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Basically if you're a communist you're already on the left. So if you're to the left of communists, what are you? An ultra communist.
They're the people who can usually recite whole quotes by heart and have bookmarks and notes in all their books. But when it comes to translating that theory into the real world, nothing is ever good enough because it doesn't follow what Lenin or Bordiga wrote to the letter. They're the embodiment of if you can't do it perfectly, then don't do anything at all.
Ultras and leftcoms in unions are hard to work with. Luckily(?), they don't last long.
Go on strike with small union presence, maybe half of which actually joins the action, if you're fortunate.
Win something.
The ultras and left coms leave because the strike didn't lead to twenty-third century fully automated luxury communism. Then they cross the picket line the next time the union takes action and sneer at the striking workers for their betrayal.
Alternatively, they stay in the union and accept no compromises because nothing but full capitulation of the bourgeoisie is good enough. Then proceed to make empty statements about never surrendering, undermining every plan that might build some of the solidarity necessary to achieve exactly that.
Worse than liberals. Worse than neoliberals, who sometimes join unions and sometimes even pickets. And those that don't are happy to be consistently against unions, so at least you know what they're up to. Maybe I'm just bitter.
Advice: if you spot ultra or leftcom in a union, try to make them see things from a proper historical materialist viewpoint before the striking kicks off.
Lenin
No, most of them don’t even like Lenin because he seized power in a coup and did non-absolutely perfect stuff as the first leader of an actual socialist state.
Well there was Bordiga, who was described as "more Leninist than Lenin".
"Hey Bordiga! Who were the true great and authentic revolutionaries of the world?"
A hint to anyone reading: he died the same way a rat sleeps.
ah yes, bordiga, well known for doing sweet f a, is way more leninist than lenin. 11/10, keep it up. 👍
In other words, they're dogmatic.
Dogmatic like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
"An infantile disorder." --V. I. Lenin
To anyone who thinks this is just a quote or doesn't get the reference, Lenin wrote a short book about left-wing communism titled this. It is worth the read and will answer all your questions.
the only correct answer
Leftcoms be like:
Mainly trotskyists, anarchists and ultra-maoists. It's basically when an ideology focuses more on idealism, dogmatism and utopianism than material conditions.
Those movements tend to have stupid expectations for any socialist state, and they will more often than not support (sometimes by actively fighting for them) a capitalist or even fascist country rather than a socialist state they don't like.
Maoists are probably the more respectable of the bunch. They're fanatics, but they also do attempt seize state power and develop socialism in their own way.
That's well said, but according to my feeling, anarchists are rather awaken, lightly radicalized libs, slightly to the left of the center
I think this more applies to general Ultra-leftism. Left-communists are more likely to not support any AES ever, while even the Anarchists are willing to point to Catalonia.
Sounds like a pleonasm or a tautology?
For anyone else that is wondering:
pleonasm
noun
the use of more words than required to express an idea or meaning; For example, ‘see with your eyes’ is a pleonasm because the same meaning can be expressed by the word ‘see’
I always mix up pleonasm and tautology. I'm still not sure what the difference is, actually.
In terms critique the phrasing of a statment, I too am not understanding the difference between them. I haven't spotted an example of pleonasm that did not look like a tautology and vice versa. 😅
To answer your first question left communism is neither of these. It is a specific set of tendencies within communism characterised with adherence to idelogical purity. Left communists deride all socialist and communist experiements that have existed because according to them these efforts did not practise Marxism properly. They do not like pragmatism.