>>Obligatory thread title<<

[Railyon]

Hi,

I am a libertarian socialist from Germany, currently with the FAU-IWA.

Been a regular over at libcom for a while, but wanted to register here too - which didn't work out as smoothly as I thought, thanks a lot to cmoney who helped me with my troubles.

There's not much to say about me really, I am in the process of setting up a scanning group for antique and hard to get marxist literature (mostly in German - can't post links but it's implikation.wordpress.com). I'm in a band, I like video games, and to my dismay identify as a hippie which has caused me much frustration because communists seems to hate them because of their bourgeois morals. I'll leave it up to your interpretation who the "bourgeois morals" was aimed at.

Anyway, my political background is that I've been a long time anarchist sympathizer, then like a year ago got into reading basic anarchist texts like Bakunin and Kropotkin, but the real break came when I started reading Capital, which took me like forever but was totally worth it.

I am a student of economics but have no friggin' idea what I am going to do afterwards. Pretty much everything I'd do with my knowledge is gonna end up benefiting the bourgies, even if I went to be a trade union adviser middle man working class slaver (yes that is one word).

Anyway, good to be on board and I'm looking forward to being right in the middle of a tendency war sometime soon, they seem to break out regularly here over the tiniest of remarks especially between trots and MLs.

[Grenzer]

I thought you seemed familiar, libcom it is!

Welcome to the board, hopefully you can learn some interesting things while you're here.

There's been a real dearth of the left-of-Lenin types; although we have a lot of anarchists, most of them suck when it comes to politics and theory so they don't tend to actually participate much in political debates. There are daily tendency wars between Stalinists and Trotskyists, but almost as often you can find them between the Leninists and everyone else. Hope you have fun!

[Railyon]

Welcome to the board, hopefully you can learn some interesting things while you're here.
Been lurking here for two months or so, and I gotta say, I already did.



There's been a real dearth of the left-of-Lenin types; although we have a lot of anarchists, most of them suck when it comes to politics and theory so they don't tend to actually participate much in political debates.
Can't really hold it against them if they don't, from what I observed while lurking is that there are debates you best stay out of because some people have their ideological shutters on...

And lots of stuff has already been beaten like a dead horse.

Personally I consider myself still in the learning phase (which never ends...), but most anarchists outside the libcom milieu would see me more as a classical marxist with a fetish for the circled A. I am usually more interested in classical marxist theory than flame wars between current political tendencies IRL, which is to me a basically fruitless pissing contest against fans going full power.

[Grenzer]

Well yeah, it's the internet. In the real world it's pretty much just as bad though.

Milieu! You must hang around ICCer's or something. We have a few of them around here, and they're generally among the better posters.

There is a rhythm to the topics you have to learn. It seems like there is something about Kronstadt about once every season, the Moscow Trials every three months, a discussion about the execution of Trotskyists weekly, and something about the Great Purge daily. The only thing you really won't see going on around here with any frequency are discussions about Maoism, which is perfectly fine by me.

[Railyon]

Milieu! You must hang around ICCer's or something. We have a few of them around here, and they're generally among the better posters.
Yeah, I know some leftcom posters on here who are also on libcom, decent folk, I generally have a soft spot for them even if I disagree with quite a few of their theories (like degeneration).

Usually I am not sectarian though, and if available I'd create a United Front with them anyday. At least I consider myself closer to them theoretically (with lots of the differences boiling down to semantics) than Trotskyists and Marxist-Leninists, which is not to say that I categorically oppose the latter just because of their tendency. Just, y'know, bitter experiences.

[Left Leanings]

Hello.

Welcome to the forum :)

[Omsk]

Your comment on the current situation in Germany,and the contemporary 'leftist' organizations?

[Railyon]

Your comment on the current situation in Germany,and the contemporary 'leftist' organizations?

I think it's pretty much like the UK, with austerity measures all over the place, Occupy is not as strong as elsewhere, lots of political depression (in the literal sense of the word).

People are too tightly in the grip of capitalist realism, sadly.

The German Left in its current state is a joke; high sectarianism among the radical left (but different in content from here; not so much an inter-tendency war but rather silly name-calling theoretical snobbery), declining popularity of social democracy (to which I also count Die Linke).

All in all, fucking depressing