In the vague interests of left unity, I thought maybe it would be interesting to talk about people who have developed or reconfigured the kind of leftism they endorse! Slight effort post.

Personally, when I was around 13-14 I was obsessed with the Soviet Union because of aesthetics and being a contrarian, which led to me calling myself a communist and trying to convince the kids around me to call themselves communist too, which they would. I tried and failed to read and understand Marx, but the gist I got was fundamental.

Around high school the only other evidently politically conscious person around me was a vegan straight edge crustpunk who was deeply anarchist so we were naturally pals, I started reading Chomsky and endorsing Bakunin-esque collectivist anarchism which persisted for a good 4-5 years where I accepted ‘anti-authoritarian’ critiques of non-West nations. Even when I was explicitly calling myself an anarchist and spent my time with anarchist direction action groups, I was working my way through Hegel and Capital and people would figure me a Marxist (I guess regularly talking about Marx and Lenin and Althusser in connection with anarchism does that) but I never felt in any sense out of place. I’m involved right now in trying to restart my cities chapter of the national Marxist-Leninist party club, but I still believe there are fundamental anarchist critiques and insights that are propulsive for leftists. If a revolution occurred with

I’m never going to refuse to work with an anarcho-communist or Maoist or democratic socialist that’s opposing capitalism, and if you spend your time fighting other leftist tendencies, recalibrate and consider where our energies are best directed and who the enemy is. Engage with your comrades who have rival visions for the future, and celebrate complementary approaches to politics. Maybe you spend a lot of time trying to configure a vanguard party and increase visibility for working class issues - that an anarchist is devoting their time to advocating for the unhoused isn’t a contradiction in vision, it’s amazing that under our banner we can have these drives to oppose capitalism materially and meaningfully. The brothers and sisters and enbies working with Food Not Bombs go hand in hand with comrades building up unionization efforts. The fight against capital has a thousand fronts, and that means a thousand thousand different weapons will be brought to bear on dismantling it.

Reach across the aisle if you haven’t or haven’t in a long time, now is the time to work on shedding our prejudices and overwhelming certainty, and share if you’ve moved through groups or connect with anarchists despite being a communist, vice versa. Stories of solidarity are my chicken soup for the proletarian soul.

:kropotkin-shining: :left-unity-2: :lenin-shining: