When did you discover leftism?

  1. Misanthrope
    Misanthrope
    What age did you start considering yourself a leftist?

    In seventh grade I started getting into leftism. I considered myself a communist for about a year. Before this I basically followed whatever my Dad believed, typical American Neo-Conservative.
  2. Brother No. 1
    Brother No. 1
    6th grade. After my father talked to me about the Polish Peoples Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and actually explained the simple parts of Socialism after that I learned everything else on my own.
  3. marxistcritic
    I discovered communism in 7th grade about 6 months ago. At first I was into lenin and the ussr, but I dropped that and just stuck with marx.
  4. amandevsingh
    amandevsingh
    This year, Grade 7/8, I read about the Marxist role in India's freedom struggle. This led me to Marx, Lenin, etc.

    Before this I was Social-Democrat (from parents) and a very religious man. Now, however, 'The God Delusion' has cleared me of such notions.
  5. A Revolutionary Tool
    A Revolutionary Tool
    I'd say I started considering myself a socialist when I was in 8th grade. In 9th grade I got kicked out of school for fighting and was alienated from basically everybody but my family and closest friends. So in the period from 9th-present(Entering 11th grade) I got to study economics and philosophy extensively and I started to call myself a communist when I was in the middle of 10th grade. Before that I was basically the exact opposite of what I am now. After 9/11 I would have advocated nuking the whole Middle East.
  6. Manifesto
    Manifesto
    I called myself a Leftist in the 8th grade just to annoy this one guy who would spaz out from the word "Communism" whenever I said it when really I was what A Revolutionary Tool was. Then became more interested in the 9th grade (going into 10th) throughout the year until the last few months of school when I started to actually read into it.
  7. RedRise
    RedRise
    I began looking into communism out of curiosity. Then I realized the whole thing made sense to me.
    I was in 7th grade at the time and most of the others at my snooty private school (which I always hated very quickly left) suddenly treated me as though I was radioactive (although I was never exceedingly popular to start with). When i started explaining what it was about in my last few weeks there, people were actually astonished. Don't you just love the sound of pennies dropping? ;-)
  8. LeninKobaMao
    LeninKobaMao
    I discovered it last year in 7th grade after my father telling me communists are evil went and borrowed some books from the library about Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao and it just went on from their. Half the people in my grade wouldn't even know what a communist is. I try to teach people but hardly anyone is interested except for like 5 people out of my 103 people grade.
  9. RedRise
    RedRise
    Half the people in my grade wouldn't even know what a communist is. I try to teach people but hardly anyone is interested except for like 5 people out of my 103 people grade.
    The only thing more annoying then people saying communism is bad, etc, etc is people who can't tell a flap-jack from a fly-swat and consequently can't discern between communism and capitalism. >:-(
    Been there, done that - you're not alone comrade.
  10. The Essence Of Flame Is The Essence Of Change
    Well my family was friendly to the left while not being that extremist themselves so I grew up with various human-central social ideas.When I was really small I was interested a lot in animal rights too Anyway I took a rough look at political ideologies during age 13 (that's seventh grade if I'm not mistaken?!System different here) and communism seemed the most logical to me but still I wasn't that concerned then.I grew a lot more searchive at my 16 though, mainly due to negative influence from my old school mates whose social understanding and opinion could be summed in ''kill all the immigrants''.Then due to various events of police brutality that took part here and rioting we were being bombed with anti anarchist propaganda from the TV so I decided to take a look myself to their ideas only to find I had been supporting them already and here I am
  11. Misanthrope
    Misanthrope
    I also got into animals rights and vegetarianism before socialism.
  12. liono4407
    liono4407
    I started looking in to Socialism last year when I was 16, I considered myself a socialist but wasn't really affirmated to it. I looked at the basic idea and loved what I saw. My senior year of high school I had to write an Economics report on a book (about economics obviously) and I chose the Manifesto. After reading the Manifesto I was reaffirmed in my beliefs and learned even more and considered myself a Communist no questions asked. My friends liked making jokes about it which I didn't mind that much in all honesty. Other people were like "you filthy communist" when I answered a question right in that class just because they couldn't. Doesn't help that most people in my Economics class were complete idiots besides me and my friends.
  13. RedRise
    RedRise
    people were like "you filthy communist"

    Doesn't help that most people in my Economics class were complete idiots besides me and my friends.
    That's a bummer. I have the same problem at school. Today this girl who's like a queen bee and total ***** was trying to tell me that communists were evil, etc, etc. Fine, I get that all the time. But the worst bit was all this 'communism is where one person rules everyone' shit was coming from the sort of person who couldn't tell a flap-jack from a fly-swat! It made my blood boil, I tell you. >:-I
  14. maxham
    maxham
    Since the end of 5th grade-6th grade (1st wave) after reading articles about USSR & China, at the time you could say I'm a Stalinist. The 2nd wave then came during my 8th grade, & I'm a Revisionist at the time. But, since my 9th grade, I'm a Titoist, Trotsykist, & an Anarcho-Communist...
  15. marxistcritic
    That's a bummer. I have the same problem at school. Today this girl who's like a queen bee and total ***** was trying to tell me that communists were evil, etc, etc. Fine, I get that all the time. But the worst bit was all this 'communism is where one person rules everyone' shit was coming from the sort of person who couldn't tell a flap-jack from a fly-swat! It made my blood boil, I tell you. >:-I
    Tell her that.
  16. Lyev
    Lyev
    I think as long as I can remember I've always had a penchant for leftist ideologies, like ant-racism, anti-war, equality, human rights, that kinda thing. Earlier this year, in year 10 (14 years old, I'm now 15), we studied Stalin and Soviet Russia in history class. That was my introduction to communism I think, albeit a rather biased one IMO. I've never really considered Stalin a true advocate of communism.

    Then a couple of friends got talking about Lenin and Marx and the evils of capitalism for a while. Although I've never really considered myself a proper Marxist until about a week ago. I'd never felt I had enough knowledge to back up any 'ism'- I think there is a big difference between having a viewpoint and believing in something and then doing some reading and backing that viewpoint up by branding yourself with an 'ism', you know? I guess it's the difference between having a ideology and then thinking: right, how am I going to implement this ideology into society?

    I still have loads more reading to do and theory to look at, but hopefully I'll have grasped most Communist and Anarchist theory soon enough.
  17. AK
    I discovered communism in about year 8 and before then I considered myself to be a Capitalist. My dad (born in the former Yugoslavia) explained to me what great things Tito did for Yugoslavia (despite his nationalistic and imperalistic policies of bringing to peace to just Serbia and expanding Serbia's borders and the fact he borrowed lots of money from Western countries) and I wanted to know more. I did a bit of research on the internet and realised what communism stood for; peace and equality. I also started listening to Anti-Flag (A great Socialist punk rock band) and that helped me form my opinions of communism to and my Trotskyist tendency came after my mum (born in the USSR) told me about the Stalinists' regimes brutal oppression of their people. So I'm now in year 9 in Australia and I love being a communist.
  18. Comrade Gwydion
    Comrade Gwydion
    Unknowling, I was lured into socialism by the Thea Beckman's book Childred of Mother Earth! But this was mostly just that I allways had these views without know what they were, until I was about 11 and started to discover that 'hey, so you mean that Russians aren't neccecarily bad guys?', which gradually evolved untill I was about 13/14 when I first admitted that I actually found socialism a pretty darn good idea. By then, my dad confessed to me that he also always had been a communist, and he gave me a comicbook version of the manifesto. Priceless!
  19. Comrade Gwydion
    Comrade Gwydion
    My friends liked making jokes about it which I didn't mind that much in all honesty. Other people were like "you filthy communist" when I answered a question right in that class just because they couldn't. Doesn't help that most people in my Economics class were complete idiots besides me and my friends.
    My friends were all radical free-marketeers at that time, so we argued a lot. It was all good fun actually, accept for one time, we had this 'private forum' for a group of about 10 friends, and our moderator wanted to stop so we held 'elections', and everything I said was waved away because 'you shouldn't listen to that stupid communist'. To think of it, this was when I allready was 14, so I might have discovered it earlier...
  20. samofshs
    samofshs
    yeah. I started reading the Bible and didn't stop. still havn't. I read it cover to cover to cover. and now through much wisdom (I believe to be granted to me by God), I'm a marxist.
  21. The Hong Se Sun
    The Hong Se Sun
    I started with leftism from the begging of my political awakening (age 10). After I fell for the post 9/11 nationalism and xenophobia I felt betrayed by the democrats then I noticed myself saying bad things about Muslims when I didn't know anything about them (age 15). After that I voted for Kerry because I was scared of bush and I thought that the democrats would get us out of this bullshit war on terrorism (age 18). Then I learned about how the good ol USA had lead countless coup's and paid death squads to kill liberals in South America. Then I learned that the Democrat hero's were murders I read the CIA documents about how John F Kennedy and Bob Kennedy were responsible for millions of innocent latin american lives, the democrats were worshiping these fathers of genocide just because they were shot? That is when I knew I would never vote or support the democrats again as a matter of fact it motivated me to do what I do today. I knew I was socialist when I was 19-20 it it hard to say exactly because it didn't happen over night. I'm glad to see you guys found socialism at an early age I cried a little when I read this because it is good to see some intelligent people are coming from the generation of MTV and FOX news. keep with it young comrades, all I can tell you is: the CP-USA is crap and the democratic socialist of america are a waste of time (both support Obama and the "lesser of 2 evils" theory.
  22. The Red Next Door
    i wasn't really communist even through i called myself one but i was fucking around as a kid, because i like the so called authoritarian ideology. but i really didn't became one until 11 or 12 then i move on from being far left and went to the center left by the time i was in 10th and 11th grade. there still a little radical aspect in my politics.
  23. MilitaryMarxman
    Seventh grade for me too. Dad was and is an activist.
  24. The Red Next Door
    i wasn't really communist even through i called myself one but i was fucking around as a kid, because i like the so called authoritarian ideology. but i really didn't became one until 11 or 12 then i move on from being far left and went to the center left by the time i was in 10th and 11th grade. there still a little radical aspect in my politics.
    I am no longer a social dems, now i just discover a better tendency
  25. RedRise
    RedRise
    I knew I was leftist since about grade five but in grade seven I was still exploring stuff. I only really announced myself as communist in grade eight.
  26. ponyfang
    ponyfang
    An easy answer. All my life have i been divulged into the simple ideals that purse the lips of capitalists. All my life have I been working for freedom. And in this I have wondered. What is it to be free? What is it? Arguably our freedom is defined by our own actions. Therefore comrades. I believe we should always support each other give a little to the less fortunate. You need food. "Have half of my sandwich." Stay true and may our lives be forever governed by our own beliefs and not those of the fascist oppressors. Присоединитесь ко мне товарищи! В нашей борьбе за свободу!
  27. CELMX
    CELMX
    Присоединитесь ко мне товарищи! В нашей борьбе за свободу!
    what does this say?

    anyhoo....i used to be HUGELY bourgeois, with a personal maid, very nice house, and all, so it's very understandable i didn't discover leftism until very late in life. I discovered it a few months ago, during summer as a freshman (high school). At first, i was in love with ze ussr, stalin, etc. but dropped that...i really regret ever being a leninist/stalinist.
    so now, after looking further into the left, i'm an anarcho-syndicalist and loving it!
  28. ponyfang
    ponyfang
    what does this say?

    anyhoo....i used to be HUGELY bourgeois, with a personal maid, very nice house, and all, so it's very understandable i didn't discover leftism until very late in life. I discovered it a few months ago, during summer as a freshman (high school). At first, i was in love with ze ussr, stalin, etc. but dropped that...i really regret ever being a leninist/stalinist.
    so now, after looking further into the left, i'm an anarcho-syndicalist and loving it!
    Join me comrades! In our struggle for freedom! Is what it says.
  29. Belisarius
    Belisarius
    i used to be HUGELY bourgeois, with a personal maid, very nice house, and all, so it's very understandable i didn't discover leftism until very late in life.
    i know the feeling(allthough it doesn't go as far as a personal maid, my parents are actually quite succesfull bourgeois). i discovered communism from a "side-way": philosophy. from my 15th i've been into philosophy. It were eventually Marcuse, Althusser and Marx himself who have brought me into communism.

    i haven't ever called myself a communist to other people, rather just a leftist or a socialist, but i think some people quite suspect it (my parents for example keep seeing me with books with the term "marxism" or something of that kind in the title).
  30. tophat
    tophat
    Could somebody explain how old one is in seventh/eighth grade?
    The English (think Scottish is different) system means that in, say, Year 7 you're 11/12.
    I would have called myself a socialist from the age of about 14 (so, year 9 or so), then read some Marx and stuff from modern Trotskyite parties (SWP...) and began to consider myself a communist. Around about when I turned 16 I began reading Emma Goldman, Chomsky, Kropotkin, etc. and it made me question the hierarchical vanguardist principles on which state communist ideologies rest, and instead embrace anarchist communism. I then read some post-left texts and briefly got into that stuff (while remaining primarily class struggle orientated and an anarchist communist), now less interested in that stuff.
    Now I identify with a range of ideas ranging from left-communism (Gilles Dauve - I recommend), council communism to anarcho-communism and even - in my more romantic moments - post-left, situationist stuff.
    I've been settled like these for a few years now.
    I hope all these younger people here outgrow their authoritarian ideas - normally the introduction to all leftist ideas, unfortunately.
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