Can you be a Communist?

[Pogue]

In the sense that, you believe in a communist society but don't label/adhere to any particular sub-division of communism, i.e. Maoism or Trotskyism or Anarchism? Or is it impossible because it is inevitable that you'll eventually be pigeon holed into one of these ideologies? If you asked someone about their politics, they replied 'Communist' and you said 'What type?' and they said 'Just communist', would you think them politically ignorant?

[Module]

No, I wouldn't. I consider myself a communist and wouldn't feel comfortable with anything more specific. I have my influences but I don't adhere to any particular 'sub-division', as you put it. The most important part of the communist ideology is class struggle. No further set of positions or specific positions on things like method or nuanced direction are more important, and the implications of political labels are often unclear and their use seems to be based more on political tribalism and (seemingly) egoism than genuine rational perspective on the future and direction of the socialist movement.
I don't think somebody is a better or worse communist because of how much Trotsky or Mao they've read (let alone how tightly they cling to their unique politics), in fact I would say a communist who treats theoretical level like penis size is slightly missing the point (there are a lot of those here).
Another reason I wouldn't further label myself is that I see, to the greatest extent, most sectarianism is irrelevant, unnecessary and counter-productive and there is a good chance I would have more respect for somebody's communist politics if they similarly rejected further political 'division' as to the greatest extent irrelevant.

[Q]

It depends how I call myself depending on the occasion. If it is some guy on the street I meet when I sell a paper I call myself a socialist. In a demonstration I call myself a communist. Under communists I call myself a Trotskyist...

I think a specific ideology stands for more than just some weirdo's that lived long ago. It's more about a specific set of ideas and tactics on how to achieve your goals. Since the Trotskyist tradition has a great set of "tools" in this regard, I identify myself as such.

[KurtFF8]

It's absolutely possible. I consider myself to be just a communist without any particular sub-division. I think that Lenin contributed quite a lot to Marxist theory, I think that Stalin's "Socialism in One State" was flawed, but the logic behind it made sense considering the position of the USSR at the time, etc. etc.

But I think the left does indeed focus too much on the sub-divisions, and thus the particular aspects of those divides become overemphasized and the members of those sub-divisions think that those divisive issues are the "important factors" in defining revolutionary theory for example. Although there certainly are drastically different views of revolution theories for example which are important.

[Led Zeppelin]

The only reason I and other serious people would call themselves Trotskyist, Maoist, Hoxhaist etc. is to clarify their position on many issues. It beats having to go over every point and explaining what their view on it is.

When I say; "I'm a Trotskyist who believes in the degenerated workers' state theory" most people who have been inside the communist movement for a while know where I stand on most issues, and which organizations/parties/movements I support or might belong to.

If I want to be a pedant and just want to call myself a "communist" or "Marxist" because if I go further than that and say "Leninist", "Maoist", "Trotskyist" etc. I am "glorifying a person" (funny how that doesn't apply when they do it with Marx, huh?), then I'm just wasting peoples' time.

Of course as Q rightly said it depends on the circumstances as well. I wouldn't describe myself as above amongst people who haven't been active in the communist movement for a while. They wouldn't know what I was talking about and it would only complicate it. Then I would just call myself a socialist, Marxist, or communist.

Also, thread moved to Learning.

[Red October]

For a long while I identified only as a Communist, but that doesn't really do a good job of explaining my politics to most people. I usually got confused for a Stalinist or Trotskyist, so I started to identify as an Anarchist or Anarcho-Syndicalist. I still consider myself a Communist, but it's usually necessary to be more specific because the variety of tendencies that go under that label is so broad.

[Dominicana_1965]

I honestly feel that comrade Thomas Sankara explained it best when he said: “We are open to all the winds of the will of the peoples and their revolutions, and we study some of the terrible failures that have given rise to tragic violations of human rights. We take from each revolution only its kernel of purity, which forbids us to become slaves to the reality of others.”

In order words we should, as revolutionaries, be able to draw the best aspects of each communist revolution and revolutionary to build a general conclusion. I feel that adopting sectarian analysis indirectly make us accept certain notions that don't allow us to see the whole picture of other movements. I consider myself a communist and just that by the way...

[not_of_this_world]

This is a very hard question. Since the closest we have ever come to communism in the USA was 1919 during the rise of the IWW union which labled itself communist. Even then they were rejected by Russia. A class struggle must ensue first in this country and the resulting factions will be made known particular to this country and it's classes. To claim to be a specific type of communist and be a citzen of the USA is impossible I believe. You may want to be that type of communist but what evolves may not be to your liking and you may have to compromise your belief system. Just my take on the subject.

[Bilan]

Your actions define your politics, so no, not really. How you understand history - particularly 'past-socialist states' - defines your line, so again, not really.
I think it was put best by Q when he said, If (...) I meet when I sell a paper I call myself a socialist. In a demonstration I call myself a communist. Under communists I call myself a Trotskyist...

[hugsandmarxism]

I'm something of a neophyte, and have only really read the Communist Manifesto and a few other articles by Marx, including his fetishism of commodities bit, so I don't yet identify with any sub-category. I know I'm not a Stalinist, being more on the anarchist side of that political axis... don't know enough about Trotsky to say if I identify with him more... so yeah, I just say marxist, though I still have a fair bit of reading to do before I know for sure.

[red eck]

For me, to be a communist or a socialist requires some sort of explicit Material feature. A capitalist is a capitalist as they invest capital and obtain a greater return (if successful). What makes a communist a communist? I don't think reading all the Marx and Luxembourg will turn you into anything, what it does do is give you some sort of identity as in fashion, like say 'goth' or 'rasta' or 'hippy', but not a material [class] identity, like 'capitalist' or 'peasant' or 'landlord'.

Perhaps the closest people in the West have ever come to creating a new material class was with 'syndicalism' through trade unions. This is certainly worth discussing...

[Djehuti]

In the sense that, you believe in a communist society but don't label/adhere to any particular sub-division of communism, i.e. Maoism or Trotskyism or Anarchism? Or is it impossible because it is inevitable that you'll eventually be pigeon holed into one of these ideologies? If you asked someone about their politics, they replied 'Communist' and you said 'What type?' and they said 'Just communist', would you think them politically ignorant?

No. I think it's stranger that people of today still claim to be marxism-leninists, maoists, council communists and followers of other marxist schools that as a whole aren't relevant today. One can of cource be influenced by various historical schools though.

I'm influenced by a lot of different schools, but I prefer to call myself simply "communist" or "marxist" and thats because I think that there is no school of marxism that has a great enough view on what the heck we should do. No one has yet answered the "What is to be done?"-question for the 21th century.

But there's of cource theories and ways to relate to reality that I believe to be quite correct and there's also schools that are more relevant than others etc.

[ZeroNowhere]

For me, to be a communist or a socialist requires some sort of explicit Material feature. A capitalist is a capitalist as they invest capital and obtain a greater return (if successful). What makes a communist a communist? I don't think reading all the Marx and Luxembourg will turn you into anything, what it does do is give you some sort of identity as in fashion, like say 'goth' or 'rasta' or 'hippy', but not a material [class] identity, like 'capitalist' or 'peasant' or 'landlord'.
Wait, what? 'He is a socialist' refers to a person's political affiliation, while being a capitalist refers to being a member of a class. 'Capitalist' is also used by some to refer to people who support capitalism, from Rothbard to left-reformists, though I don't tend to use this usage of the word much. Being a socialist doesn't require any particular class affiliation.

[red eck]

Being a socialist doesn't require any particular class affiliation.

A manager of a company may consider himself to be a Socialist if he say, supports and is affiliated with a left-wing party. Political affiliations can also mean that a significant portion of the working class support orthodox Capitalist parties (Tories/Republicans/Whigs/Christian Democrats etc..) You even get upper class and professional members who consider themselves to be radical left wing revolutionaries.

The problem comes when actual class affiliation comes into conflict with political affiliations. What if the manager who supported the Left-wing party finds himself subject to new government regulations which benefit the majority but affect him negatively? He may switch political affiliation to a party more in tune with his class location. Likewise with the Tory supporting working class, big cuts in spending could leave our working class Tory unemployed, he may then switch his political affiliations to a left-wing party.

In my opinion, a new class with distinctive socio-economic relations that supersedes Capitalism is the real deal, everything until then will just be sympathising. I don't know if new sustainable socio-economic relations have ever come about since Capitalism so I cannot give an example of one. That's why I'm in the Learning section of this forum. But it may be easier if from now on, for the purposes of discussion, we all assume that every individual's political affiliation is commensurate with their class location, in other words: no working class Tories; no upper class revolutionaries and so on.

So, to be a Socialist should be more than just an arbitary politcal affiliation, but a class affiliation as well.

[Tjis]

I must disagree with the majority here. I don't think saying "I'm a communist" really covers what you mean. While the communist world we want to achieve is the same for the vast majority of the revolutionary left, our means are different.
As far as I know, there's no debate among communists about the communism part, but about how to get there. That's why we have so many groups. Just the fact that we happen to want the same thing in the end does not make us any more compatible.
For example, a revolution where a vanguard party takes control, followed by a centralist socialist state, which is to dissolve into communism eventually, is very different from a revolution without a transitional period, where the workers organize themselves without leadership and try to achieve a communist world immediately.

Of course, labels that are just about adding a class to your analysis or interpreting some historical event differently are silly.

[piet11111]

because most consider communism the same as stalinism i tend to call myself a marxist even though my political views are from all sorts of leftist currents.

[Diagoras]

I wouldn't consider them politically ignorant, but I would ask for elaboration. I can understand the sense of being overwhelmed and the desire to avoid drowning in the alphabet soup of socialist groups... but there are, of course, differences amongst the communists that form the foundations of our different affinities, and they need to be delineated for the term "communist" to be meaningful, imho.

I did like what was previously said about using different labels around different groups, as I have had to do that for one reason or another as well. I am a 'libertarian socialist' when discussing with someone who is likely quite new to the ideas, an 'anarchist' amongst generally informed groups (like Revleft), an anarcho-communist when discussing theory in more detail with someone, and I don't use any labels whatsoever when discussing politics with my extremely conservative relatives (just elaborating on values and ideas, so at worst I am being "utopian", rather than a newly disowned anarchist bastard son/nephew/grandson/son-in-law :rolleyes:).

[Reclaimed Dasein]

I just take communist. When pushed on who I like, I say all of them but Pol Pot and the leaders of North Korea. If anyone says something like, "Lenin/Stalin/Mao/Che was a monster/idiot/had the wrong line!" I just reply, "We must be more Lenin than Lenin." Throughout the history of communism most major figures have contributed some valuable demand or insight. However, many times they didn't take that insight that they offered. In that case, we must do a better job of enacting their positions than they did.

[Armand Iskra]

Isa akong komunista, at ang linya ko ay marxista-leninista-maoista; wala namnag masama kung ipagmalaki mo, basta't gawin mo nang tama at wag mong gawing mali!

(I am a communist, and my line is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; there is nothing wrong to be broud of, just do it right and don't make it wrong!)

[cccplikai]

Communism is a common goal!In accordance with national conditions,you can choose a different path,such as,Leninism Maoism Trotskyism……
However, attention should be paid, we do not need the Democratic Socialist，it's wrong~

[scarletghoul]

Everyone should just be communist without adjectives

[Invincible Summer]

I tell people I'm an anarchist usually, but then it does sort of confuse them when I mention that communism is the end goal.

[Charles Xavier]

There are ideological trends within the working class movement, Theres social-democrats, who can be right or left wing, "Democratic socialists", Revisionists, on the right wing of the working class movement which the (left-wing social democrats can still be progressive and can be closer to the center), Marxist-Leninists at the center, there is Trotskyites, Maoists, Left-communists, Anarchists who form the ultra-left.

So basically when you state your ideology you are stating which ideological wing of the working class movement you are on.

[Led Zeppelin]

To expand on that list; there are also Tankies, Stalinists, Maoites and other assorted types.

[Charles Xavier]

To expand on that list; there are also Tankies, Stalinists, Maoites and other assorted types.


I've never heard of Tankies, Stalinists don't exist and whats the difference between maoites and maoists?