Always remember Zhou Enlai quote on Khrushchev when he questioned him on coming from a priviledged family while he claimed to come from peasantry.
"True but we share a similarity. Each of us is a class traitor".
Was about to pull this up but I'm glad its well remembered on here, I like to think of it as one of the finest dunks of the 20th century.
Definitely up there lol. I also like Marx dunk on the writer of "the philosophy of poverty", he called the critique "the poverty of philosophy" 😂 he then mentions his friendship ended after that.
Primo dunk
Unless you're so performatively poor that you lack the means to meaningfully threaten capitalism whatsoever the liberals will brand you as a hypocrite.
And if you are that poor they'll just giggle and clink wine glasses as your home is crushed by tanks so billionaires can make more magic cars with the minerals under your home.
They use this argument to dismiss anything you say without thinking about it.
I'm quite poor, so I get the other end of this "You're just a communist because you want to leech off of other's hard work."
They're just empty thought-terminating cliches, it doesn't matter who you are, if you're a communist, people will say stupid shit to you in order to dismiss communism without ever thinking about it.
Often the same people who say this are the same people who think they can't talk about racism because they're white. Nothing is ever a them problem. Everything is a you problem. They don't like it when other privileged people stand with the oppressed. It makes them look bad and the cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable.
I've heard it before and I'll repeat it here: this is related to the reason why liberals hate communists so much; our very existence forcibly reminds them that their empty idealist rhetoric doesn't fill bellies, build homes, or prevent hate crimes.
Edit: I knew I'd read it recently, it was Criticalresist8, who put it like this:
They can’t reconcile the fact that they are not actually the most progressive and tolerant person in the room.
It's probably because they're projecting that if their family was as wealthy as yours, they'd probably be a hardcore capitalist
If you're poor and a communist, that's just because you're incapable of bootstrapping yourself upwards and jealous of successful people 
When the chips are down, people normally fight for their self-interest.
The bourgeoisie fight for bourgeois interests.
Proletarians fight for labour interests.
Landlords aren't going to willingly give up their free income and comfort in exchange for a life of labour. (Maybe 1% of them will.) They might say they will from the comfort of their armchair, but I'm talking when your life, your future are on the line.
If it’s during a revolution and people are being held at gunpoint to give up their property, I would counter that an extremely large portion of wealthy people would give up their wealth without much issue at all.
Possibly, but then they will seek to destroy the revolution by using infiltration and fascism. The revolution is not just the fighting and seizing of the MOP - it is the continued subordination of the local bourgeoisie to the DOTP and the defense against imperialism/the international (lead by the American) bourgeoisie.
Indeed, although there may be some bourgeois comrades, that number would likely be much fewer than WithoutFurtherDelay's "extremely large portion"
My grandmother in Eastern Europe came from a wealthy aristocratic family but was a communist and gave up willingly all the lands and property.
45 years later corrupt anti-communist far right nationalists took power, canceled socialism and just divided it all up between themselves and their cronies…
That’s like saying you can’t be capitalist if you’re poor.
you can't be both capitalist (bourgeois) and poor, but you can be liberal (pro-capitalism) and poor
That’s true. I hang around a libs too much and get my words mixed up.
I hear that. They are infectious.
Except that's true
Yeah fuck those people. If they’re communists saying this then they’re only damaging the movement and should shut the fuck up for the benefit of the world in general. If they’re not and trying to “gotcha” you, they’re idiots, and should be treated as such. It’s a bad faith argument and an attempt to discount you by making you out to be a hypocrite.
When people attempt to do this to me in person I have no problem warning them that I’m prone to smacking people who piss me off.
The idea that you're obligated to show a system any gratitude just because you've benefit from it in some way (or even were shaped by it at all) is one of my least favorite parts of dealing with other people. A bizarrely deeply ingrained notion.
Stop thinking about those people who are still dirt poor. You've got yours now so pipe down. Try to be thankful rather than ungrateful.
Absolute inversion of reality, as usual. I also detest this kind of argument.
Only ever applies to the West. Chinese people who got everything they have under CPC rule don't owe CPC anything, according to the same people.
It's just a way tonpremptively discredit anybody criticizing capitalism.
Oh, you think socialism is good, well then why dont you willingly make yourself destitute, ensuring you can't have any impact on anything.
We should reclaim that gotcha. If capitalism is so equal, and hard work is such a source of pride, why don't you give everything away and start from the bottom? It's like presteiging business, think of all the pride you'll cultivate!
If you are rich and a communist then you have a duty to donate to leftist movements. Don't just be a rich guy who reads leftist books to pass the time. Your funding might make a huge difference in the long run. Imagine if Engels never financed Marx.
If you don't know where to start, then I suggest you help with leftist independent media. Breakthrough News do a lot of good work.
im still 15 sadly and dont have independant money yet, if id like to donate to something i would need to ask my parent first until im 18
Understandable.
but i try to educate as much people on socialism as possible and i give money to the poor whenever i can.
If you're rich and a communist it's because you're pampered, if you're poor and a communist it's because you're jealous, and if you're middle class and a communist it's because you're lazy. We have something for everyone!
Capitalism was built with the ashes of feudalism, socialism is being built with the ashes of capitalism. All of us in the imperial core live in a capitalist society; everyone is tainted with it in some way. It’s not as though the first capitalist, when he was doing the first enclosure, looked at the land and was like “wait a minute, I’m a hypocrite since I’m using feudalism to destroy feudalism.” He didn’t care. “We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us” has proven to be a pretty effective strategy.
Anyone can be a communist, all it takes is your want to destroy capitalism and the inequality and oppression it brings, coming from rich or poor means nothing, as you said many famous marxists, including marx himself, were materially bourgeois, but they didnt oppress the proletariat and were genuine revolutionaries who actually wanted to end the oppression of the proletariat, these people were class traitors to the bourgeoisie and aided the proletariat against their class interests, calling these people anything but socialist or communist is plainly absurd to be honest.
And this is coming from someone who regularly deals with food issues.
Anyone can be a communist, all it takes is your want to destroy capitalism and the inequality and oppression it brings
And read theory.
all it takes is your want to destroy capitalism
Someone's internal desires are irrelevant here. Someone who doesn't actually practice theory is apolitical.
marx himself, [was] materially bourgeois, but they didn't oppress the proletariat
You mean Engels. Marx was a journalist/writer. Engels owned a factory and did exploit the proletariat.
But all this is missing the point. We live under capitalism. Subjecting yourself/family to extreme poverty is not going to bring about the revolution, and will prevent you from various methods of supporting it.
When someone pulled the "Engels was a factory owner" card on me, I did some minimal searching and found that it was his father who owned the factory, with him getting appointed to a menial desk job. But even if that's not true (and the reason I didn't search any further) is that it doesn't really matter, even if he was a hypocrite the analyses he did with Marx and the actions they propose seem valid.
Regardless of whether Engels owned the factory, @alcoholicorn@hexbear.net's point that action, not beliefs, is what makes someone a communist still stands.
You're only really a communist if you give me like, uhh, $20. Don't worry this goes for the poors too.
I once got told that I was a hypocrite for being a communist while simultaneously using a username in english, which, I quote, "was the language of the bourgeoisie".
I thought I had seen things hit rock bottom until I got told I could not be a communist and use money at the same time.
was told something similar once: "You cAnT bE ComMUniST, YoU dOnT SpEAk RuSSiAn" ????
The amount of wealth is not the sole indicator and neither is individual choice. There are the material condition, economic relation, and desire to reform the flawed capitalist system with its hypocritical command economy that allow free riding by a few spoiled manchild.
If you were poor they would call you jealous. Throw their criticism out, it is worth less than nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGC3uJadXh0
If a rich man offers you money, take it and, the next day, kill him. When he says "But I gave you the money!" respond "Why did you give me the money, you idiot?"
We live in brutal capitalism and we must brutally use it.
oh we're not millionaires tho just saying because where i live, millionaires are considered the point where you are officially considered "rich". But the term rich has everywhere different meaning, i might be poor in Qatar but rich in South Sudan. Nothing is objective
Talk about whatever, respecting the rules established by Lemmygrad. Failing to comply with the rules will grant you a few warnings, insisting on breaking them will grant you a beautiful shiny banwall.
A community for comrades to chat and talk about whatever doesn't fit other communities
