It’s one of those words that I’ve learned to disassociate from as I’ve abandoned liberalism and all “ultra”, uncritical or otherwise reactionary politics. I use the term Marxist-Leninist and I don’t see how any terms like “leftist” or “right-wing” apply to it, since those words are incredibly dogmatic and pigeonholing. One chooses those labels and adopts all that those labels stand for without much thought. It makes it easy to “shut the brain off” and strictly delegate all choice and action to what rules are detailed under any of these politics.
The foundations of Leninism take concern with capitalism in its imperialist, global form, and, coupled with the dialectical materialist grounding of Marxism, tackles it and gives people the tools necessary to gain an understanding of their realities under its hegemony and rule, so that they learn to think and resolve challenges in overthrowing its many fetters and contradictions.
Ultras love disparaging all existing socialist experiments almost as much as the imperialists and their reactionaries instead of understanding that they share a great, common enemy. They’re more concerned with whether a country is following Marxism as a doctrine or “holy scripture” to a tee; if they’re not, they throw their hands up and say “they’re not worth it, they’re revisionists”. They’re perfectly content abandoning these countries and their people in their struggle against the forces of imperialism and all of the terrors that we know it’s capable of.
They don’t “think” in a dialectically materialist way, and this has allowed them to be deposed and stuck in their tracks time and time again by agents working on behalf of the bourgeois order. They demonstrate that they’re not willing to struggle against, at the very least, the contradictions within their very own organizations and cadres or address issues in a good faith, selfless manner. They’re not willing to learn or advance beyond their book reading, which is a critical error. For fear of “betraying” the label of “leftism” and all of the static tenets of whatever flavor of leftism they ascribe to, they abandon reason, prudence, selflessness, science, and the international struggle, at large.
When one becomes more familiar with the dialectical materialist process of scrutinizing, analyzing, understanding the world and its phenomena, these terms like “leftism” become nothing more than set backs and impediments to the necessary development of the individual and their class into revolutionaries capable of challenging the bourgeois order, its many systems and proponents, and destroying them to make way for the dictatorship of the proletarian.
In short, leftism has such rigid, dogmatic “rules”. It focuses more on preserving the label and membership in these factions that it serves as nothing more than a set back for people in developing the dialectical materialist Marxist worldview necessary to face struggles, adapt to challenges, learn from losses, and ultimately, achieve wins.
I disagree, mate. Talk to folks in real life and you’ll see that most folks don’t understand politics beyond their real-world experience and what they merely hear from word-of-mouth. Specifically, I mean working class folks who are too caught up trying to make ends meet. There are a lot of folks with humanity and decency, so don’t use the most loud and vocal liberals, fascists, and imperial apologists online as an accurate accounting of a significant portion of folks out there.
Remember that the bourgeois propaganda machine and its media apparatus are heavily curated to foster a specific worldview among the masses and that all content is filtered of any real, dissenting views or insights into the outside world.
The fact of the matter is that these liberals and conservatives overwhelmingly comprise the majority of thosel who live among us in the imperial core. Building socialism is a struggle, and reaching folks who are receptive to learning about class matters and the reason their material reality is as it is isn’t a walk in the park, especially because of the generations-worth of corporate propaganda against socialism and communism. We can’t afford to shut up and leave folks out to dry living in blindness to the world while the bourgeoisie and their opportunist forces continue to prey upon them at every turn. Many of us were once like them, many of us fell for the very lies that these people have no choice but to believe simply because they have not been met with the opportunity to learn a different path.
It’s not up to us to give up on folks, especially if that liberal or conservative, unknowingly to us, who is receptive to Marxism exists out there. We must reach these folks because we need them. They need us, too, and posterity needs us to struggle and work together towards a better world, because we’ve all lived under cruelty, terror, and exploitation for generations and these all need to desperately come to an end.