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zombie_berkman wrote

i call myself a syndicalist because its like 99% the same thing and plus i like the idea of radial unions

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Dirtbagleftist wrote

Same here. I find people are a little more receptive to socialist ideas when you don't explicitly label them as such.

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Naokotani wrote

I'm not going to call myself a human becase it has been forever tainted by the countless authoritarian and totalitarian state-capitalist states that have labelled themselves as human.

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ziq wrote

You're not going to be faced with a situation where you need to defend being a human though because everyone you talk to is also a human. If you say you're a communist to someone, they immediately assume you're a USSR / China fetishist.

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Naokotani wrote

Communism is a good. It is where humans need to be, and I don't really want to stop using it because imperialists have tried to destroy its meaning, or because reactionaries are going to cry about me using the term.

The only time I "defend" the USSR and China is when I elevate them to the same level as the US or other western countires when people try to defend western democracies. In my view, the diffrence between the US and USSR is that the US had a few hundred years head start to access massive slave labour, and an entire continent to exploit because of genocide. The other difference is that the USSR lost the cold war and the US won.

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ziq wrote

Communism is knee deep in workerism, industrialism and exploitation of the Earth. It's not limited to tankies - all communism sees humans and other animals in terms of their value to production, with the entire society revolving around production.

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jlwob wrote

I try to avoid isms and ists. We are so far away from needing to differentiate between the specifics of leftist theory. Also - I find that liberals agree with me and can be convinced by arguments much more easily if they don't actually know I have anarcho-syndicalist leanings.

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Dirtbagleftist wrote

I don't imagine there are very many liberals who have even heard of syndicalism. Heck i've been left leaning for years and it's only fairly recently that I began to understand the various tendencies of Socialism and Communism.

'Anarcho' anything though, yeah I have to agree. Not even communism is as tainted as Anarchism. Most people don't even realize it's a legitimate ideology.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Clarify - you're talking about what people should call themselves and not what they should be?

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BlackFlagged OP wrote

Ancoms should abandon the word communist while maintaining their ideology.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ziq wrote (edited )

The word 'libertarian' has been tainted thanks to US reactionaries. It's also not entirely the same thing as anarchism because not all libsocs are anti-state.

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DissidentRage wrote

I'd rather take it back. We have to start drawing a line in the sand on these things because they're very good at co-opting terms. If we let them keep muddying the waters there won't be any clarity left. The fact that "labor" and "union" were dirty, filthy words just a decade ago and are starting to be treated as valid concepts gives me hope that we can undo some of their linguistic damage.

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ziq wrote

I think anarchism is a far more useful descriptor than 'liberty + arian'. Liberty can mean anything to anyone. Anarchy is very specifically anti-hierarchy.

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DissidentRage wrote

Perhaps, but it also implies the source of inspiration. I draw more inspiration from Marx than Kropotkin, and garden variety communists have set an unfortunate precedent of authoritarianism, which is where we differ from them. There's not really another established descriptor here* unless we just referred to ourselves as Luxemburgists, which I personally don't really consider the best solution because her influence wasn't given the opportunity to mature thanks to the socdems.

*Perhaps there is a better descriptor but I'm not as well-versed as other leftists because I wasn't exposed to leftist thought at all up until a few years ago, and since then I've been precluded from studying it as thoroughly as others because of life stuff.

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ziq wrote

What's wrong with 'anarchism'? Anarchists haven't put people in gulags, caused famines, invaded other lands, created nuclear wastelands, forced millions to work in factories or created ultra capitalist dictators.

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DissidentRage wrote

Oh, at what point did I actually argue that I had an active problem with anarchism, or try to justify atrocities committed by state capitalists? Being sectarian this early in the game serves nobody but the bourgeoisie.

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ziq wrote

I'm talking about the word 'anarchism' vs 'libertarian' and demonstrating that it's an uncorrupted word.

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