Precisely. I personally think we can still remain Leninists while reevaluating the relevance of vanguardism. If someone disagrees with that, I welcome the counterpoint.

My parents are petty landlords too. They're also exploited workers as well. They simultaneously occupy both classes and it's a factor that prevents them from seeing things clearly. And worse, they don't actually make returns on their investments and havent since they started renting out property years ago. They should see how rigged things are by now but "temporary embarassed millionaires" and all that. I get your frustration.

But also, realize how normalized and propagandized it is for everyone to be a landlord or entrepreneur now. In that sense your parents and my parents are victims of that. Like you said, they're just trying to have an easier life and aren't heady about this political stuff like we are.

While there is an exploited class and an exploiting class, it's not necessarily indicative of where someone's ultimate interests lie. Plenty of petty bourgeois circumstancially have more in common with workers and plenty of labor aristocrats have an individual stake in preserving capitalism.

Let ideology be a guide for you, but don't treat it like a cult. If you let it dictate who you love or who you're friends with, you're gonna be pretty miserable and ultimately you'll find yourself creating more divisions, not healing them.

There is a lot of dogma from past socialist experiments. And while the successes of the USSR should be defended, many MLs get carried away with the defense and act as if Lenin and Stalin were omnipotent and their theories on organizing and revolution are able to be perfectly replicated anywhere. We must ultimately remember that the USSR had many failures, had material conditions and obstacles unique to them, and that Lenin -- while a brilliant analyst of imperialism -- was a human, not a god, and that he wrote from a particular insight with the intent of revolutionizing his particular society.

That's not to say past theory should be discarded. We gotta continue to study and be the messengers of this knowledge. And it's also not to say we have license to be eclectic and undisciplined in our takes and our praxis. But even though history is currently rhyming and all that, we live in a notably different world in terms of our technology, collective awareness, We need to forge NEW theory suited to OUR material conditions. Especially for us comrades in imperial core countries. Take our cue from the rest of the global south and ADAPT the theory. Stop treating it like dogma.

One example in my maybe-unpopular opinion, is that we can actually learn from current anarchist tactics of organizing rather than wholly dismissing them because they are anarchists. Yeah I know, a lot of them (as evidenced here recently) are annoying in their lack of proper geopolitical analysis and their idealism, but they're also leading the struggle in plenty of areas of resistance (Cop City in Atlanta). We shouldn't take that for granted and we can learn from them just as much as they should learn from us. In this day and age, with the unique opportunities and setbacks we are confronted with regarding online surveillance and social media, strong centralization of our movement might actually not be appropriate right now.

"These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world"

My favorite Engels tweet.

I know so many liberals in my personal life who claim they wouldn't have supported Jim Crow or Confederates if they were alive in previous eras. They absolutely would have.

Basically, get offline. Every single conversation I've had about communism in person, I can at least get people to view communist history from a rational perspective less clouded by propaganda. Even if they don't "agree" they can at least respect it and can marinate on it later.

Online arguments with liberals are pointless. At least the arguments on lemmygrad are mostly good faith and even if there are disagreements there's a lot of learning that happens. Arguing on mainstream liberal forums just opens you to being brigades by bots, reactionaries, and people who are participating in bad faith to begin with.

This is the inevitible result of nations wholly relying on mercenary groups to fight their wars. As major powers, not just Russia, continue to rely on privatized militaries these militaries are going to become emboldened and realize how much power they have over their capitalist financiers.

The other day I was listening to an old episode of The Deprogram where they talked about this. Surreal to see it actually happening now.

It's amazing that liberals think this man is any less verbally unhinged than Trump in the ways that are meaningful and relevant to being a president of a country.

Y'all think Biden wears diapers?

Welp. Better pick a wall.

Jk. Tons of famous communists were class traitors.

The same way in liberal states there are decades-long eras of defining liberal thought that both build on yet rupture from one other ("Jeffersonians" "New Deal Liberals" "Reaganism", etc.), so are there dominant ideological trends in Marxist countries. Frustratingly, the majority of Westerners can't help but view Chinese politics through a chauvanist lens when their own politics showcase a very similar evolutionary process, just in a different language.

Great points.

Honestly, liberals just need to study their own revolutions more. Most or them just ignorantly buy into the mythic narrative of liberalism's origin story rather than the bloodbath, atrocities, and dogmas their movements were also birthed from.