Every Commie noob thinks that they’re the new Lenin.
Every red, whos been red for a year or so, thinks that they are the true disciple of Marx, and that they have the ideological “Holy Grail” of insight that all of the other communists in the movement, who have been red for decades, are missing.
It seems to me that very few people come to communism to embrace it; they come to communism hoping to change it. I should know because sadly, I was once among their ranks.
I too, in the beginning, thought that I had a pretty good handle on things. Among my experienced comrades, I thought that I should be the one calling the shots. Rather than embracing the decades of experience of my organization, I questioned every action and every policy, spouting long tirades of social-democratic, Utopian socialist rubbish.
It is surreal now, to look back at where I came from ideologically, as I have gone through radical ideological changes in only a short time. I went from calling Lenin a revisionist, to becoming a student of his teachings. I went from calling Stalin a “totalitarian dictator” to defending him vigorously as a champion of socialism. I was once an overzealous supporter of parliamentary democracy, perplexed and annoyed at my comrades lack of effort when participating in elections ; It took me years to finally understand that parliamentary democracy is a sham, and is no way to build a socialist revolution.
I used to think that Mao was a great Marxist-Leninist, and couldn’t understand why all of my Comrades abandoned Mao Tse Tung thought back in the sixties; now I’ve read Hoxha, and I understand the ideological flaws of Maoism, including the “theory of three worlds” and the “two line struggle within the party”.
I even wrote a short book , pompously titled the “Manifesto of the 21st Century proletariat”. In this tome, I layed down my own naive thoughts on every element of a hypothetical socialist society, my capitalist influenced criticisms of of various past communist personalities, my Utopian socialist revisionism, and other useless bile that I thought was both insightful and practical. Now, since I have re-read it, I find myself grimacing with disgust that the words coming off of the page are my own. I feel sickened that these words, which once represented my thoughts and ideological outlook, are so similar to the naive communist novices that I previously mentioned. I have considered destroying the book, but I have opted to keep it, if only for a teaching guide to warn other new communists, and to remind myself of where I came from ideologically, and how I have progressed.
In hindsight, my communist development could have been so much more painless if I had taken into account the four decades of socialist experience that my comrades offered to me. I guess that to truly embrace the theory laid down by Marx,Engles,Lenin,Stalin, etc, you have to actually experience the communist movement. To truly understand the wisdom of the classics, rather than suggesting radical and impractical revisions to them, you need to learn for yourself why your own notions are incorrect, through practical experience and study.
To sum up, basically I used to think I knew it all; experience has taught me that I was just another punk commie noob with dillusions of grandeur.
Posted by ravenblade 