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Explain why you view your tendency as the best/most rational
Note: This thread isn't intended to cause arguments. Only for people to provide rational explanations of why they view their tendency to be the most practical. I'd like to hear people who care to explain why they've chosen their specific tendencies, rather than see a back and forth conversation between two people on why the other person is wrong. If this is unrealistic, I'm sorry.
Given that, here's what would be nice to see in this thread.
As an example, suppose I'm a Trotskyist, I'd just say "Well I view trotskyism as the most rational tendency because a, b, c, which other tendencies I feel don't because a,b,c" or something like that. I understand if there are a few minor issues that come up (e.g. "Well you said other tendencies don't address a,b,c, but really they do because a,b,c which is why I support them0.
Anyways, I think you get the idea. So what makes your tendency the best in your minds, comrades?
Explain why you view your tendency as the best/most rational
Anarchists actually do concrete things to better people's lives.
Trotskyism is a view of Communism in which we attempt to find a solution to the main problem that has faced Communism, from a Revolutionary to a healthy, working class, regime. Leon Trotsky saw the Russian Revolution first hand, and had more experience with Socialized planning from a Revolutionary era to an eras of wartime and political degradation, yet Trotsky is later able to re-examine the entire revolution and in A Revolution that Failed Analyzes these problems. He believes in a better way of coming about Socialism. He studies how Socialism is impossible in one country, and uses his own experience and examples as proof of this, and this is what mainly drew me to the Trotskyist tendency. Although, I believe that becoming too involved in our tendencies can lead us astray. We need to band together to fight Capitalism in Solidarity, if we do not we cannot win this fight. We can have the tendency argument after we get rid of the oppressor, Capitalism.
"We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it." - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
I think tendencies and politics are stupid. Does that count?
You think politics are stupid? why are you on the forum?
I'd think that most "tendencies" would just call themselves Marxist, and that they believe they're the closest to legitimate Marxism. That is unless you're an anarchist which the same principle applies.
For student organizing in california, join this group!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1036
http://socialistorganizer.org/
"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
I don't have a tendency...therefore my views are vastly superior.
So in some small way you do
Because everyone else is a revisionist CIA-backed force of counterrevolution.
'despite being a comedy, there's a lot of truth to this, black people always talking shit behind white peoples back. Blacks don't give a shit about white, why do whites give them so much "nice" attention?'
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EARTH FOR THE EARTHLINGS - BULLETS FOR THE NATIVISTS
Impossibilist because when other tendencies are fighting for ruling-class offers of "concrete things to better peoples lives", impossibilists are primarily fighting for the only long-term panacea, a stateless, classless society of free access.
Lol.
Let me know when you start getting elected into parliament.
Because Left Communism is the hippest tendency within the left, or maybe least nerdy would be a better way of putting it.
On the real tho, I like Left Communism for it's critiques of substitutionism, democratism, it's unwavering internationalism, and its unwillingness to apologize for certain incarnations of bourgeois rule because they had red flags.
so do some religious people, conservatives, liberals, maoists, swp-ers; the list is endless. and what? i don't see how "do[ing] concrete things to better people's lives" under capitalism is anything other than reformism (especially in the manner you express it).
Until now, the left has only managed capital in various ways; the point, however, is to destroy it.
My tendency is superior because a great man with beautiful facial hair said it is.
I'm an anarchist because I oppose social hierarchies and social inequalities. Anarchism is an ideology that constantly seeks to abolish these and adapts accordingly to other social struggles arising.
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”
-James Baldwin
"We change ideas like neckties."
- E.M. Cioran
A minor correction
Dear International Solidarity: Please forgive this small quibble, but Trotsky's book explaining the Soviet Union is called The Revolution Betrayed. It was published in 1937.
The expression, "A Revolution that Failed," sounds an awful lot like the title of a famous anti-Communist screed, "The God That Failed" (1949), in which, if memory serves, a bunch of renegades from Stalinism renounced their previous political views.
* * *
To respond to the subject of this thread, I work with a Trotskyist tendency that is active in Latin America and has sections in Europe also. I visited comrades of that tendency in Latin America twice, and those people seem like the real deal to me. (I got to address a hall full of Latin American workers, which made me as happy as a Rottweiler with a frisbee.) The group is in sync with workers' occupations and recovery of enterprises abandoned by the bosses; they are also in favor of workers' self-management, in the sense that the workers should be the ones who make the decisions about the enterprise where they work, all of which sounds great to me.
Last edited by sixdollarchampagne; 12th February 2013 at 00:02.
If we really want to transform life, we must learn to look at it through the eyes of women. – Trotsky, 1923
The ballot box is the coffin of class consciousness. – Alan Dawley
Proud member of the 47% since 2010 – Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!
Explain why you view your tendency as the best/most rational
Isn't that the point of revolution? Not talking at conferences and holding state sanctioned political events?
Lol don't mean to flame, but left communists are to communists, what libertarians are to capitalists.
"That's not real capitalism." w/ ridiculous and impossible end goals that they consider real capitalism.
"That wasn't real socialism." w/ unworkable and unorganized means to create real socialism because everything else is state capitalism.
I don't like confining myself to a tendency. If the situation arises where the working class is class conscious and militant, I wouldn't insist on a vanguard. But in a situation where education is necessary to guide the revolution in the right direction to keep the oppressors from being replaced by more oppressors, I am in full support of a vanguard party. I believe that the affirmation of "socialism in one country" is not a viable way of spreading socialism. I do agree with parts of Trotsky's Permanent Revolution theory, but I think that quality of life of the workers and peasants in areas liberated by the DotP, should be a priority, rather than just something kicked to the side as they "hold the fort" and fight in nation after nation to overthow the state with the comrades of that struggling nation.
I support National Liberation struggle like Vietnam from French colonialism. I support guerilla warfare to overthrow the bourgeoisie and make the quality of life of the people better, whilst holding the fort against the restoration of capitalism, and spreading socialism. Rip apart my views limb from limb. I won't mind, and might learn something seeing another perspective.
that's really an entirely false dichotomy, though.
and the point of revolution is the abolition of the state and capital.
Until now, the left has only managed capital in various ways; the point, however, is to destroy it.
I consider myself a libertarian socialist so i can borrow from and embrace the best of both anarchism and Marxism in order to establish a direct,democratic society in which we all benefit.
"You can have all my shine I'll give you the lighttt"
