, and even AFTER HE WON THE PRIMARY, failing to receive any real Democratic Party support. Lieberman won that race, when he should have been shamed out of it. But that was ok because we took the house. ...with which, we did nothing.

2008, Obama, 60 in the senate, house in control. Watching the cabinet and administrative appointments was heart wrenching. One or two good people were nominated out of dozens, and they never made it to office. Almost no important laws were passed. EFCA didn't pass because of... Joe Lieberman, who should have been run out of the party on a rail several times. And I began to see that was exactly how they wanted it. Always an excuse. I'm sure they were fucking dismayed that they actually had 60 seats.

A lot of study since then has explained why this is the case. It isn't really obvious at all. Far too many people put their hopes in the party and are unable to break away ideologically. "Failures" are always attributed to bad luck and incompetence.

Well, now the party is shedding even the semblance of Liberalism. I wonder how far right they can go before a significant amount of people wake up. Too goddamn far, is the answer.

TL;DR, my nature made me a communist sympathizer, but it took the Democratic Party to make me a communist.

That makes sense.

[Catma]

I'm surprised to see that not a lot of people here became class-conscious through struggle but began to become involved only after having taken a Marxist position. But then again this is not an organization but a forum.

That's not surprising at all. Struggle is incredibly boring, unfulfilling, and difficult. I have no idea how anyone could force themselves to do it without a goal in mind like the complete reshaping of society.

[Rusty Shackleford]

conservative politicians redbaiting obama in 2008 and the market crash.

[Tablo]

Back when I was a libertarian(the American kind, lol) I stumbled across an article about anarchist-communism while searching ancap stuff. I laughed thinking it to be a contradiction of terms. I looked at the sources and started reading a bunch of Emma Goldman(she's my hero). Ever since then I've been a communist.

[Logico]

That's not surprising at all. Struggle is incredibly boring, unfulfilling, and difficult. I have no idea how anyone could force themselves to do it without a goal in mind like the complete reshaping of society.

I wouldn't say this is true. People are engaged in struggle all the time without having a class-conscious outlook that's oriented toward revolution. In fact it's *often* the case that it does not take that kind of orientation. Mass class-conscious movements are rare in history.

The reality is that people are forced into struggle whether they're class-conscious or not. But of course people are not spontaneously class-conscious. Struggle can be long, unfulfilling, and boring but I suppose that depends on the fight and how determined people are to succeed.

[Mark V.]

My family lost our house just before the markets came crashing down in 2008. The process of losing the standard of living that I was used to left me very bitter. I wanted to go out and smash something in some sort of abstract rebellion, but I realized that I was too weak and the owner of whatever I smashed would kick my ass.

So I just sat on my butt and did nothing. When the 2008 election came up I decided that it would be a good distraction, since I didn't consider it anything serious with figures like Palin in the race. I heard a lot of talk of "liberal" and "conservative", terms that I had only vague ideas about. So I studied various political ideologies and after quickly going through Libertarianism and Social Democracy I ended up being a radical anti-capitalist.

[Yazman]

I remember hearing the name "Karl Marx" a lot as a kid and then when I was around 14-15 I was like "WHO IS THIS GUY?" and got a few books out from the school library (the communist manifesto being one of them) and instantly thought, "I like this shit."

So yeah I basically got interested in it because I was curious to find out who Karl Marx was.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

My family lost our house just before the markets came crashing down in 2008. The process of losing the standard of living that I was used to left me very bitter. I wanted to go out and smash something in some sort of abstract rebellion, but I realized that I was too weak and the owner of whatever I smashed would kick my ass.

So I just sat on my butt and did nothing. When the 2008 election came up I decided that it would be a good distraction, since I didn't consider it anything serious with figures like Palin in the race. I heard a lot of talk of "liberal" and "conservative", terms that I had only vague ideas about. So I studied various political ideologies and after quickly going through Libertarianism and Social Democracy I ended up being a radical anti-capitalist.
Just go spray paint something and run, half the people here will consider it a revolutionary action :laugh:. Really don't. Unless you want to, then just do it. What I'm saying is you don't have to smash shit to get a little adrenaline rush and make you feel a little better.

[Revy]

My political radicalization began after the war in Iraq in 2003. I was 14 years old at the time (I'm now 22). I was already leaning to the left, but I gradually became more interested in revolutionary ideas. Sites like Indymedia helped expose me to the struggles going on. I also stumbled on sites like Raise the Fist and of course Che-Lives (which is now RevLeft). I was attracted to anarchism first calling myself an anarcho-communist then I started to become less of an anarchist type. Started to call myself socialist more and not so much opposed to parties, electoral campaigns, stuff like that but still consider myself a revolutionary socialist.

[noble brown]

I was in prison for the umpteenth time wonder in why I kept doing dumb shit to end up in jail. So I started reading psychology and sociology which led to. behavioral science and history. I found out how much our environment lays a role in our decison making and behavior. Then I realized that there was a reason why we are so fucked up. We've been systematically lied to. They socialize us to be good lil complacent workers/consumers. As I become conscious of this I get kinda pissed, in prison mind you. So I reach out to a couple of old and young cats on radical stuff. They enlighten me and now I see I've read alot of political science and philosophy. Bakunin Marx kropotkin malatesta my favorites. I don't subscribe to anything particular but anarchism In a very loose sense is what I've been lead to by what I've read in philosophy and the sciences. I don't like dogmatism and calling myself a marxist or a troskyist seems a little domatic. I have many significant influences but i see the world from a unique perspective, we all do. But I'm convinced that what we all call communism is the next evolutionary stage of our social evolution. Maybe not the very next stage but everything from here on out is leading up to anarchy/communism.

[ken6346]

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[Olentzero]

Lenin for BeginnersStill got my copy, along with Trotsky for Beginners (took me years to hunt that one down!), Kapital for Beginners, Capitalism for Beginners, Economics for Beginners, and one or two others, I think. Love them! Even if I do agree with your assessment of LfB - there's more nuanced scholarship out there, but it's still a damned good introduction.


I'm surprised to see that not a lot of people here became class-conscious through struggle but began to become involved only after having taken a Marxist position.It depends on the times. The 80s and early 90s were not a time of high working-class struggle, which made it more likely that people would be won to Marxism intellectually. The Teamsters strike in '97 and the anti-globalization demonstrations in Seattle in '99 were an upswing of sorts, as was the anti-war movement for a while (stupid goddamn ANSWER/UFPJ sectarianism...) which made it somewhat more likely for people to be won over through struggle. These days, however, we're seeing a lot more opportunities to win people through struggle worldwide. The right work where struggle is happening will see a lot more people won that way than on an intellectual basis.

[Le Socialiste]

I grew up with two different political camps (which in reality aren’t so different, but people like to think they are): the Democrats and Republicans. My mom’s side were FDR/New Deal-type democrats, with my father’s side having bought into the xenophobic jingoism of post-9/11 America. Another big aspect of this was Christianity, which both sides of my family believed in (with different approaches and interpretations, obviously). So naturally, I was brought up in the Church. Both my parents were democrats (my dad is and continues to be the “black sheep” of his family), so I grew up surrounded by “democrats good, republicans bad”. I saw my mother’s side of the family more often than my father’s side, so I identified with a liberal interpretation of politics, religion, and society. I was twelve when 9/11 happened, though all I can recall about that day is my father bringing out this giant atlas, turning to a page which covered the Middle-East and showing me where Afghanistan was. He said “We’ll probably be at war soon”, which baffled me (I, for whatever reason, believed there hadn’t been any war since the American Civil War—clearly, my elementary education had failed me at some point). I was still pretty young, so the fact that NATO/American bombs were killing thousands of men, women, and children in some far-flung corner of the world didn’t really stick with me. Then 2003 happened, with the Iraq War kicking off; I remember watching CNN with my parents as it showed a live picture of Baghdad before American fighters/jets began the invasion. It was so quiet, serene (again, I was young and had no knowledge of what was going on there), when suddenly the air lit up and the bombs could be heard exploding. My dad was furious, stating that we were only there for oil and that the pretense of “establishing democracy” was a false one. It was during this time and my high school years that I became firmly centered in the Democrat camp. I bashed Bush and the Republicans whenever the opportunity arose, and was devastated when I heard Kerry had lost the ’04 election. I remained a firm proponent of liberalism on up towards the ’08 election, believing (wrongly) that the Democrats were good, honest leftists ready to reestablish the America that once was before the Republicans ruined and gutted it with their warmongering and religious fundamentalism. Man, I’m embarrassed admitting how brainwashed I was! :blushing:

Anyway, during the ’08 election I happened to stumble upon “The Communist Manifesto” by the good ole’ Marx himself. I liked what little I read, so I decided to buy it. I was still a democrat after reading it, but harbored some sympathetic—if not admiring—views of communism and Marxism. Shortly after reading the “Manifesto” my college professor had us debate whether participation in the “democratic process” that is the American election cycle could actually affect change. I believed it could, and defended my position to the end. I looked on those who were either skeptics or outright disbelievers in the effectiveness of elections with such disdain at that time. My mind made up, I woke up on election day and voted for Obama, believing he would restore the power and confidence of the unions, introduce New Deal-type laws/legislation, and lead us into a new “American Dawn” (:laugh:). Damn, was I wrong!

To make the long story short (too late), I went from a Democrat, to a Marxist, to a Leninist, to a Trotskyist, to a Democratic Socialist (even joined the DSA—what a mistake that was), to a Luxemburgist, to a Libertarian Socialist/Anarchist within the span of 2 ½ years after Obama was elected. I’ve since fled the Democratic Party, risked the disapproval and disappointment of my parents (they’ve since accepted my “folly” as they so fondly term it), and condemned the Democrats and Republicans as being joint-upholders of an oppressive and exploitative system. I realize that only mass revolutionary movements, not political parties, can bring about a stateless, classless society. My progression to this point in my political and social beliefs is, I think, a natural one—considering how my fellow comrades here arrived at their point on the spectrum of revolutionary leftism through similar means.

In short, I'd say I stumbled upon communism and the revolutionary left by chance.

[∞]

I've always been against war and power. Even as a child I always wondered why some people have it so easy. When I became older I thought to myself why theres so much war (not to mention all the horrible things I've seen being of Arabic descent) and it started making sense...

Why do we have a war in Iraq? Can't be Saddam, we support dictators. Alright it must be economic reasons. *reads about imperialism* aha, So thats why, capitalism sucks, maybe socialism is better.

I still was rather apolitical and had very mild opinions. But one night I was watching a stand-up special and George Carlin's show was on. The way he said it burned a fire inside me and I wanted nothing more than freedom and equal rights for my fellow man. This is what he said:


the owners, the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want:

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.

Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! Its a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.

By the way, its the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.

They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.

Its called the American Dream,because you have to be asleep to believe it.


I needed to understand why things are the way they are. I read several books and realized socialism wasn't some utopian dream followed by some hippies, but it was a step forward for mankind. It was also a science. Knowing this I stopped believing in deities all together (knowing the harm its done). I started arguing against people and even converted some of my closest friends to socialism. I even met an Anarchist friend who recommended to read some Noam Chomsky. I then had many good arguing points for foreign policy. I even joined the debate team and won several competitions. I suddenly craved knowledge and read philosophies, and pondered all kinds of theories.

It is because of socialism that I'm not living my life in vain. Ever since I became interested in the world around me have people acknowledged me as an individualist and an intelligent human being. I'm no longer part of the majority of people who worry themselves about the petty things in life. I'm glad my political views helped shape me into a better person.

[Threetune]

1972 building workers strike
Got elected shop steward
Read left leaflets and papers
Joined a left group
Organising agitating
Kept on reading criticising, and more reading Lenin first hand!
Save yourself a lot of time and confusion READ MARX AND LENIN!

[thefinalmarch]

Made fun of a Russian substitute teacher I had in high school. Parents born and raised in USSR and SFRY. Read Soviet history on wiki. Shitty fucking bias. Found revleft. Lurked.

Interestingly, I've only read the manifesto very recently. During my months of lurking revleft I was able to develop my ideas and I ended up with pretty concise Marxist viewpoints. This makes sense when you consider that the manifesto was written in a particular historical context - much of its contents (and the fucking language oh god) were relevant only to European workers at the time. What I got out the manifesto was just the origins and development of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Having read the principles of communism, I now have on my reading list: Economic and philosophical manuscripts; Wage labour and capital; Value, price and profit; The German ideology; Socialism: Utopian and scientific; A contribution to the critique of political economy; The civil war in france; critique of the gotha programme; Das Fucking Kapital and The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin.

Most of what I understand about Marxism today has come exclusively from reading the ideas of revlefters.

[Olentzero]

That's a hell of a reading list.

[ColonelCossack]

I wonder if there's anyone else on here who self-described as a communist when they were 11? :lol:

[thefinalmarch]

That's a hell of a reading list.
You're telling me.

[danyboy27]

Got it from my parents distrust from authority, and from a lot of conversation with piett long time ago.

also, red alert made me curious about the soviet union in general and the idea of communism.

[Zealot]

Met a girl from Vietnam who gave me a Vietnamese 5,000 dong note that had a picture of Ho Chi Minh on it. You see, I'm the sort of person that is easily annoyed when i stumble across something I don't know. I just HAD to know why she thought this guy was so darn great so I started reading his biography and realized why he really was a great person. This in turn led me to Communism, which is when I realized that I pretty much already had socialist ideas without even knowing it and was relieved to find out that I wasn't the only one who thought there was something terribly wrong with the current systems of power. I Read the Communist Manifesto and the rest is history.

[berryhill.julie]

The US entered the Vietnam War in an attempt to prevent the spread of Communism.
Communism is a very attractive theory, particularly for the poor masses of a developing country. Imagine a society where nobody is better or richer than you are, where everyone works together and shares in the products of their labor, and where the government creates a safety net of guaranteed employment and medical care for all.

[Dogs On Acid]

Save yourself a lot of time and confusion READ MARX AND LENIN!

And Trotsky, and Rosa, and Bakunin, and Engels, and Mao, and Chomsky, and Kropotkin, and...

[Dogs On Acid]

Got it from my parents distrust from authority, and from a lot of conversation with piett long time ago.

also, red alert made me curious about the soviet union in general and the idea of communism.

+1, I was a kid, it was the first time I heard of Communism

[Reznov]

Is it bad to say that I can't really seem to remember?

[azlea]

i started to look towards communism when i was surrounded by ignorant far right extremists who think that exploitation, fraud, and greed is the only way to give yourself a better life, people who think of destroying peoples lives as "investments". it really doesnt help when you have capitalism shoved down your throat. it also doesnt help when capitalist governments act in fascist ways. i think a few examples of far right countries that are linked to fascism would be singapore, where you cant chew gum, and can get caned for graffiti. the usa is another example. they have the most prisoners and seem to be tazing people all the time. there are lots of videos that paint capitalism in a very negative light. a few of them include "the corporation", "secrets of the cia", "the obama deception", "they chose China". there are lots of videos of u.s troops abusing people. i remember seeing a video of a u.s soldier bragging about how he had forced an iraqi girl to become a prostitute and forced her to kill herself after being rented out a few hundred times. i think even in alot of mainstream hollywood films, they talk about the dangers, and evils of capitalism, although not directly. you see alot of movies about people who are young and ambitious. they do all that they can to get that dream job, only to find out that it isnt such a dream and that the people in this corporation are thieves, and gangsters. the main character of the movie ends up arguing with his boss, leaves his job, and goes back to his hometown where the people are decent and care about each other. although he is now making less money, he is in a better environment. that is exactly what i see when i am in the poorer countryside. i see people who are not using iphones, and starbucks, but they are in touch with nature, trust and know their community, solid family values, care about the environment, take care of those in need, and are not trying to scam someone, so they can buy an iphone. there are also other videos of u.s. cops abusing people such as the "dont taze me bro" video, and there is a very famous video of a ucla student getting tazed. i just dont buy into this whole "freedom" idea that is shoved down peoples throats by the american government. i dont think america is free at all, yet they spend so much money and time trying to brain wash people into believing that somehow capitalism=freedom, when the exact opposite is true. i think people are more free without iphones, corporations, and starbucks. i think the quickest way to become a communist is to see through all the hoax, propaganda, and fraud of capitalism, then you start to move away from the right. but then of course there are also the less enlightened and evolved who see through the hoax of capitalism, but instead are duped into attacking immigrants, gays, muslims, etc. of course the capitalists can dupe a lot of fools because they have the money to do it, and control the media. then there are guys like alex jones who attract alot of followers, but only tell half truths. that pretty much goes with the ron paul crowd.

[thesadmafioso]

I had a friend in high school who would jokingly draw hilarious cartoons of Stalin and who began to call himself a 'communist', which sort of introduced me to the concept and sparked my interest. Of course, I never identified as a Stalinist or anything, but it was still my first serious dealing with communism.

I mean, much of my understanding of leftist theory was more or less nonexistent at this point, but it still provided me with a sort of foundation to continue my studies.

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

I would say my plight in the world, personal experinces and studying/reading about the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, etc.

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

There was this random commie kid from school, and since I was really involved with the debate team, I was always tagged in his Facebook notes trolling all of our school's capitalists. I sort of argued in favor of Capitalism for a while, then realized i was making the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance... yes I actually thought like that... and he told me on MSN to read the Manifesto. I talked with him for a long time (actually his name on this forum is Cyberwave). Then I read the State and Revolution by Lenin where I really had my eyes opened to the dual nature of things, especially the state. Then some Das Kapital, and the rest is history.

[chegitz guevara]

It was a combination of things

Mom raised me on stories of Irish oppression and Irish rebel songs
I was bullied in school
Friend's sister whom I had a crush on was a commie and we debated all summer
Read a book on Marx
Figured out on my own the overproduction problem of capitalism
learning about Latin American coups took away my belief we could peacefully elect socialism

Basically, it was my destiny

[Klaatu]

I realized that there is no such thing as a "poor country" or a "rich country", and that ruling classes exist basically everywhere. I knew the ills of inequality came from improper wealth distribution...

This is a good observation. The so-called "richest" countries are where there are the largest number of middle-income earners, such as the U.S. and Europe. that is to say that, it is not "the wealthy" class that makes a country wealthy, as RedSonRising has pointed out; for there are countries where an opulent class exists, yet make up only a microscopic proportion of the overall population, the vast majority living in shanty-towns and eating food barely fit for animals.

This is a good argument as to why Socialism is a vastly superior economic system; for it generates a healthy fair wage for all, sans poverty, recession, unemployment, and best of all, sans a greedy filthy rich class.

[leftistman]

I started out as a centrist liberal. I found a copy of Animal Farm at school and read it in one sitting. That sparked my fascination in the Russian Revolution, the history of the Soviet Union, socialist/communist/anarchist philosophy, and as time went by I moved further and further to the political left. I'm still very interested; just yesterday I bought a book about Che Guevara. I'm also hoping to act upon my political views. I'm possibly going to be working as a missionary in El Salvador next summer, but only if I'm able to.

[Robespierres Neck]

A friend got me into it. We often talked about politics and I agreed with most of his viewpoints. My grandmother got me The Communist Manifesto for the following Christmas and the rest is history.

[MaximMK]

Once when i was younger i was speaking to my father about something like why is not everything free and all live equally and he told me about the idea of socialism and communism and i asked him to tell me more about it. It is than when i first heard of it. After that i explored more over the internet about it, joined this forum. I was always political tho and my grandparents were members of the communist party of yugoslavia and they always said how it was better back than. But i really got the idea of it when i spoke to my father.

[Art Vandelay]

Starting by getting into Che and Fidel ;)

[Lowtech]

This is just my personal road to embracing Marxism, not how I believe everyone finds it.

I was born into a large family that was quite poor, not completely due to 'the system' but as I would later find out, our system starts 99% of us at a huge disadvantage in every respect to begin with.

My grandfather on my mother's side was a huge star trek fan, so so was she and later I became a 'treker'

Later in life my grandfather gave a hint as to what communism was, explaining a few facets like not having a government (as we know it today anyway) and eventhough the self-proclaimed communist states were failures of totalitarianism, they had many social improvements that made western countries seem socially arcane.

Then I read Marx and found that the rich consume more than they produce, devalue our labour and retain value through the profit mechanism producing artificial scarcity; all in order to inscrease abudance of resources for themselves while making resources less abundant/accessible to everyone else; I found that capitalism is not only wrong, it fails as an economic system and this is mathematically observable.

[Ostrinski]

Seriously cannot recall exactly what it was, but I know that becoming a history nut had something to do with it.

[Sea]

Born and raised a liberal Democrat.

The more I read, the more I red.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

I'd understood from a young age that class warfare is a part of society and always held disdain towards the rich, the boss, etc. I come from a working class family and my family has been through its fair share of issues - my mother at one point working four jobs, almost being kicked out of this mobile home park, having the electricity shut off a few times due to not being able to pay the bill... reliance on food stamp programs and whatnot. My best friend, in a similar financial situation, was homeless for eight months before renting out an apartment in the town I currently live in, and although he isn't particularly political, it was around that time that, through comparing our situations and whatnot, I came to have political leanings towards the US Democratic Party.

All of this left me feeling contempt towards that unknown rich man up in some building somewhere, who, by a simple signature on a piece of paper, could force me out of my lifelong home and into the streets. I realized I had nothing in common with this man and that he was essentially an enemy to me, my family, my friends, my home, my life, my existence.

And it was a few years ago, when I was in 7th grade if I remember correctly, that I decided to research this ridiculous totalitarian idealist ideology of communism that seeks to make everything equal, and I recall being pretty surprised by how down to earth all of it was. I was interested in the general idea of "Lenin=good, Stalin=bad" communism, and that was basically my understanding of it at the time... after a bit more research I began to define as anarcho-communist. Flash forward to the next year, I began researching Trotskyism and ended up identifying with that instead. Now, a few tendency changes and a few years older... is me.

I was also an atheist at a young age. My mother went to some evangelical Christian church when I was a little kid and I remember asking some Sunday school teacher how they could believe all of this and that it seemed like a fairly tale and whatnot.

[∞]

My pops was really anti imperialist so I was that. And I believed reallocating the MOP would work against imperialism.

[X5N]

I'm not sure. My memory sucks.

I think I've had a certain fascination with the radical left before I became a radical leftist. I was a Ron Paul libertarian when I created a nation in my fictional world thing that was built on anarcho-communist principles. And even when I was a liberhurrian, I wasn't all that enamored with the free market, nor with the social views of many of my ideological comrades.

[Sinister Intents]

I got into it in a bizarre way, I got interested because the local "communist" introduced me to it. He in reality is a nazi who highly praises Stalin. I later learned he was nothing more than a nazi, I read some article on this site that would make me further describe him as a national bolshevik. He sent me to the CPUSA website and communistleague or something like that. The next year, ninth grade I did a report on the soviet union and a report on V.I. Lenin.

[Galileo]

My history teacher in highschool was John George Hospodaryk, and he was a socialist. Every teacher I have been taught history by was a socialist, but this one wrote text books for Australian schools. He was the first person to refer to the arrival of the first fleet as an 'invasion' in a history text.

He was also a musician, and wrote some fantastic left-wing songs. unfortunately I'm not allowed to post links yet :(

His classes were awesome, though only a couple of students enjoyed them. That probably had something to do with the fact that they had been convinced to take modern history by me and my friend because we wanted the class to run...
We studied the Russian revolution and the cold war in our senior year, and I really enjoyed it. Our teacher had spent time behind the iron curtan. You can probably tell by the name he had an eastern european background. He made the subject come alive for us, and gave us the most realistic views of the cold war that we probably could have got from anyone.

He was a man who faught for equality, for public education that wasn't just funded by the crumbs left on the table for disadvantaged schools. On principle, he taught in the most disadvantaged schools in the state because he believed in everyone's right to education. so many schools around the country use his books. he could have had a private school job if he had wanted one, which is the dream of so many teachers here, but he never wanted one.

I'm a musician and songwriter and I have a love for history, so I was inspired by him a lot. I think this was the start of my left-wing journey.

[nbj55]

I'm currently in 10th grade, growing up in an upper-middle class family.
For a long period of time, I identified myself as an American Republican, adhering to everything about them, blindly, just like my parents. Then I started learning about the American Democratic Party and learning that I am more left, as apposed to before I was thinking the more right the better. Then we start to learn about Communism, and I loved it. I studied it out of class quite often. That made me turn Communist quite quickly.

[eyeheartlenin]

i entered college while the Vietnam war was going strong, under LBJ, and one thing I was absolutely clear about, was that I had no intention of dying in Vietnam at age 22, without even having lived on my own, etc. So I "joined" the antiwar movement, by encountering a local demonstration against the war during my first semester in college, while walking home on a Saturday afternoon. After that, I started going to the meetings of the local antiwar coalition and to some big, impressive antiwar demonstrations, one in NYC (half a million people, they said) and another in front of the Pentagon. I encountered the SWP/YSA in New York and also at the local coalition meetings, and by the time I went to the demonstration at the Pentagon, I had joined the YSA and was hawking The Militant to other anti-war demonstrators. I was confirmed in my ideological choice by the chance remark of a friend who was a year ahead of me at college, who thought Trotskyism was the only way to go. He is now an Obama Democrat, but I am still a Trotskyist.

[RedHammer]

I got a job and stepped into the real world.

I also read some good books like A Peoples' History of the United States, which opened my eyes to some of the lesser known crimes of capitalism. I always felt that capitalism was "wrong" on moral grounds, but I didn't transform that feeling into material understanding and opposition to capitalism until I read Marx.

[roy]

school introduced me to it, then i took it upon myself to learn more. revleft helped a lot.

[cynicles]

It was the logical choice as a system given the increasing conflict between long term planning and science and the market. The coercive nature of capitalism just became more and more an obstruction to getting done what needed to be done for me.

[Veovis]

Other: Having to work under the capitalist system to support myself and later getting to know what it's like to be exploited.

[Comrade Samuel]

Growing up watching all sorts of propaganda with my father from time to time (a lot of Stalone's work, the original red dawn ect.) it lead me to wonder why all the villains where just these crazy evil people who don't appear to have a reason to exist other than to antagonize our fearless American heroes so I became interested, sometimes a library book on the Soviet Union, a documentary, really anything to give me some insight as to why those damn commies where always up to no good. Eventually as I matured and began to experience the real world and all of it's majestic wonder I got my hands on a copy of the communist manifesto and while it was a slow process that involved several readings over the corse about 3-4 years I eventually began to see the parreles between it and the modern world we live in and sure enough I became hooked and didn't stop reading several other Marxist works until the god fearing republican that I was turned into a godless commie bastard.

That's when revleft happened and I learned we all hate eachother like we are in some kind of reality show where the cast is a bunch of radicals who have day jobs and that we aren't quite rioting in the streets 24/7.

[Prometeo liberado]

My father being too cheap to pay for a baby sitter so I had to go with him to walk a picket line during a strike. At a young age you can't help but start asking hard questions when you see grown-ups not working because they are being denied the right to a decent wage.:mad:

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I'd say gradual. I always have been rather inquisitive, but i did not really see the importance of politics until i became a teenager. If someone said something, i always would say the opposite, maybe a sign of seeking attention, but i definitely leaned towards the left my whole life due to having moved around quite a bit, grown up in three different countries, my working class mother having spent her last pennies to go on many holidays in many countries etc. For this reason i always have been for the equality of humans since everywhere humans are the same.

Having problems integrating into the new surroundings i was constantly in, I began thinking (5 years later) a lot at the age of 14 about what makes humans behave a certain way. I went from growing up on the land to the city and it was a completely alienating change, i couldn't understand it, so for a long time i thought i had to act differently or change something about myself to fit in better while the whole time i did not comprehend or know that the life of the workplace relations and material conditions of the urban working class are very different to the land. So when the crisis hit in 2008 i began to become aware of the material impacts on humans life and in effect human behavior. I read the Communist Manifesto that year and since the popular conception is that communism is evil, i read it very distanced and only registered the questionable or rather outdated parts and i disagreed with communism.

You have to understand that my father, a social-conservative, called me a "socialist". This surprised me very much, and i asked him why, and he responded because i am against classes. Curiously, I never was conscious of the fact that i was against classes, or that i ever spoke out against them. In 2009 when there was much talk about the large recession that year, i felt very confused as to the reason for this mass impoverishment of working people and saw on the public news that the bookstores running out of this one book. That book was Das Kapital. So i ordered it, and i read the 1st chapter. I finally understood why i was against classes. That was the day i called myself a marxist, i was so enthralled and occupied by this new revelation of the "surplus" that i had to take months to gather my thoughts on the implication of this.

I didn't really call myself anything after that experience, i mainly spent a lot of time reading news and gaining a perspective on the global situation. When i started being on the verge of calling myself a libertarian socialist, i felt i did not know enough and read the rest of Capital. I had a discussion with a Marxist Leninist comrade and i disagreed with him on the vanguard, but i felt insecure on that position because i had the feeling that he had superior overall knowledge to me so i started read Lenin's "Imperialism as the..." and his "State and Revolution" and subscribed to a Marxist-Leninist newspaper. I can only call myself a communist since less than a year and a convinced Marxist-Leninist since i have been on RevLeft.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I got interested in Marxism when I was 15 because my favorite band were Refused.
Sorta juvenile, I know.

[Caj]

I first became interested in the revolutionary left through reading Noam Chomsky lol

[ВАЛТЕР]

Hearing stories of the Yugoslav partisans growing up. Given that pretty much my whole family were partisan fighters with one of the greatest commanders being my great-great grandfather (Sava Kovacevic Gotta brag). While the others in the region were bickering between Croat/Serb/Muslim etc. It was only logical for me to continue my families fight. I didn't actually start demanding blood in the streets until approximately 4-5 years ago. When my family went to shit financially and we went bankrupt.

[Sir Comradical]

Hearing stories of the Yugoslav partisans growing up. Given that pretty much my whole family were partisan fighters with one of the greatest commanders being my great-great grandfather (Sava Kovacevic Gotta brag). While the others in the region were bickering between Croat/Serb/Muslim etc. It was only logical for me to continue my families fight. I didn't actually start demanding blood in the streets until approximately 4-5 years ago. When my family went to shit financially and we went bankrupt.

Wtf your grandfather was Sava Kovacevic? That is so freakin awesome. You gotta make a thread with some war stories.

I always had this really old book in my house called 'Soviet Russia' by John Lawrence written in 1967. I read it when I was young, around 8 maybe, and told my dad I wanted to visit the USSR but my dad laughed and told me the USSR was sadly no more. I've just always instinctively been attracted to communism.

[Galileo]

I probably should have added to my original post that life experience made me quite left wing as well.

Being born disabled, and with a medical condition that often requires surgery, I am a big supporter of public healthcare because above all, human lives are important, and everyone should have the right to the means of survival.
Not only that, but when you have to work twice as hard as able bodied people to get employment simply because employers would prefer the non-disabled choice if there's one available, evven if the disabled person is better qualified etc, you find yourself longing for a society that doesn't take note of these things and treats people according to their ability, rather than their physicality.

Today's society may seem more accepting to the disabled, but believe me, there's a long way to go. Every day I have to deal with discrimination from people who don't even realise they are acting like ignorant idiots...ok, I'll stop ranting.

[Delenda Carthago]

You know, there was this girl...

[Philosophos]

I became a communist after I started reading books,websites and joining RevLeft.
But the main left ideas that I started having were from an old guy who lived in the mountain raising his goats. I met him, he asked for my help and then we started talking about this and that and all off the sudden he started telling me some truths that I've never thought about. I should write a book or something about this experience :lol:

[ВАЛТЕР]

Wtf your grandfather was Sava Kovacevic? That is so freakin awesome. You gotta make a thread with some war stories.

I don't know many since he was my great great grandfather. Although I have spoken to people who knew him and they said he was pretty crazy. Jumping on tanks and killing the crew, a man once told me that every time he saw Sava, he had blood on him. He also told me that he would sneak off behind the lines by himself sometimes just to kill a few fascists for the hell of it. His nom de guerre was "Sava bombas" or "Sava the grenadier" as he would often charge bunkers and tanks and hurl grenades into them.

It is said he had a deathwish. He didn't expect to survive the war and fought mostly because he hated the occupiers. On Sutjeska he threatened Tito with his machinegun because he blamed Tito for getting the partisans in the predicament they were in. Saying: "Before all this is said and done, this parabellum (9mm ammunition) will judge you." While patting his schmiesser.

There was the story of him kicking the shit out of a partisan who didn't fire his rifle in combat. He suspected that the man wasn't shooting and after the engagement he took his rifle and smelled it to see if it had been shot. He then beat the shit out of him saying that there was no room for cowards in his outfit.

These are stories I picked up from older family members and other veterans I spoke to who knew him or saw him.

Another family member who fought as a partisan told me that the Italian troops were known for being very cowardly in combat. Often times the partisans would just shoot over their heads and the Italians would throw down their weapons. The partisans would then take the weapons and send the Italians back. Most of the Italian soldiers were not loyal to Mussolini and had no real will to fight, often giving up their officers to the partisans. With some Italians even joining the communists to fight the fascists. :lol:

[Jimmie Higgins]

The WTO protests (read about and watched on TV)

The DNC protests in 2000 (experienced).

[Chris]

Well, I grew up in a working class/peasant family in quite a bit of poverty, and most of my family is either socialist/social-democratic (as well as a couple leninists) or agrarians, so got early subject to left-wing thought (although, few in my family are that political, barring my deceased great-grandfather who was active in the Communist Party and in trade union politics).

Growing up in, relatively speaking, poverty (at the time of my birth, our household income were about 1/10 of the average in Norway), and also relatively early learning the virtue of hard work by living on a petty-farm, but also by seeing quite clearly the difference between me and most of my mate's condition, and that of others. There are no private elementary schools here, so quite soon learned that some were born into wealth and others... not.

Didn't really get much politically conscious/involved until teens, and before that I just had a vague idea of 'fuck the rich, yay for the trade union', so social-democrat. I became increasingly left-wing/socialist, barring a period of flirtation with the local skinheads and ultranationalism (of the 'WE MUST INVADE SWEDEN, DENMARK AND ENGLAND AND RETAKE OUR OLD LAND! TO VALHALL!' variety). Essentially, just seeing that someone was screwing me over, but not entirely sure who.

At the same time, we had a very good history teacher who, while I'm not entirely sure what political affiliation he had, was very concerned with portraying history as it had happened. We had him on WW2 and Cold War history during youth school, and essentially explained the dichotomy between socialism and capitalism as "Socialism means egalitarian steady growth, while Capitalism means inegalitarian unstable growth". Got me interested in learning more about the Soviet system and of socialism in general, and eventually opted to join the Young Communists (the youth cell of the Communist Party of Norway, a marxist-leninist pro-USSR party that my great-grandfather and some other older family members were members of).

So, essentially, a mixture of experiences with work, life and learning history?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Red Alert

[Igor]

Awareness of developing world issues and issues of colonialism - both the old kind and neocolonialism. Before that, I was pretty much your standard social democrat who thought the system was basically fine, just needs some working around. Learning how fucked up things are in most of the world made me realize this is bullshit, especially considering how the system I thought was the perfect one was based on the exploitation that made it so fucked up for those people.

[Amon]

I first became interested in communism when I was getting tired of watching tv and seeing people bash it constantly, especially on the show American Dad. Since a lot of people saw it as a bad thing, I decided to look it up and research it...I was never one to follow what others think ;)

I was also wanting to find out if there was a system where by people were equals, and now here I am.

[RedHammer]

Hearing stories of the Yugoslav partisans growing up. Given that pretty much my whole family were partisan fighters with one of the greatest commanders being my great-great grandfather (Sava Kovacevic Gotta brag). While the others in the region were bickering between Croat/Serb/Muslim etc. It was only logical for me to continue my families fight. I didn't actually start demanding blood in the streets until approximately 4-5 years ago. When my family went to shit financially and we went bankrupt.

That's actually pretty amazing. Make a thread!

[Robocommie]

I first started radicalizing in college when I became aware of more things outside of the sheltered view that TV and school had left me with, things about American and world history that shocked me for their injustice. I spent a very long time as a liberal, but I quickly began to realize that a lot of left-liberal solutions to social problems didn't actually address the problem. I began to realize more and more that social problems like crime and drug addiction were primarily rooted in economic inequality, and that nearly every unjust war and police action in human history was motivated by private material gain by the rich, and so I became a socialist. At first I considered myself a democratic socialist, because as an individual I abhor violence, but after understanding more and more Marxist theory, recognizing the serious limits to electoral politics, and also the intense double standards present in bourgeois society, I came to realize that social revolution was necessary.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Y'all are gonna laugh, but I think seeing the Zeitgeist movie was a pretty big step on my road to communism. A lot of it is crap, but it taught me that there's nothing special about Christianity and it introduced me to the idea that the rulers of my country were trying to fuck me over for their own personal gain and that I owed them nothing. This of course made me more receptive to the idea of proletarian internationalism.



I don't know many since he was my great great grandfather. Although I have spoken to people who knew him and they said he was pretty crazy. Jumping on tanks and killing the crew, a man once told me that every time he saw Sava, he had blood on him. He also told me that he would sneak off behind the lines by himself sometimes just to kill a few fascists for the hell of it. His nom de guerre was "Sava bombas" or "Sava the grenadier" as he would often charge bunkers and tanks and hurl grenades into them.

It is said he had a deathwish. He didn't expect to survive the war and fought mostly because he hated the occupiers. On Sutjeska he threatened Tito with his machinegun because he blamed Tito for getting the partisans in the predicament they were in. Saying: "Before all this is said and done, this parabellum (9mm ammunition) will judge you." While patting his schmiesser.

Wow. I've never heard of this guy before. He sounds like a badass.

[human strike]

Alienation.

Margaret Thatcher and my interest in 20th century history may have also played a role.


It's interesting that nobody has answered with "Arguing with Communists" yet, I know that there are a fair few ex-fascists, ex-cappies etc on this forum.

That's because argument is an ineffective way of changing someone's mind. Commonly it results only in entrenching people in the views they already hold by encouraging them to defend their position. Discussion, on the other hand, listening first and then talking, is a great way to encourage people to question their own opinions.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Primarily this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/glenn-lenin-my-t168141/index.html

[Blake's Baby]

My parents and one of my grandfathers were all active in their trade unions, though only my dad and my grandad referred to themselves as socialists (my mother has never forgotten the scenes of Hungarian refugees in '56 and refused to have anything to do with 'communism' on that basis). I've known about Marxism since I was about 7.

[Geiseric]

Alienation from everybody I came in contact with helped nudge me in the direction of hating what everybody supports (capitalism), leading me to join the 4th international in high school. In my head I rejected the bourgeois culture that working class white people try to emulate. I don't know the reason for this, maybe because I was always excluded from the other whites and for my life have found my real friends to be those who are also excluded or alienated, usually black kids, Filipino kids, or Mexicans.

My parents are in unions, so I have always been supportive of those out of necessity, but now I realize how important they are. I've never been respected or really taken seriously by anybody. Until I started being a communist, where I learned self respect by acting in a way that I approved, I was totally lacking meaning. Communism is the next step in history, so who am I not to vie for its existance? I realized that everybody I care about are in danger by Capitalism, direct danger by the wars that it causes and the lives it destroys.

On top of that, nobody I know is rich. Nobody I know owns a buisness. Nobody I know "Owns," anything. So why would I support Capitalism? We've been systematically getting poorer and poorer for the past 60 years. I will never own anything. I've realized this, which comes with a kind of existentialism. I view myself as a pawn for history to manipulate, to do what has to be done. What has to be done is overthrowing capitalism. There's no other choice, unless we all want to be slaves for the rest of our lives.

[rednordman]

For me it was strangely enough growing up during a period of boom, and experiencing the bad side of capitalism first hand. Even though things were supposed to be good at the time, we still got treated like total shit. I remember going to uni and getting promised the world, yet got pissed on when trying to find work with agencies just after I left.

Then there was the problem of going to interviews and trying to get the job i was qualified for. It became very obvious that there is a proto-type that all employers are looking for and that is one of bullshitter salespeople - even if the job isn't a sales based one. something at the time really sad badly with me about that at the time, but to be fair there are/were also a few hard left wingers in my family too, so probably got influenced by them.

[RAF7098]

I got it from my father, he was a communist. He had always been a politico, and when I was growing up, politics and religion was always discussed. When I was growing up, he and I would always debate these topics, and as I grew up, I've read a lot more, and learned a lot more, and to this day, I still see things from a leftist bias.

[x-punk]

I used to work in govt regulatory role (no i wasnt a copper). Initially i thought i was doing some sort of good stopping the 'bad stuff' from happening but as the years passed i realised that the govt interference was not only usually totally unnecessary but also highly damaging to those involved. I loathed the way govt forcefully made people comply to its mandate when the mandate was often only there to support certain vested interests. Due to the job I also started to develop doubts over the concept of ownership. I couldnt understand what it meant to own something when a more powerful controlling group could control its use which led me to question the whole nature of property and ownership.

I then stumbled across anarchism, or more specifically anarcho-capitalism. I managed to relate to its anti-state rhetoric but was never able to sign up to the theory because of my confusion over ownership and property rights, and because of the fact I thought its economic arguments were unrealistic and downright dangerous if they were to be implemented. I quickly discovered anarcho-communism through reading the Anarchists FAQ which cleared up a lot of the issues I had over property and ownership. From there i started to read more relating to communism and dispelling the myths i had implanted in me from the anti-communist propaganda which i had been force fed since birth. I had eventually found the political and economic theory and philosophy which fitted my own views and opinions.

A few years later and here i am. Im still relatively ignorant on many parts of communism but i am trying to learn fast.

BTW I am not working in the govt regulatory job anymore.

[Marxaveli]

I've only been Communist for about 2 years or so now. But I discovered it by chance, through a variety of factors.

Firstly, when I went back to school about 2.5 years ago, I happened to be taking a Political Philosophy class at the time in my first semester. I was actually a business major, and I was probably what most would call a "blue-dog" Democrat. In that class though, Marx was one of the authors we covered, and I was very intrigued by his materialist conception of history. It didn't convert me right away into becoming a Marxist revolutionary, but I found his critiques of Capitalism to be pretty spot on. I changed my major to Political Science, and I began to move further to the left, becoming a Social Democrat - I wasn't revolutionary yet though.

I finally bought the Communist Manifesto, and the first page onward just seem to resonate. I began thinking about the current economic crisis and I realized that every retail place I worked for was the same: they all *****ed at me no matter how hard I worked, all the while paying me minimum wage. About 6 months after going back to school, I was officially radicalized. I did much research on Marxism and Communism on the net, and found this place, and have learned a ton by reading posts on here and engaging with fellow comrades. I still have a huge amount to learn, and the vast knowledge that some people have here is pretty staggering. My political science and sociology classes were also probably contributing factors into my radicalization. This of course was at my community college - I am now at the university level, soon to be studying International Relations.

[fug]

When I realized everything was better back then and we actually had a future.

[peaceloveandponies]

I was in fact, raised a homeschooled Conservative Christian. I suddenly realized how the Church was in fact, a perpetrator of hate and not of love, and turned against organized religion. However, I still keep my faith, just not in the Church. Then, still retaining some Conservative beliefs, I supported Ron Paul in the elections, which led me to libertarianism. After joining a sort of an online "community" of libertarians, I realized their similarities and even exactness with the anarchists in their distrust and hatred of governments, as well as, in the anarchists' case, capitalism. Now I was not just a libertarian, but a left-wing libertarian, ultimately becoming the Communist Anarchist that I am today.

[crg]

Seeing how the capitalists really treat workers and how the focus is ONLY on the "bottom line." Knowing and seeing the inequalities in society and knowing workers oftentimes cannot even afford to feed their families because they are treated as a commodity.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Камо́ Зэд]

I came to communism through technocracy, in fact. Technocracy ignited an interest in heterodox economics. I found my way to Marx as a classic of heterodox economic theory; I came to appreciate his endeavor to understand history and society according to a scientific method of investigation. Engels soon became a very important figure to me due to his analysis of prehistory and primitive communism. I dabbled in left communism, then emerged as a quasi-Maoist. In fact, I came to Leninism proper through Stalin and found my way to Hoxha from there. But holy shit this was a cool story.

[Tjis]

I encountered communism in my elementary school history lessons. My teacher actually first presented communism as a form of society where everyone was equal, with no social hierarchy, and where everyone had what they needed. Unfortunately she then fell back to calling it inpractical, using the equal grades example ('If I give you all a 7 for your tests, who of you would still study hard?'). that argument didn't influence me much though, since I failed to see how a free, equal society could possibly be compared with a teacher giving grades.

Ever since that I considered myself to be a communist, though what that meant changed over time. At first it meant believing in a reformist path towards communism (and supporting the Socialist Party). Upon desillusionment with that it became a form of utopian socialism (leave society, form a perfect communist society somewhere else, etc). Eventually I discovered the anarchist FAQ and got me my first dose of actual class theory and a huge reading list. The Conquest Of Bread by Peter Kropotkin turned me anarcho-communist.

[Karabin]

Played Call of Duty: Finest Hour when I was younger. The Soviets were awesome. Became a Communist.

Story of my life.

[smellincoffee]

I started working in a factory after getting a BS community college degree (actually, since it was a two-year, I guess that's an AS BS degree) and couldn't help but notice how shitty real life was. These people, the workers - and I viewed them as different than me, because I was going to go to college and get a generic white-collar job that let me have a house in the 'burbs and a wifey and kids whom I took to soccer practice, all that -- were subject to dictatorial whims from the bosses and the manager. The work was mind-numbingly dull and ill-paid. When they came home, they had no time to enjoy life, but as soon as they were there they were harassed by their kids who had been sitting in front of the television learning what great toys they could nag mom and dad for. Class conflict and the obscenity of consumerism were obvious to me. The more I talked with guys, the more I began to suspect that what I'd been told to believe was horseshit, that education and hard work didn't amount to much. I thought of my dad, who worked two jobs (auto mechanic and truck driver) and didn't have much to show for it. And then, two years later, after I'd left religion and having a belated teenage defy everything phase, I read Marx just because he was controversial, and I couldn't figure out why he was controversial. Then I listened to the Internationale, found it jibed with my humanist values, and hey presto, Billy Bragg turned me into a red.

Well, not really -- it took Emile Carles A Life of Her Own to really make me start Thinking about politics and economy. I read that for French history, and at the same time I was pursuing a minor in sociology, and all of my classes were taught by the same working class Marxist who'd come out of the same religious/etc background as I had. Those helped considerably..

[Red Nightmare]

Studying the history of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. I was curious so I wanted to learn more than just the American textbook version of Cold War history. Pretty soon I was researching communist ideology and Marxism and discovered that the original, non-Stalinist type of communism appealed to me.

[ind_com]

Other. Interacting with communists doing mass work.

[MP5]

I got interested in Communism through reading works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Connolly, Fannon, etc as my friend was taking political philosophy and i always read the books he brought home after he was done with them. Of course i had read about the Soviet Union, Cuba (i did a high school paper on the Cuban revolution actually) and the rest but i was already interested in Socialism though not Communism at the time. I had been involved in labor unions from a fairly young age so i knew about Socialism and Syndicalism. It was not until i was in my 20's that i started to consider myself as a Communist. I was a Marxist-Leninist at first then a Anarcho-Communist.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

I picked Revleft, but I probably should have done other.

I got into it through listening to anti-capitalist punk music.

[TheIrrationalist]

Basically the most important event that got me into communism was when I watched Sergei Eisenstein's films Strike and Battleship Potemkin. Before that communism was what I had heard in the history class, and I said I was a communist to piss off my classmates. Second influence came from 20th century art movements like Surrealism and Dada.

[VDS]

As a Cuban-American and specifically a son of Cuban Exiles and Nephew/Grandson of Cuban-American business owners, I at an early age decided to research Cuban history, and the Cuban Revolution. It turned me into a leftist almost immediately. Visiting Cuba at an early age also made it easier, since I didn't see any of the horror stories the Cubans here talk about.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

This (I guess it falls under RevLeft): http://thequeerproject.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/glenn-to-lenin-my-transformation/

[1848]

In World History and American History class, classmates would be all about capitalism, and it disgusted me. They all argued against communism (most didn't even know what it was!) and were convinced that capitalism was way better than any left-wing economic branch. I pointed out that capitalism caused much misery for many people around the world, but they wouldn't listen...Honestly it was incredibly disappointing.

[smellincoffee]

This (I guess it falls under RevLeft): http://thequeerproject.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/glenn-to-lenin-my-transformation/

I'm not sure I follow the transformation: you went from "Okay, what is meant by socialism" to "Fuck yeah, I'm a socialist"? What about leftist thinking made sense to you? I went from quasi-fascist to red, too, but I had a basis for it -- some things I believed in, like universal healthcare and education, weren't just beliefs, they were values that leftism met better than anything else.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I'm not sure I follow the transformation: you went from "Okay, what is meant by socialism" to "Fuck yeah, I'm a socialist"? What about leftist thinking made sense to you? I went from quasi-fascist to red, too, but I had a basis for it -- some things I believed in, like universal healthcare and education, weren't just beliefs, they were values that leftism met better than anything else.

I already had a keen sense of history so knowing the leftist side of things placed things into perspective; so ultimately this is the moral of the story: education leads the way.

[Futility Personified]

Punk led to a change in attitudes, change in attitudes led to an open mind, open mind led to changing what was responsible for the world sucking, the issue was definitely capitalism, now let's see a movement that can bring forth socialism.

[Leftsolidarity]

idk if i posted in this thread before. punk music got me to research what anarchism was and then through listening to socialist rap i got curious so i started researching communism and debating with communists online. What they said made sense and seemed like the most logical thing to support.

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

Maxim Gorky's The Mother.

[Lokomotive293]

Why is there no such answer as "Went to some protest that happened to be organized in large parts by a communist group. Knew some of them from school/other places, or just through friends of friends. Thought they were cool and started hanging out with them. Learned about communism. Joined."?

[Dropdead]

Some guy on my art class was saying how bad communism and communists are. Well, then I got home from school and started reading about communism and got really interested in it and became a communist after reading about it more. Tried to argue with the guy on my art class, but all of his arguments were just like ''so what'', ''what do you mean'', ''stop talking shit'', etc.

[Rakshaal]

Became a skeptic, rejected religion, applied skepticism to politics, rejected capitalism, leftist tendencies emerge, find revleft and lurk.

[Captain Ahab]

I became interested after reading the refutals made to a critique by a SocDem on their blog in the comments section.

[slum]

was anti-status quo/leftist because of life experience, sought socialists out since i was looking for alternatives when all liberalism could do was talk about 'lesser evils' and rejected struggle for any real change. labour theory of value blew my mind and explained why capitalism is exploitative and destructive by definition which i always knew but never had the proof to explain. realized communism was the only solution.

[Fionnagáin]

Out of curiosity I acquired class-consciousness.
Individuals can't acquire class consciousness. Class consciousness is the collective self-consciousness of the organised working class, not some zen state you achieve by reading pamphlets.

[Deity]

I tend to research things that Americans demonize because those are the things they never really teach you about, and this time I actually got very interested. I eventually learned enough that I decided this was the future.