Tbh I feel like that’s an unfair generalization. Amongst the sea of opportunists there are real communists such as myself who show up to combat liberalism and connect with other revolutionaries. I see it as a platform to promote theory, do mutual aid, and network with people. We need to be available to answer questions when reformism inevitably leaves them disillusioned.
lol I’m a Hoxhaist so I agree with that sentiment. This post is more so about Marxist solidarity against liberal slander specifically. “Tankie this” “authoritarian that” “book club, etc.”. Theoretically based criticisms are always welcome, don’t get me wrong.
The sections on working conditions were sobering, I had many feelings. They read to me almost like a warning. In Ch.10 Marx quoted Horace when speaking to the then American readers “It is of you that the story is told”. At the time it was a direct truth, now it is a harbinger. There ought to be a black book of capitalism. Imperialism only imports the suffering of yesteryear for NA-Europe where the trauma is well contained in the commodities to fit the bill for the old reaper of scarcity.
Capitalism developed into imperialism in about 1900 according to Lenin. Imperialism was defined interestingly not just as a type of economic model a country can have but as an age, an era. This is why even the first socialist camp didn’t have national elections because under the age of imperialism itself democracy which in its beauty is one person one vote is subverted by capital into becoming one unit money one vote. Democratic centralism / internal party democracy was seen as a way to save democracy from bourgeois subversion actually. As communists we love democracy in its fullest form in principle but where we have limited its scope was out of a concession to reality.
“So you see I was banging a local bourgeoisie at church”