Should Marxist drop the 'Communist' 'Socialist' labels?

[Blanquist]

How many times can you say "Oh, they aren't real socialists..."


Why not just drop the words like past Marxists dropped 'Social-democrat' and others?

[Martin Blank]

If an identity thief were to steal your name and ruin your personal reputation, would you change your name?

I wouldn't.

Besides, we are far enough past the whole Cold War nonsense for that to matter much.

[pluckedflowers]

How many times can you say "Oh, they aren't real socialists..."

However many times states and bureaucrats usurp the means of production in the name of workers and call it socialism.

[daft punk]

I think it's best to keep the socialist name but drop the communist one for obvious reasons. However there are still problems when we have libertarians calling Obama socialist and so on. Using Marxist is good as well.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I want to move humanity to a classless, stateless, money less, and egalitarian society with highly advanced productive forces; Communism. I am a communist.

[Per Levy]

why? we want communism, communism is our goal and thats why we call ourselfes communist since quite a long time, it would be dishonest to drop the term.

[roy]

'marxist' has bad press too. meh, why have friends when you can have comrades?

...i'm so lonely:crying:

[Veovis]

Why bother? As soon as we start calling ourselves something else, they'll drag that label through the mud, too.

[Revolution starts with U]

Just use the exact same rhetoric, believe the exact same things, and advocate the exact same policies, and call yourself a capitalist. It's just a label. No matter what label it is, it's only going to have meaning in so far as the audience understands it; meaning, if they think poop monkey means a monkey that wipes your butt for you at Wal-Mart, and you think it means an untouchable who spends all day cleaning up poop... you're going to have a hard time having any kind of debate.

Why do people care about these labels at all? In popular discourse (like on the street and in fb, etc) I almost never label myself. I let my opponent do it for me, and I do not run from it. I ask them to critique my position, not knee-jerk react to the name given it.

[Railyon]

I like Marxist, sounds academic. Communist and socialist sounds so... cold war era to most people that lived to see the end of the USSR.

In the anarchist camp some proposed simply "syndicalist" for the ASers instead, but in Europe that MAY make one think of fascist national syndicalism... quite a dead-end really.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I use Marxist and communist interchangably; I suggest we drop "socialist" since everyone from left liberals to tankies call themselves socialists.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

What would we call ourselves if we dropped all the conventional terms? How would such a change even be undertaken throughout all the world's leftist parties?

[Grenzer]

There would be no point in picking a new name, as others have pointed out, that would simply be dragged through the mud.

Personally, I think we should drop the label of socialist since it's fully associated with liberals and social-democrats. Better to stick with communist and be associated with the likes of "mass murdering sociopaths" like Stalin than with liberals.

[Leftsolidarity]

I think it's best to keep the socialist name but drop the communist one for obvious reasons. However there are still problems when we have libertarians calling Obama socialist and so on. Using Marxist is good as well.

What are those "obvious" reasons?

[Ostrinski]

It doesn't really matter tbh. Not like we're running for an election.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

What are those "obvious" reasons?

That "Communist" is associated with Marxist-Leninism, or what Daft Punk, and most of the mainstream left, would call Stalinism.

[Lucretia]

How many times can you say "Oh, they aren't real socialists..."


Why not just drop the words like past Marxists dropped 'Social-democrat' and others?

You sure have started a lot of new threads on this subforum. Any particular reason?

[Blanquist]

You sure have started a lot of new threads on this subforum. Any particular reason?

To learn..?

[Anderson]

What would we call ourselves if we dropped all the conventional terms? How would such a change even be undertaken throughout all the world's leftist parties?

That's true, it is not practical to achieve this at all.

Is this a manifestation of pessimism and lack of confidence in the communist cause ?:(

[ВАЛТЕР]

To learn..?

We don't take kindly to learning around here. :sneaky:

I don't see why we would drop the name. Seems like a waste of time. Since we are communists we are going to call ourselves that. I don't think a name means much. It is our ideas that are important.

[daft punk]

What are those "obvious" reasons?

Well, your average person thinks of 'communism' and they think of the USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Eastern Europe pre-1990, and even Cambodia under the Khmer rouge. And they have zero desire to have anything like that, mostly anyway. They imagine (mostly correctly) dictatorships, lack of free speech, not too great economies, failed states. Plus of course, Russia and Eastern Europe gave it up for capitalism, so it must have been rubbish, and China is doing the same but more slowly. So basically communism got a bad name from being associated (incorrectly) with these Stalinist states.

They did have some good points, the planned economy grew very rapidly in the USSR, and therefore Trots did support the existence of the USSR as progressive, but this was despite the bureaucratic dictatorship rather than because of it, in our opinion. History proved Trotsky right and it didnt last though, as over time the disadvantages of the dictatorship outweighed the advantages of the planned economy, and it was obvious they would never catch America up.

The workers did try a few times for democratic socialism, but each time the dictatorship crushed the movement. In the end it was the elites themselves who led the move to capitalism. This was because the one thing they feared was actual socialism, so instead they preferred to go capitalist.

[Blanquist]

What would we call ourselves if we dropped all the conventional terms? How would such a change even be undertaken throughout all the world's leftist parties?

That's exactly the point though, we don't want it to be undertaken throughout the worlds parties.

If I was a Trotskyist I wouldn't want to be associated with the Stalinists. I wouldn't even want to be associated with other bankrupt Trotskyists who don't agree with my programme and interpretation of history and current events.

[Railyon]

Kinda reminds me of how Democratic Socialism is the new Social Democracy.

Works for them... :confused:

[daft punk]

only 22% of people in the world think it was a shame the USSR closed down, and that includes Trots who hoped for a political revolution.

[daft punk]

If I was a Trotskyist I wouldn't want to be associated with the Stalinists. I wouldn't even want to be associated with other bankrupt Trotskyists who don't agree with my programme and interpretation of history and current events.

We dont

[Leftsolidarity]

Well, your average person thinks of 'communism' and they think of the USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Eastern Europe pre-1990, and even Cambodia under the Khmer rouge. And they have zero desire to have anything like that, mostly anyway. They imagine (mostly correctly) dictatorships, lack of free speech, not too great economies, failed states. Plus of course, Russia and Eastern Europe gave it up for capitalism, so it must have been rubbish, and China is doing the same but more slowly. So basically communism got a bad name from being associated (incorrectly) with these Stalinist states.

They did have some good points, the planned economy grew very rapidly in the USSR, and therefore Trots did support the existence of the USSR as progressive, but this was despite the bureaucratic dictatorship rather than because of it, in our opinion. History proved Trotsky right and it didnt last though, as over time the disadvantages of the dictatorship outweighed the advantages of the planned economy, and it was obvious they would never catch America up.

The workers did try a few times for democratic socialism, but each time the dictatorship crushed the movement. In the end it was the elites themselves who led the move to capitalism. This was because the one thing they feared was actual socialism, so instead they preferred to go capitalist.

People equate it with socialism too.

Communism is actually something and we strive for it. So unless you want to change what you are struggling for you are still a communist.

[gorillafuck]

it's going to be kind of hard to call yourself a marxist but deny being a communist when karl marx's most famous text is the communist manifesto and advocated the replacing of capitalism with communism.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

However there are still problems when we have libertarians calling Obama socialist and so on. Using Marxist is good as well.
I've seen them call Obama a Marxist.

[Kronsteen]

We could all invent a new name for ourselves tomorrow. Kronsteenists.

The day after, we'd have one more name, and arguments over who are the real Kronsteenists.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I use communist and socialist interchangeably, although I'm more likely to use the latter when broaching the matter with people I suspect would react worse to communist.

[BE_]

No, I don't think we should drop those names. I think they are fine.