Even if a communist can colloquially describe themselves as being on the left, there’s a distinction between communism and “the left.” This is implied right in the title of Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. Whereas the left, a big tent term for a myriad of incompatible ideologies, aims merely to act as an opposition towards the present order for the sake of it, communists have a coherent vision for how to defeat the system: by advancing history’s development to the next stage. The left, because of its lack of commitment to that central Marxist goal, naturally takes on an opportunistic role. Because when you want only to build a movement as an end in itself, rather than use this movement as a means for defeating the system, you become nothing more than an actor who benefits from discontent without helping solve the problems behind that discontent.
So we’ve touched on the decolonizing the US part of this article a lot, but I want to talk about the drugs for a moment.
Comrade Shea is 100% based on this imo and as well I would like to add a sort of ‘other side of the coin’ aspect to this conversation.
While drugs which illicit an extreme response such as hard illegal ones do are undoubtedly harmful to our cause as currently the contradictions are so that drugs are not required to “wake” a liberal prol out of their fantasy (they do have their uses in certain scenarios), prescription psychoactive drugs of a mild variety can play a limited beneficial role.
Antidepressants and other medications, while in many cases are damaging to the body, can artificially stabilize a prol enough to be able to study, plan, and learn. However, this does cause dependence upon the pharmaceutical industry and in turn upon legal society which could become detrimental later on although there are ways around this issue.
I think these should be used wisely and phased out over time if appropriate as deemed by scientists under socialist economy.
These topics being brought up in this article should be addressed as should all other aspects of neoliberal culture which have largely gotten grandfathered into our own as our base model. We know for sure where we stand on minority worker’s needs, I believe we should work to iron out the logistics of what exactly 21st century predominately western proletarian culture is, and reject outright what has been dictated to us by the bourgeois class. Yes it will be controversial but so long as we show each other respect, solidarity, and participate in good faith we will gain more answers than headaches.