How long have you called yourself a communist?

I think there’s an initial phase where you accept the label and you get all excited for the revolution.

Then the reality sinks in and you realise that being ready for the revolution doesn’t mean landing on an island or marching thousands of angry workers to parliament.

It’s a bit draining when you learn that most of the task will be extremely boring day job-type tasks. Arranging meetings. Confirming minutes. Standing in the cold at the time and place you told everyone you’d have a protest. Calling/messaging everyone on your list. Booking coaches. 😴 Sounds like a job but one you don’t get paid for and might never see much fruit from.

Maybe you’re somewhere at the start of that second phase? Not ‘less communist’ but more realistic about what it will take to make the whole world communist (or just your country/city/union to start with). It’s kinda demoralising but things get easier and more hopeful again.

You’ve seen the light now. Keep pushing through.

i think that probably your issue is that you’re being “convinced” by liberals or media that the things you thought as communism “were capitalism all along, huh?” but that’s the thing with propaganda: make you doubt about what you’ve learned and move you to think “you know, maybe you’re being too extreme and need a cup of chill…capitalism is good and you have all these freedoms and sheeit. did you considered that maybe we’re right about gommunism being evil? why do you think we’re badmouthing about it all this time? we’re doing it for your good”

I don’t really feel that myself personally. Like some have said, probably the initial revolutionary vibe is wearing off? everyday when i go to work, read the news, or just exist in society, i become more communist and resolved everyday. perhaps you need to do more study and self-reflection.

every day I become more Maoist

I feel more communist by the day, even though i am objectively less ultra than i was years ago. I guess ultras would consider me revisionist.

I’m not sure if I’d say I’m less communist but I do sometimes feel uninspired to do something. Which I guess is normal. I have a busy but steady and decent paying job. I am able bodied. I have a good group of friends, good family relations, a good relationship. I have fun hobbies I can do. I am moderately well liked by most people I meet. In general, my life can be pretty good with only a few challenges at times.

Basically, at my current situation, I live in a system that is designed for me to profit off. I’m not getting the largest piece of the cake but I’m not on the bottom of the societal ladder either.

What this causes is that for me, the path of the least resistance in life, is to accept the status quo and to live life according to said status quo. It might give me a slight discomfort from time to time but I will probably have a decent life. I think it is natural, from an instinctal point of view, to follow a path that gives you little to no stress in which you don’t have to fight that hard. After all, would I rather stand on a cold market talking to half interested people about communism or would I be doing something I actually enjoy? I think many comrades with me, if they had to be honest, would choose the latter.

However, I have also become aware of the unequality of our system. I am aware how I am in a privileged position purely because I was spawned in a certain part of the world, with a certain gender and a certain skin color. And because I think that is bullshit, I want to do something about that.

Communist organising is difficult. It takes a lot of time and effort and you very rarely get great results in our current societies. This causes you to have an ideology which you cannot always bring into practice as our current society is the direct opposite of said ideology. I think this can cause some dissonance to occur in your brain, which at times can be hard to overcome.

It’s okay to take some time once in a while to reflect on where you stand. It’s a privilege a lot of people, especially in the western left, have. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it. Despite my personal challenges to stay organised or to find motivation to go out for the umpteenth time without a guaranteed result, I still believe communism is the way forward for humanity and I try my best not to lose hope, however difficult that can be.

I think doubting how communist you are is a good sign if you are living in a western nation. The more anti-imperialist theory I read the more I see that I am part of the problem. I’m a beneficiary of imperialism and I’m not willing to risk my freedom to oppose the status quo which means I am kind of a hypocrite.

I do a little agitation but I can’t really throw my life into anything to further communism and that makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. I can try to justify things by saying the chances of a revolution where I am are nil at the moment or that most orgs are riddled with revisionaries and feds so they are a waste of effort but that’s just excuses.

Imposter syndrome is a difficult feeling but but I’d rather continue to feel like a shitty communist than to try to pretend liberalism is anything but crypto-fascism.

I think we might be conflating being a communist and being a 20th century Marxist or anarchist. at a very basic conceptual level being a communist just means to want to bring a classless society into existence, the how, where the why is all the ism we attach to it our, theoretical, (theoria) The practical (praxis) and the Creative (poiesis) these 3 concepts are the basis of our sect forms we adopt these our are Maoisms, our Marxism Leninist variety anarchism of all flavors.

Now that we got some clarification out of the way we can begin to answer this question. “is it normal to feel like your slowly becoming less of our classical 20th century leftism?”

No not all not even a little bit the left is in a process of reformation its clear to people who have a long view of the lefts history of its self. That the 20th century for better or worst we lost a battle in a war with many battles to come. Right now a lot of people want something to hold on too they want a way out, they want hope really we must also rember that marx said the following…

“And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present …” Brumaire

Marx is talking about revolutionary taking up banners of the past to creature the future. all politics is a larp to put it kinda crudely we are always going to the past to search of the gold laden gravel the paths uncharted to create a future. Paraphrased from -Ernst Bloch principle of hope. (if you don’t know who Ernst Bloch he was a Marxist who chose to live in east Germany after the war and then got canceled by the soviets for being too allegedly being idealist they arrest a bunch of his students and blocked him from publishing and removed him from his chair at the collage he worked at then he moved to west Germany and got called too materialist and was looked down upon as a sort of outsider. Its a wild story and its kinda sad.)

the second problem is hope blinds one self to the reality that surrounds our self. its self limiting we have to sit down take note were we really are. This is a very uncomfortable conversation to have with ones self, their comrades. I think what your feeling is the sobering reality that the left isn’t in a good place at the moment which objectively it’s not. we are confined to online spaces and our organizations are tied to boug institutions, we haven’t built up any pre political organizations to even engage workers outside of social media. In others words I cant in a mid sized city go to a leftist organized hobby space, soccer club, skill sharing center where I can learn fun skills or serious skills. Lastly I cant even get a drink with people of a similar political persuasion outside of places leftists are politically captured I.E democratic controlled states like New york and California.

a lot of folks think that building the party is the same as doing pre poltical work and its not at all entirely, you want women in orgs? offer childcare.(its a major factor in why women can’t spend time doing political work, take care of their obligations, likely they will return the favor.) you want to have a movent that matters you have to build the infrastructure. You want a fucking movement that can seize on the revolutionary moment all of this is non negotiable, what do you think dual power means? in today day and age it means building durable non CASCADE FAILURE PRONE structures that fail if one part fails, it means building party’s were everyone is prepared to be a leader, it also means that we listen to each other and allow our selves to have factions other wise it turns every disagreement into a power-struggle. (if your arguing for capitalist restoration it don’t count you shouldn’t be in the party your not on the left at this point for me we have to draw a line somewhere sorry not sorry)

you can’t seize on the revolutionary moment without building the revolutionary party… everyone always stops at the part, you cant build the revolutionary party with out the pre-political work that means not lecturing working people for getting access to this infrastructure but offering them access to the meeting with the knowledge… these communists help me get cheap childcare and access to legal, food, after school sports, hobby skills, professional services I could not get otherwise, maybe I should see what these communist party meeting are all about they talk about they seem very moved by this communism thing they talk about sometimes at the building they give me these services with and they said their will be free food too. I hope I’m getting my message across here… we aren’t doing charity we are building something where workers can come to understand their class interests and their class power to change their conditions without depending on the fucking capitalist state, the idea is to get rid of it the disagreements we may have amongst our selves between anarchists and Marxists is largely how long it will be before that happens and how it happens. we have to build that new way of being today right now, it has to be lived, it has to be materially touchable.

cough anyways sorry rant over

So yeah maby this is why you may not feeling like a communist or slowly not becoming one. its hard to feel apart of a movement you cant touch see or hear in real meat space outside of online spaces which have a place but are no substitution for what I talked about above. we didn’t become communists because we where likely to win, or because the road to changing the world would be easy and automatic. Anyone telling anyone that is fool and a damned liar. Nothing is free in this world, everything costs something, your time, your money, your life. The decisive moment will ultimately boil down to 1 simple question how fucking bad do you want it, and do you want it more then the people opposing you?

I am the opposite. I’m becoming more and more dedicated. i’m fighting FUD online, reading a ton of theory, consuming lots of Leftist content, joined an org, went to a meeting finally. I’m all in. No doubts in my mind at all.

It can be frustrating since it seems like an impossible battle, but I know I’m right. Empirically socialism is a better system. Capitalism has failed in all non-imperial-core countries, and barely functions in the imperial core ones.

Personally, I frequently doubt if I truly am understanding Marxism correctly, so I go into research spirals to see if I have a genuine understanding. Sometimes someone who obviously hasn’t read Marx, Engels, Lenin etc will come and accuse me of not understanding Marxism which can easily be countered, but frequently on the flip side I still harbor self-doubt.

I wouldn’t say I become less radical, but less confident, which pushes me into further reading and study.

All the time. I’m only barely picking up reading theory again and have done only a microscopic amount of organizing since becoming radicalized. I like to tell myself I don’t have the spoons, but I fear in reality that it’s because I’m unwilling to leave my suburban home to go to the city where the organizing is done and don’t want to alienate friends and family with moderate to heavy suburban kkkrakkker burger brainworms.

Are there any better explanations than materialist dialectical views on history and politics?

Communism is a science based on certain views of history, economics and other fields. It’s not a religious faith or personal opinions. Those are based on nothing and can be changed by anything.

If your material conditions aren’t basically forcing you to always try and find a way out (when you’ve already gained the beginnings of communist consciousness), you might just be struggling with the fact that your own life isn’t really that bad, and slipping into old habits.

Keep reading Marxist theory and developing your class consciousness and killing the little bourgeois-self in your head trying to commandeer your brain.

I think it’s normal to have doubts. I feel the need not to think about it too much. I also need to remind myself it’s not a perfect system.

Have you read combat liberalism