People claim that i cannot be communist because my family is wealthy. This argument is just stupid in many ways, its as if you told a white person he cannot be against racism because he is part of a more privileged group. The people argumenting this pile of diarrhea which they interpret as a “gotcha” moment also seem to forget that a lot of revolutionaries were from wealthy families like Friedrich Engels, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Marx etc. Being communist has nothing to do with your class-background but your solidarity and the willingness to commit yourself to the liberation of the working class. Having petit-bourgeois, or even bourgeois parents does not make one hypocrit, you are a hypocrit the moment you exploit workers yourself. I myself met a lot of fake-intellectuals who made this argument which made me, as a baby leftist at that time, feel really insecure about the ideas i hold but at the end no true communist cares about wealth, power, luxury or anything as such. If somebody made me the offer that if i had to live the rest in my life in a small, cold, concrede apartment with no kithcen, bedroom or toilet in return all the people would be supplied with food, clothing and shelter…i wouldnt take a second to aggree.
Always remember Zhou Enlai quote on Khrushchev when he questioned him on coming from a priviledged family while he claimed to come from peasantry.
“True but we share a similarity. Each of us is a class traitor”.
Zhou Enlai go on hexbear
Capitalism was built with the ashes of feudalism, socialism is being built with the ashes of capitalism. All of us in the imperial core live in a capitalist society; everyone is tainted with it in some way. It’s not as though the first capitalist, when he was doing the first enclosure, looked at the land and was like “wait a minute, I’m a hypocrite since I’m using feudalism to destroy feudalism.” He didn’t care. “We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us” has proven to be a pretty effective strategy.
When the chips are down, people normally fight for their self-interest.
The bourgeoisie fight for bourgeois interests.
Proletarians fight for labour interests.
Landlords aren’t going to willingly give up their free income and comfort in exchange for a life of labour. (Maybe 1% of them will.) They might say they will from the comfort of their armchair, but I’m talking when your life, your future are on the line.
My grandmother in Eastern Europe came from a wealthy aristocratic family but was a communist and gave up willingly all the lands and property.
45 years later corrupt anti-communist far right nationalists took power, canceled socialism and just divided it all up between themselves and their cronies…
They use this argument to dismiss anything you say without thinking about it.
I’m quite poor, so I get the other end of this “You’re just a communist because you want to leech off of other’s hard work.”
They’re just empty thought-terminating cliches, it doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re a communist, people will say stupid shit to you in order to dismiss communism without ever thinking about it.
Often the same people who say this are the same people who think they can’t talk about racism because they’re white. Nothing is ever a them problem. Everything is a you problem. They don’t like it when other privileged people stand with the oppressed. It makes them look bad and the cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable.
I’ve heard it before and I’ll repeat it here: this is related to the reason why liberals hate communists so much; our very existence forcibly reminds them that their empty idealist rhetoric doesn’t fill bellies, build homes, or prevent hate crimes.
Edit: I knew I’d read it recently, it was Criticalresist8, who put it like this:
They can’t reconcile the fact that they are not actually the most progressive and tolerant person in the room.
Unless you’re so performatively poor that you lack the means to meaningfully threaten capitalism whatsoever the liberals will brand you as a hypocrite.
And if you are that poor they’ll just giggle and clink wine glasses as your home is crushed by tanks so billionaires can make more magic cars with the minerals under your home.
That’s like saying you can’t be capitalist if you’re poor.
you can’t be both capitalist (bourgeois) and poor, but you can be liberal (pro-capitalism) and poor
Removed by mod
I have seen quite a few American Maoists and ultras practically worship poverty, acting like the only way a socialist nation can be “truly” socialist is if everyone is equally poor, which is just nonsense. No one should be rich due to the exploitation of others, but that doesn’t mean people can’t be well off.
The ‘cambodian farmer’ approach.
What good intentions but a focus on aesthetics and lack of theory get you
I’d say it’s more an obsession with theory above all, for Maoists at least. That “reading theory” is a badge of honor, rather than understanding theory. Every conversation I’ve had with a Maoist has had them break out some obscure socialist thinker, some of whom I’ve never heard of, and uses that as a “gotcha” because they are “more well read” therefore anything I say is invalid.
Ironically Mao himself talked about this sort of thing in Oppose Book Worship, but they are big on memorizing theory to use cherry picked examples in arguments, not so much on actually understanding theory and using it to improve their cause.
I once got told that I was a hypocrite for being a communist while simultaneously using a username in english, which, I quote, “was the language of the bourgeoisie”.
I thought I had seen things hit rock bottom until I got told I could not be a communist and use money at the same time.
If you are rich and a communist then you have a duty to donate to leftist movements. Don’t just be a rich guy who reads leftist books to pass the time. Your funding might make a huge difference in the long run. Imagine if Engels never financed Marx.
If you don’t know where to start, then I suggest you help with leftist independent media. Breakthrough News do a lot of good work.
True, im super rich and give at least 15% of my income per month to the DSA
They’re just socdems and won’t stop US imperialism. Imo, it’s better to donate to independent journalists like BN, Brian Berlectic, Grayzone and similar ones, than socdem organizations.
Anyone can be a communist, all it takes is your want to destroy capitalism and the inequality and oppression it brings, coming from rich or poor means nothing, as you said many famous marxists, including marx himself, were materially bourgeois, but they didnt oppress the proletariat and were genuine revolutionaries who actually wanted to end the oppression of the proletariat, these people were class traitors to the bourgeoisie and aided the proletariat against their class interests, calling these people anything but socialist or communist is plainly absurd to be honest.
And this is coming from someone who regularly deals with food issues.
all it takes is your want to destroy capitalism
Someone’s internal desires are irrelevant here. Someone who doesn’t actually practice theory is apolitical.
marx himself, [was] materially bourgeois, but they didn’t oppress the proletariat
You mean Engels. Marx was a journalist/writer. Engels owned a factory and did exploit the proletariat.
But all this is missing the point. We live under capitalism. Subjecting yourself/family to extreme poverty is not going to bring about the revolution, and will prevent you from various methods of supporting it.
When someone pulled the “Engels was a factory owner” card on me, I did some minimal searching and found that it was his father who owned the factory, with him getting appointed to a menial desk job. But even if that’s not true (and the reason I didn’t search any further) is that it doesn’t really matter, even if he was a hypocrite the analyses he did with Marx and the actions they propose seem valid.
Regardless of whether Engels owned the factory, @alcoholicorn@hexbear.net’s point that action, not beliefs, is what makes someone a communist still stands.
Anyone can be a communist, all it takes is your want to destroy capitalism and the inequality and oppression it brings
And read theory.
