For former socialists, there’s one argument I see them use for why they are not socialist anymore.

That argument is that they felt guilty about wanting to push their ideology onto others and so they started believing in parliamentary politics again where every opinion is valuable. My dad who used to be an anarchist as a teenager used this reasoning, as well as one of my teachers.

But this argument doesn’t make sense to me, because it makes politics into something which only revolves around opinions, while we communists and the capitalist class know it’s about power.

I feel like these people never learned much about their ideology when they were socialists. I think I will never stop being a communist, I know too much.

Have you seen this reasoning yourself?

  • King_Simp@lemmygrad.ml
    17·
    8 days ago

    I can’t speak on that reasoning in particular, but I think there’s another, possibly bigger reason. They don’t think dialectically.

    There’s a good video (here:https://youtu.be/LONtgVNaa7A ) that talks about the trial of the Chicago 7, the Aaron Sorkin movie, and the hippies. You’ll notice how the hippy member fo the Chicago 7 who didn’t die (edit: oops, mixed them up. It was Jerry Rubin, the one who did die) in a car accident, ended up becoming a yuppy. Why was this? He supported Castro, was radical, etc. But the key thing is that he didn’t think dialectically. He didn’t see any change from him becoming radical, so he de-radicalized and became an investment banker.

    I think that’s the main reason for a lot of former socialists (who were actually socialists. Some say they were “a full blown lefty” because they liked Obama a bit). They still look at the world through a liberal lense even when trying to achieve a socialist goal