Movements of the left

[Redhead]

This is a auestion i have been wondering for a time: which movement is bigger, communism or anarchism? And really how big is the left movement internationally atm?

[PhoenixAsh]

Part of the anarchist movement considers themselves to be communists as well.

As to the numbers...your guess is as good as mine. I think world wide we are talking about tens of millions of people who consider themselves part of the revolutionary left in some way or another....

If the rest of the revolutionary left agrees with them being part of the revolutionary left is entirely up for debate.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

If you mean how many Communists are there world wide. It's hard to figure. If you just measure those currently under some mutant Communist state (China, NK, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos) than it's roughly 20-25% of the worlds population is Communist. Thank you China.

[Redhead]

No, i mean those who consider themselves leftist, not those getting it forced upon themselves.

[Left Voice]

Part of the problem is that whoever is 'leftist' depends on who you ask and how they self-identify.

For example, most of my liberal friends would self-identify as left, as would most social democrats. Most people here would not regard them as leftist though, myself included.

Plenty of people throw around phrases like 'left wing' yet are still unashamed capitalists.

[Red Economist]

my advice is to look at election results. It's not a mark of seriousness, ideological commitment or understanding, but is the best we've got.

This is a decent place to start, but it's still no where near the kind of detail we'd like. it's more 'illustrative' than anything else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-capitalist_and_communist_parties_with_national_par liamentary_representation

[helot]

my advice is to look at election results. It's not a mark of seriousness, ideological commitment or understanding, but is the best we've got.

This is a decent place to start, but it's still no where near the kind of detail we'd like. it's more 'illustrative' than anything else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-capitalist_and_communist_parties_with_national_par liamentary_representation


Election results? Are you serious? How on earth do you expect to get any sort of picture from that? It makes no sense whatsoever.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Election results? Are you serious? How on earth do you expect to get any sort of picture from that? It makes no sense whatsoever.

If you have some hidden way of tallying things more effectively, we're all ears or eyes, rather, lol

[Red Economist]

Election results? Are you serious? How on earth do you expect to get any sort of picture from that? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Election results are about the worst way of finding out "how many" leftists there are, especially anarchists who probably don't vote or have anyone to vote for, but it's the best I've got. On the plus side, it's arguably the most accessible, given that Wikipedia has records of countries election results including historical ones. Parties and organizations are hardly going to say how many members they've got.

[Wht.Rex]

IMHO, those people who haven't studied Marxism, communism, socialism and economy overall, believe in anarchism.

My classmate from university is an example. Before he studied Marxism, he was anarchist, afterwards, he became Marxist.

[PhoenixAsh]

IMHO, those people who haven't studied Marxism, communism, socialism and economy overall, believe in anarchism.

My classmate from university is an example. Before he studied Marxism, he was anarchist, afterwards, he became Marxist.

I was a Marxist then a Leninist and by studying Marx I became an anarchist because of the inherent flaws of the ideology. This does not mean I reject Marx entirely but that I do think Marxism is limited and will ultimately result in stalling a socialist revolution indefinately.

[Tim Cornelis]

Electoral results are indeed an indication of support for, generally, Stalinist parties.

If we look at active movements, we see Maoists in Nepal, Philippines, and India (and formerly Peru) are the most active. Presumably, Maoism is the largest revolutionary leftist position globally. Closely followed by Marxism-Leninism, quite popular in Southern Iberia, some Eastern European countries (oddly, though not really, not at all in Albania despite its 'anti-revisionism'), and South Africa.

The largest (bourgeois) socialist movement in the world is the Landless Workers' Movement, an unorthodox Stalinist movement with 1.5 million members.

The Zapatistas are quite popular but have no actual ideology.

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a sort of autonomist-communist movement with some twenty thousand members in South Africa.

The largest anarchist movement is in Spain, with the CNT and GGT having a few ten thousand members between them followed by Sweden's SAC (7.500 members circa 2002). It's generally not quite big elsewhere.

Trotskyists have some very modest electoral successes in Ireland, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Algeria. Generally small as well.

[Abrad2]

I disagree. An understanding of Marxist theory is essential for any left anarchist. The main division between the two ideologies (aside from some of the philosophy of the post-left movement, which I am quite the fan of but that's another story), is how the state ought to be dealt with. Marxists are authoritarian at least to some degree, believing that a state or provisional government will have to facilitate the transfer to "pure communism" anarchists seek to dismantle the state through direct action and insurrection and in it's place form loosely organized trade unions to carry out basic societal functions. But there are as many different versions of left anarchism as there are communism