What kind of Communism do you believe in?

[P.O.U.M]

"All I know is that I am not a Marxist" Karl Marx

Thats only half the qoute. I think its, "all I know is that if this is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist."

He was referring to a French workers party which had started calling themselves "Marxists" but held a political line contrary to Marx.

[Holocaustpulp]

This thread isn't too favorable (and for younger socialists, possibly confusing) in dividing the work of Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. In reality they all play off of one another, and they all carry the same thought line. The only differences are that Lenin elaborated on Marx's works (and thus elaborated Marxism instead of making a new sect), and Trotsky elaborated on Lenin's works, and worked to uphold the Leninist tradtion after Stalin and his bureaucrats ruined the Soviet Union.

I didn't vote because I don't support this division. And while I don't agree with some of these other sects, mentioned in the poll or not, I don't like to ultimately separate myself from these people.

- HP

[Stellersjay]

I'm a trotskyist, and a member of the Workers International League.  It took me many years to make that decision.  I broke with anarchism early on as I felt there was a certain dishonesty about the complexities a working class leadership finds itself confounded by in a world that is still dominated by imperialism. I broke with maoism because despite all its alleged honesty about the "contradictions" of stalin's leadership, when push comes to shove, they still defend Stalin's execution of the entire early Bolshevik party, as well as his crimes during the periods of collectivization and the show trials.  I broke with anti-vanguardism in a limited context.  I believe, as WIL teaches, that the working class will go towards its traditional organizations before it makes a bid to build something qualitatively different, and that when it does, it will first be a mass labor formation of some kind with a wide smattering of "left" and socialist, and sometimes revolutionary nationalist  politics.  When I look at history, I don't see any revolutonary movement where this has not been the case.  And usually, if the workers decide to break with a mass labor party that betrays, they create something that, for want of a better word, becomes a vanguard party.  So I suppose all I've broken with really, is the idea that the tiny factions can ever be a vanguard party.  Finally, I don't agree with the assessment of Rosa Luxemburg, that she repudiated Lenin and Trotsky.  When I read her writings on the question of the Bolsheviks, I note that she was very careful to identify the contradictions Lenin and Trotsky had to deal with, and was very supportive of the fact that the Bolsheviks and the Mezhyerhontsi stepped forward.  So I'm in WIL, because, after almost thirty years in "revolutionary politics" in the United States, for me they remain the  most sober and realistic force out there, tiny though we are.  And I think our work in Venezuela has been top notch.  That's the kind of communist I am.