What Sort of Leftist Am I

[uncontent_soul]

Am I an anarcho-communist if I believe in everyone should be a leader instead of no leaders? Am I an anarchist at all? Would I be socialist, I feel communities should all lead themselves and create one big community out of it and everyone should cooperate and be a leader?

[Zoop]

I think you're going to have to go into more detail for people to ascertain your specific tendency.

I think I know what you're getting at, and these basic ideas do relate to anarchism in some sense. But you'll have to elaborate on your beliefs in order for things to become a bit more concrete.

[uncontent_soul]

I think you're going to have to go into more detail for people to ascertain your specific tendency.

I think I know what you're getting at, and these basic ideas do relate to anarchism in some sense. But you'll have to elaborate on your beliefs in order for things to become a bit more concrete.

Okay then... Say a revolution has became as ended... No government is set up but everybody co operates with each other for self sufficiency. There is no leader but multiple small communities are created and say they all sort of are equally I charge at the same time...? Any ideas on what this ideology if sorts would be called or did I just make it up?

[Sewer Socialist]

I think that this is more or less what every leftist thinks. You should probably do some further reading to develop your ideas.

[uncontent_soul]

I think that this is more or less what every leftist thinks. You should probably do some further reading to develop your ideas.

Not every leftist. Leninists believe in a central government. That not what the USSR believed!

[Sentinel]

Okay then... Say a revolution has became as ended... No government is set up but everybody co operates with each other for self sufficiency. There is no leader but multiple small communities are created and say they all sort of are equally I charge at the same time...? Any ideas on what this ideology if sorts would be called or did I just make it up?

It definitely sounds like federalist anarchism/libertarian communism of some sort; communities governing themselves without interference from a central government, and deciding wider issues together from the bottom up instead of top-down. But there are still several specific tendencies this could fit, for example if you think trade unions ought to have a central role in organising then anarcho-syndicalism might be your thing, otherwise perhaps some other anarchism, council communism.. etc.

My tip would be to not to be too quick to try fit into a specific box from the beginning, rather study what different tendencies and organisations have to say, and/or - and this is always optimal - hang around and work together with such organisations, to see how they operate in practice on concrete issues.

[Sewer Socialist]

I guess I'm a little confused by what you're describing - is it centralized or decentralized? "One big community" seems at odds with "There is no leader but multiple small communities". What do you mean by "believe in government"? Statelessness and equality is the ultimate goal of the radical left (and I should have specified "radical left" instead of just "left").

The USSR was a political body of many people over many decades - you really couldn't say the USSR believed one thing or another.

[Zoop]

I think the "one big community" he/she is referring to is composed of smaller communities. So this "one big community" is a federation of smaller communities, I'm assuming.

[Sewer Socialist]

Well, yes, but a big community is necessarily comprised of smaller sub-units; Lenin, Bakunin and Marx all advocated forms of this.

The difference, as I see it - is admission to this "big community" optional? Can they be said to be freely associated? Or must unity and compromise be maintained?

If they are to be freely associated, this is along the lines of anarcho-communism; Bakunin and Kropotkin.

If the "big community" is not to be dissolved, but to remain unified, this is more along the lines of Marx and Marxists.

However, there are many other reasons people align themselves with one or the other, and I agree with Sentinel not to rush into aligning with this or that; and that real life practice is also important.

[uncontent_soul]

I think the "one big community" he/she is referring to is composed of smaller communities. So this "one big community" is a federation of smaller communities, I'm assuming.

I apologize for my limited political vocabulary.

[Comrade Jacob]

A strange one.
Translation - I dinnie ken pal

[Blake's Baby]

Not every leftist. Leninists believe in a central government. That not what the USSR believed!

I think you're mistaking 'the plan' - world revolution and the overthrow of capitalism and the state worldwide - with 'what was achievable' - maybe slightly less horror and brutality for a bit, until the new boss turned out to be just as shit as the old boss.

I once went for a nice night out with my girlfriend and some of our friends, and what happened was somebody punched me repeatedly in the head until I fell over, then started kicking me with a large pair of boots. I went to hospital and had bandages wrapped around my head, and spent 5 days in a darkened room and developed a dependence on painkillers. Obviously, that's what I chose to happen, I had it all planned out like.

[uncontent_soul]

I think you're mistaking 'the plan' - world revolution and the overthrow of capitalism and the state worldwide - with 'what was achievable' - maybe slightly less horror and brutality for a bit, until the new boss turned out to be just as shit as the old boss.

I once went for a nice night out with my girlfriend and some of our friends, and what happened was somebody punched me repeatedly in the head until I fell over, then started kicking me with a large pair of boots. I went to hospital and had bandages wrapped around my head, and spent 5 days in a darkened room and developed a dependence on painkillers. Obviously, that's what I chose to happen, I had it all planned out like.

I'm sorry to here about your pain killer problem but I don't see where this plays into Leninism.

[Blake's Baby]

Because the result of the revolution was a brutal state-capitalist regime, then that was the intention behind the revolution.

Because the result of me going out for the evening was hospitalisation, lots of discomfort and painkiller addiction, then this was the intention behind going out.

Don't worry about it, it was years ago, I stopped taking painkillers and my eye is fine, thanks.

[uncontent_soul]

I don't see the analogy beside the cause and effect template. A capitalist society sparked a revolution, hospitalization and injury caused your addiction. Me wanting to eat a snack made me make brownies with my burgouis parents money.

[Blake's Baby]

The point is that consequences should not be mistaken for intentions. Lenin was no more aiming for a brutal capitalist dictatorship than I was aiming for a kicking. So your argument that 'Leninists didn't believe that! The USSR didn't believe that!' I don't think is valid.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think you're mistaking 'the plan' - world revolution and the overthrow of capitalism and the state worldwide - with 'what was achievable' - maybe slightly less horror and brutality for a bit, until the new boss turned out to be just as shit as the old boss.

I once went for a nice night out with my girlfriend and some of our friends, and what happened was somebody punched me repeatedly in the head until I fell over, then started kicking me with a large pair of boots. I went to hospital and had bandages wrapped around my head, and spent 5 days in a darkened room and developed a dependence on painkillers. Obviously, that's what I chose to happen, I had it all planned out like.

I understood the OP as claiming that the Leninist "believed in" a centralised state instead of a federation of autonomous communities. They're wrong on the state part, but I do think Leninists - and some people who are arguably not Leninists like Bordiga - did stand for the unity of human society against the federalism that is popular on RevLeft - as in fact did Marx. In fact I think Bordiga put it best:

"Marx here uses a formidable expression: the social brain. First technology and then science are transmitted from generation to generation, as an endowment of the Social Man, of the Species, in which all of the individual members have laboured and collaborated. In our construction, the Prophet, the Priest, the Discoverer and the Inventor have all been equally liquidated. The Social Man is spoken of in these pages also as the Individual Man, not in the sense of a human person as a cell of Society but rather human society treated as a single organism living a single life (it is in this form that the naive and sublime myth of Immortality has entered into science, which the thought of human babies assigns to the singular, just as today Law and Economy want to stand in the singular, and are likewise ruined). This organism, whose Life is History, has a brain, an organ constructed in accordance with its thousand-year-old function, which is not the legacy of any skull or any cranium. The knowledge of the Species, Science, much more than gold, is for us not an individual legacy, but its power pertains undivided to the Social Man."

As in, Bordiga put it most forcefully, not necessarily in the most appealing form, particularly since I couldn't find a translation of the work in question online and had to translate using my slightly dodgy Italian. But I swear there was a translation. Maybe I'm just going crazy, who knows. The point is that this vision - which I think was also present in Lenin and Marx - is as removed from the vision of a federation of autonomous "communities" as is humanly possible.

(And I question if there is any basis to the talk about "communities" in 2015. Some people apparently think we still live in hamlets and old sections of Paris...)