Your political evolution?

[Skyhilist]

In this thread, map out for us how your politics have evolved. For example, if I were a liberal and then a market socialist and then a left communist, I'd put:

Liberal---> market socialist---> left communist

For me personally, here is the path that I've taken:

Apolitical ---> liberal ---> panarchist ---> plain ole Marxist ---> Maoist ---> Anarcho-Maoist (yes, that's actually a thing) ---> social democrat ---> democratic socialist ---> revisionist ---> general libertarian socialist ---> Anarcho-communist

What about you all?

[Deity]

Right Wing (not extreme, but pretty far) --> republicanish --> Ron Paul, woo! --> liberal --> woke up to reality --> anarchist

[Brutus]

Bourgeois socialist-->STALIN!!-->Trotskyist-->Marxist-->brief flirt with anarchism-->marxist again

[Akshay!]

Nothing (Apolitical) -> Capitalist -> Ayn Rand "Libertarian" -> Liberal -> Chomskyist -> Anarchist -> Communist -> Anarcho-Communist -> A mixture of Anarchist, Communist, and Marxist.

[Lobotomy]

(Raised by liberal parents, and was sympathetic but never truly enthusiastic about liberalism) > (Ron Paul libertarianism) () > (communism [most sympathetic to left communism, but still unsure])

[Comrade Dracula]

Apolitical (I was a kid) -> "Communist" who had no idea what communism even meant -> Ultranationalist "communist" -> Tankie -> *Discovers RevLeft* Non-Doctrinaire, meaning I haven't got a bloodied clue -> De-facto Anarcho-Communist -> Leninist -> Trotskyist (briefly) -> Marxist-Leninist/Hoxhaist (briefly) -> Bordigist (still kinda sympathetic) -> Left-Com -> A boring Marxist that I am now.

[Taters]

Republican -> Liberal -> "Communist" -> Ron Paul Libertarian -> Liberal again -> Some kind of Proudhonian -> Anarcho-Communist -> Marxist

[Asmo]

apolitical ----> Democrat-ish ----> Lolbertarian ----> Democratic Socialist ----> Libertarian Socialist ----> Anarcho-Syndicalist ----> Anarcho-Communist ----> Anarcho-Primitivist ----> MRA ----> Anarcho-Communist who loves science and is a staunch Feminist.

I had a period of stupidity there.

[ind_com]

Apolitical -> ML (Mao thought versus Maoism debate was still going on) -> Maoist.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Parents are old-school (New Deal-ish) liberals -> (dissenting/dissatisfied) liberal -> anarchist/anarcho-syndicalist -> unorthodox trot

[Q]

When I became politically active in early 2003 I was a loyal Dutch SP follower.

The SP is a left-wing parliamentarian formation that started out as a Maoist grouplet in the 1960's but by 1991 formally renounced Marxism-Leninism and afterwards shifted rightwards towards coalitionism. Dutch politics consists of a complex parliamentary formation, given that our electoral system is fully proportionally representative where parliament has 150 seats and you only need the votes of 1 seat (0.67% of the tally) to get in. After campaigning for years, the SP got in at the 1994 elections with two seats and initially stood on a platform of principled opposition.

Besides this the party traditionally had a strong activist core in the membership that stands on the streets, wages agitation, held public meetings, organises in neighbourhoods against all kinds of social injustice.

These two factors - principled opposition and an active party - are what attracted me initially to the SP and for a time, from 2003 to 2006 I was pretty active for the party, holding a seat in the local branch leadership, active for ROOD (the youthwing of the party) and was regularly seen at national party events and decisionmaking places.

But at around 2005 I started asking questions, quite possibly due to the party's continuing shift to the right and, not wanting to leave the party just yet, I started looking explicitly for a Marxist current inside the party on the web. This is how I quite quickly stumbled across the Dutch CWI section. I joined after visiting an initial meeting in late 2005.

From that point on I was getting into more and more conflict with the party. Just half a year later, at the summercamp of ROOD, I was taken apart by the chairperson of ROOD (now MP Renske Leijten) and was told in no uncertain terms that I would be expelled from the summercamp if I was caught selling a paper of the CWI. Of course, such a bland attack on democratic freedoms was ignored but I and another comrade made the mistake of not openly attacking this and so we so we sold them a little more covertly.

Of course this was found out, we were portrayed as being "sneaky" to the rest of the summercamp (who had no knowledge of Renske's ban) and were then banned from the site.

This is just to give one example of many of these clashes, but it is perhaps noteworthy because it had quite a few longer lasting repercussions and at least played a role in my expulsion from the party in 2009.

In any case, from 2006 to 2009 I gradually identified myself more and more with the CWI and, therefore, with Trotskyist politics. Here too I took up quite some leading roles: joining the national leadership (such as it was, it was only a small section) in 2008 and in 2009 representing the Dutch section on the International Executive Committee and the European Bureau (a subset of the IEC of the European sections) and being the site admin since 2009.

Since early 2009 I started drifting again however. Two events were of most impact to this: In April there was a short lived CWI webforum I setup with a few other Revlefters. The IMT had something similar, so why not the CWI? However, after a few days we announced it on Facebook and within hours I got mails from the International Secretariat, Belgian chairperson and a Dutch member of the national leadership to put it down immediately. I was told by one of these how "hyenas" were already waiting to "tear apart" the CWI because of this forum.

Another event was actually more of a process that lasted a year and revolved around the question: "What is actually a programme?". The CWI doesn't really have much of a programme in the sense of a document around which the party is built. Instead there is a method that is built on all kinds of documents, ranging from the Communist Manifesto via the first four congresses of the Comintern to the Transitional Programme and much in between. From these result various lists with demands for various situations.

I came to the view that this approach was rather sectarian and elitist as you don't simply walk to the masses and say "hey, please read this small library to see what we're all about!". No, you go to the masses and present them with this or that "wishlist" and hope it radicalises them. To understand the method though takes years of training, a process more commonly referred to as "consolidating". It results in a stratified organisation were the leadership, the most "consolidated" after all, dishes out the line, commonly without a critical view by the membership. In fact, membership is often hostile to dissenting views and dissenters often just end up leaving the organisation.

Around the same time DNZ referred me to the CPGB and since I started reading the Weekly Worker my political views broadened, went deeper, became fuller. Here was not a publication that just dished out "yet another line" but was actually debating, had different views that were allowed to clash with one another. When I started out this was somewhat confusing for me: Who was "right" after all? All the sides made quite good points most of the time!

Since then I deepened my understanding of Marxist theory, history and political practice. I'm still a CWI member, although not a very active one anymore (note: the section too is pretty lifeless) and I recently rejoined the SP, but no longer as an entryist (something I described as a "raiding party" recently), but as someone who seeks to convince the existing workers movement of Marxism, let them embrace their revolutionary self-emancipation through the struggle for communism

It took some time, but I'd say I'm pretty solid in my views now and don't really see another "thought revolution" coming soon.

TL;DR
Democratic socialist -> Trotskyist -> Orthodox Marxist

[bcbm]

nothing -> anarchist -> some sort of communist with fetish for nat lib armed fuckers -> anarchist -> bitter, cynical nihilist

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Apolitical -> Semi-political (fuck Bush! Fuck Israel!) -> Vaguely political (Inheritance is unfair and is nothing more than coin-based dynasty! Why are some people born with millions when I can barely afford a phone? Why the formality in government? Why is it bad for men to wear skirts?) -> Anarchy, under the impression that all 'communists' were the apologetic and disturbing Stalinists I'd come to despise -> Commie forever.

[dēmistĕfī]

I Am that I am.

[Crux]

anarchist -> councilist -> trotskyist
pre 2007 I had a bit of an infantile disorder. Then I joined the Party and all was well. 1

[p0is0n]

Interesting how so many people here were libertarians at some point. Revleft, småborgerlighetens högborg? Heh.

Apolitical (when I was a kid) > communist. And not out of any fancy fucking reasons either, no "ohh i was 14 and the suffering of the 3rd world was upsetting, then I read the communist manifesto and everything became fucking clear as shit to me".

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Apolitical---> Liberal---> Eco-Anarchist---> DeLeonist---> Marxist ---> Non-Demoninational Leftist---> Marxist---> Libertarian Marxist

[Aleksandr Karelin]

Became a leninist at 15-16, soon became an Anarchist, into my twenties now and still an anarchist. Into workplace organising a bit but with my job people are scared of being binned so it is quite hard.

We all had a tiny glass of champers in the staff room when maggie died, that is about as radical as things get when most of us there are precarious workers.

I find a lot of commonality with certain french gun toting not giving a fuck about the guillotine Anarchists but really just focus on talking about simple issues with workmates, friends and family rather than doing what people on here seem to do and shout at anyone disagrees and call for bans.

Oh I also started figuring out at like 18 I probably need to become more sensitive to the T in LGBT and have been reading up on the subject. I also shagged s guy who dresses up as a girl recently and looks like a girl, but with a really big willy WHO IDENTIFIES AS A GAY FEM??. Not sure if that is the same as trans but it was great regardless.
I found that my politics opened up my sexual horizons massively.

[Vanilla]

moderate democrat-ish ---> extremely liberal ---> socialist ---> communist ---> anarchist ---> anarcho-communist

[Jimmie Higgins]

I found that my politics opened up my sexual horizons massively.

Ha-ha, so leninist -> anarchist -> mactivist?

rather than doing what people on here seem to do and shout at anyone disagrees and call for bans.

While many people were clearly enraged in the thread you are alluding to and there was a lot of unproductive polarizing things said all-around (and I can see how you would be frustrated), just to be clear, people were calling for bans based on a preception of Islamophobia (leaving aside if those perceptions were accurate or not), not "disagreement".

Have you seen the threads here? How would anyone not be banned if "disagreement" alone was the reason for banning?