Comradeship // Freechat

I grew up in USSR, and I was generally happy with my life there during Soviet times, and I lived through some really horrible shit during the collapse. That said, I was a kid at the time, and I didn't really think about politics all that much. All I knew was that my life in a communist country was just fine, and that things got worse after we transitioned to capitalism.

My family moved around a lot after the collapse, and I got to live in a few different western countries. I saw incredible amounts of opulence contrasted with incredible poverty. It never sat right with me that some people should live on the street while others live like royalty.

As I got older, I reflected more on these things and it became clear to me that the capitalist model was fundamentally exploitative and unjust. Reading history I realized that Marxism-Leninism was the only ideology that provided a clear and consistent path away from capitalism.

I think that the theory that Marx and Engels built is fundamentally sound, and it lucidly explains material relationships within our society. Why things are the way they are makes perfect sense when seen through the Marxist lens. Marxism is not utopian, and its application provides real and tangible improvement in the quality of life for majority of the people. This is why I'm a Marxist.

I was groomed to be a military/state department professional from a young age. There is a long history of anti communism in my family. Not just in a propaganda obsessed kind of way. In a committing war crimes in countries with active communist revolutions sort of way. I always knew my calling was to serve the American project, and, of course, the Christ.

Anyways I slowly grew to hate the US and my family. I was an evangelist for some time and thought my family had a shallow, or otherwise incorrect understanding of Christianity. I started to become more anti war. In the pacifist sense but also structurally I knew there was more to war than religious differences or politics. I would have been a Ron Paul lib at this point. I had some good criticisms of the machine but was ostensibly racist as all fuck and was by no means a socialist.

Later I was exposed to more explicit socialism and Marxism after become interested in the Green Party and losing faith in libertarians and became more aware of what racism is and isn't. I also burried Christ somewhere out back behind the shed and my old life began to really fade away.

My first thoughts about my experience with marxism is how refreshing it was to find the dialectic. Finally something that could cut through the discourse and understand a dynamic world instead of reducing everything to just ideology, intuition, "human nature," or morality. Finally a better way to approach history and power.

Through this I was able to begin understanding America as a project and found myself studying more about the conditions that created and developed it into what it has become today, relying especially on Indigenous and Marxist perspectives. I am very interested in what socialism in this place means and what its prospects are. Now I am back in school hoping to see further beyond the veil, and not shying away from my former calling, though this time with new intentions 😈.

I taught high school in an impoverished neighborhood of the richest metro area in the state

I didn't decide to be a Marxist. I became one when I learned more about the world and communism.