this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
56 points (93.8% liked)

Comradeship // Freechat

2168 readers
70 users here now

Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.

A community for comrades to chat and talk about whatever doesn't fit other communities

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
felipeforte@lemmygrad.ml
56
On joining a non-ML marxist party as a ML (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by DankZedong@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So as some of you might know, I'm a member of a marxist party, maybe one of the biggest of Western Europe currently.

The party is not ML. It takes part in electoral politics, though its main focus is building class consciousness at the work places and in the local communities. Getting into parliament is beneficial because 1) money and 2) raising awareness.

The party gets criticized by groups on the margin. They sometimes specifically criticize the MLs in our party for joining, because we are not part of what Lenin described as a Vanguard Party. I guess they are not entirely wrong, I'm not going to call my party ML even though there is (increasing) room for ML sentiment.

My problem is, I don't really know what to do with these critics. Leaving the current party, with tens of thousands of active members and actual political influence, for a 'true ML party' with several dozen people who struggle to organize a book club, does not sound like the way to go. Stop calling myself a ML? That would seem weird as well.

How do you guys look at this?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ThereRisesARedStar@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My view on being part of a dsa chapter full of actual socialists is that the people who have comfy professional jobs are not going to form the vanguard but they can still be useful if they have the right politics. We can do good work together in an accelerationist sense- ei making conditions less precarious and connecting organizing around labor, tenants, and municipal issues to a wider context of capitalism.

I can't do that with a ML party that struggles to have a book club.