S. Zetor
11th December 2008, 15:20
Hello all, I joined Revleft already some time ago, but I don't think I've introduced myself properly yet. I was looking at the Groups and thought it might make sense also from the point of view of joining groups and discussing with other people that others know the general drift of where I'm coming from.
I'm and electrician from southern Finland. My organisations at the moment are the Metal Workers Union brach 49 and a leftwing internet newspaper / archive of digitalised marxist authors Sosialismi dot net.
In the past, I was active within the Communist Youth League, but I'm not of appropriate age anymore, so that's that. Also, I used to be a member of the Finnish Communist Party SKP, but after a few years I grew tired of the stagnant atmosphere.. the act clearly was going nowhere, and despite certain good comrades, the structure was rotten and bureaucratised through and through, no mass contacts, so what the hell.. it's slowly dying, so I decided not to waste my time on it.
Politically I tend to look beyond the Trotskyism/Stalinism debate, I find it pretty useless for all practical purposes (it can make interesting discussions though). As Finland has a long history of Moscow-oriented communism (i.e. almost no Trotsky or Mao influence), I tend to bend the stick towards "Trotskyist" ideas, as I think he has a lot of interesting to say.
In general I'd just characterise myself as a revolutionary Communist. I don't want to categorise myself based on supporting this or that historical trend in the Communist movement, I find that somewhat artificial, not to say unuseful.
At present I'm not very familiar with Mao or the Chinese experience, though it sounds interesting enough and I look forward to learning about it. I consider Fidel Castro perhaps the greatest politician of the last century. Lenin is great too, of course, but that's kind of boring because it's so self-evident, and I like Fidel more as a personality (as in his self-biography with Ignacio Ramonet).
I tend not to make too rigid categorisations of things, and in general the New Communist Movement group sounds good in that it presicisely seems to reject this kind of schemes.
I read a lot, and prefer discussions that provide sources to back up opinions (be it newspaper articles or books), rather than just expressing opinions.
Some of my main interests at the moment are:
- the national question and national struggles, imperialism
- feminism
- evolutionary psychology (yes I know, many people think it's just reactionary. I don't think it's ONLY that)
- The Chinese Cultural revolution
- organisational questions of the revolutionary movement
- learning German
Some things I think I have a fair level of knowledge of:
- Russian history 1917-1945 (who woulda thunk)
- Finnish history and politics
- Marxist economic theory
- History of the Finnish trade union movement
I'm and electrician from southern Finland. My organisations at the moment are the Metal Workers Union brach 49 and a leftwing internet newspaper / archive of digitalised marxist authors Sosialismi dot net.
In the past, I was active within the Communist Youth League, but I'm not of appropriate age anymore, so that's that. Also, I used to be a member of the Finnish Communist Party SKP, but after a few years I grew tired of the stagnant atmosphere.. the act clearly was going nowhere, and despite certain good comrades, the structure was rotten and bureaucratised through and through, no mass contacts, so what the hell.. it's slowly dying, so I decided not to waste my time on it.
Politically I tend to look beyond the Trotskyism/Stalinism debate, I find it pretty useless for all practical purposes (it can make interesting discussions though). As Finland has a long history of Moscow-oriented communism (i.e. almost no Trotsky or Mao influence), I tend to bend the stick towards "Trotskyist" ideas, as I think he has a lot of interesting to say.
In general I'd just characterise myself as a revolutionary Communist. I don't want to categorise myself based on supporting this or that historical trend in the Communist movement, I find that somewhat artificial, not to say unuseful.
At present I'm not very familiar with Mao or the Chinese experience, though it sounds interesting enough and I look forward to learning about it. I consider Fidel Castro perhaps the greatest politician of the last century. Lenin is great too, of course, but that's kind of boring because it's so self-evident, and I like Fidel more as a personality (as in his self-biography with Ignacio Ramonet).
I tend not to make too rigid categorisations of things, and in general the New Communist Movement group sounds good in that it presicisely seems to reject this kind of schemes.
I read a lot, and prefer discussions that provide sources to back up opinions (be it newspaper articles or books), rather than just expressing opinions.
Some of my main interests at the moment are:
- the national question and national struggles, imperialism
- feminism
- evolutionary psychology (yes I know, many people think it's just reactionary. I don't think it's ONLY that)
- The Chinese Cultural revolution
- organisational questions of the revolutionary movement
- learning German
Some things I think I have a fair level of knowledge of:
- Russian history 1917-1945 (who woulda thunk)
- Finnish history and politics
- Marxist economic theory
- History of the Finnish trade union movement