(this is a sarcastic post meant to highlight the absurdity of some of the “greater good” rhetoric we’ve been hearing, especially around leaving vulnerable populations like disabled people behind in case of revolution, basically accelerationism)
(this is a sarcastic post meant to highlight the absurdity of some of the “greater good” rhetoric we’ve been hearing, especially around leaving vulnerable populations like disabled people behind in case of revolution, basically accelerationism)
Whereas if I just say, “Yeah come join me, I’m a socialist” the right will just call me a communist anyway. I’d rather own it and wear it with pride than allow it to be used as a boogeyman. The way I see it, reclaiming the term means I have a better chance to define it, if the right says, “Communists believe this,” I can say, “I’m a communist and none of us believe that shit, this is what we’re actually about.” Whereas if I let it be a boogeyman then I’m stuck giving them ground and punching left, “I’m a leftist, but I’m not like those dirty commies.” They’re still gonna hate my fucking guts for being a leftist and in the process I’ve alienated potential allies and given in to their rhetoric.
It’s no different from reclaiming other insults, except it wasn’t originally an insult and we shouldn’t allow it to be.
Please define them and explain how they’re different, because again, I genuinely don’t know how you’re using them. The way they’re commonly used varies tremendously and generally leaves a lot of ambiguity, I’m guessing the difference is that communism has a harsher vibe or something.
Socialism as a system is a transitionary state that aims to establish communism, that is, a classless, moneyless, stateless society. A socialist is someone who aims to establish communism through such a transitionary state. I guess you could distinguish socialists from anarcho-communists, who seek to go straight to communism without a transitionary period. There is also a distinction between Marxists and Social Democrats, but Social Democrats, at least originally (Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, etc), still claimed that their end goal was communism, and that they could achieve that through reforming existing systems. And on the other side of that, the USSR was called the USSR and not the USCR, because it did not claim to have achieved communism but rather to be a transitionary state towards that eventual goal.