Comrade:Fernleaf

5 editsJoined 27 January 2023

1. I found it through a simple Google search while looking for an English-language encyclopedia free from the usual western hegemonic biases of sites like Wikipedia.

2. Currently I uphold and identify most strongly with Marxism-Leninism. My journey as such started around two years ago, before which I intermittently identified with either anarchism or democratic socialism. I became interested in Marxism originally through a large dissatisfaction with the anarchist movement and a realisation that most commonly held beliefs against communist-ruled countries are a complete fabrication of capitalist propaganda. It felt like the next logical step in my journey as I realised that that initial distrust of capitalism is what pushed me into leftism in the first place.

3. I have read through them. I thoroughly agree with the principles stated. I am especially grateful for the outright opposition to hate speech, National Bolshevism, and patriotic socialism, which I have seen all too often creep up in ML spaces.

4. I critically support the People's Republic of China and uphold the belief that the CPC is strongly committed to Marxist-Leninist ideology. I am critical of some of its stances on issues of gender and sexual identity and drug criminalisation, which I believe should be freed up to allow people to freely express themselves, and also for frequent use of harmful recreational drugs to be treated as a health or societal issue rather than a criminal one. I do view the PRC as a socialist country in that it is a state controlled by the proletariat, and while a bourgeois class still exists, is subject to this proletarian state as per the Leninist definition of socialism.

5. Joseph Stalin was a strong and capable comrade, anti-imperialist, and anti-fascist. I do not view him as infallible or as someone to hero worship, however, and as communists we should not be proponents of great man theory. His governance and policy however where the main driving factor behind the defeat of the Nazi imperialists and subsequent liberation of millions living under or being influenced by the brutal regime. The dekulakisation and purges of reactionaries were also a strong necessity of the Stalin-era Soviet government. It is unfortunate that later governance fell to revisionism.

6. Gender is a socially constructed phenomenon which, in its current and most widespread form, assigns certain roles and restrictions to an individual based on their biological sex. However this is not always, and historically hasn't always been the case, with countless cultures at various points throughout history having had gender roles outside of the usual man/woman binary, or that don't restrict a person of a biological sex to certain restrictive gender roles. This applies further to one's process and preferences in consensual marriage, family, sex, reproduction, access to necessities, and freedom from discrimination, and as oppressed peoples there is no basis on which Marxists should not support an individual based on their sexual or romantic affiliations or their personal gender identity.