"People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.
Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution.
We must use Marxism, which is positive in spirit, to overcome liberalism, which is negative. A Communist should have largeness of mind and he should be staunch and active, looking upon the interests of the revolution as his very life and subordinating his personal interests to those of the revolution; always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all incorrect ideas and actions, so as to consolidate the collective life of the Party and strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses; he should be more concerned about the Party and the masses than about any private person, and more concerned about others than about himself. Only thus can he be considered a Communist.
All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front."
Every single protest that I have seen has sought reformative action. It is naive, in a way, to expect change from a system that is aimed against you. You're expecting the people who have everything to gain to willingly give you what you want. That is willfully ignorant of history. Revolution is the only way forward, and anyone who isn't working towards it might as well be aiding the fascists and capitalists.
im with ya on this, this sounds great, i think the workers should control the means of production, co ops, or whatever they can call it, where we all chip in, we all get back can you help me sort it out or am i doing ok?
You're on the right track. Right now, lot of self proclaimed leftists who may believe in leftist ideas will still practice liberalism as described by Mao. These kinds of ideas are rot inside the party, selfish and lead to corruption and bad decisions made without the people in mind. On a semi-related note, liberalism, by the classic definition, and modern neoliberalism, is bad from an ideological standpoint because they will always compromise their beliefs when it conveniences them. They will side with the fascist before the socialist because the fascist says they won't threaten the liberal's position in the class structure.
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u/Ok_Recipe12 3d ago
what is a "leftist" at this point? can someone tell me?