For former socialists, there’s one argument I see them use for why they are not socialist anymore.
That argument is that they felt guilty about wanting to push their ideology onto others and so they started believing in parliamentary politics again where every opinion is valuable. My dad who used to be an anarchist as a teenager used this reasoning, as well as one of my teachers.
But this argument doesn’t make sense to me, because it makes politics into something which only revolves around opinions, while we communists and the capitalist class know it’s about power.
I feel like these people never learned much about their ideology when they were socialists. I think I will never stop being a communist, I know too much.
Have you seen this reasoning yourself?
Liberalism is the one that forced its “ideology” on Vietnam, Korea, Indonisia and Lybia and so many other nations. The “liberal” capitalists are the ones who forced money into parliamentary politics.
Sounds like your dad and your teacher were “anarkiddies” who never read any political theory. If you read like just the smallest amount of theory you realize that socailism isn’t about forcing your ideas on everyone else it is about fighting back against the dictatorship of capitalism.
The only reason to stop being a socialist is because you never were or because you don’t give a fuck about anyone else and just want what is in your own personal interest.
People like that just don’t care to actually know anything and don’t want to acknowledge the suffering of anyone but themselves. They want to just have a quiet “peace” that is absent of any form of true justice. “I don’t care if innocents and children suffer and die so long as I don’t have to disrupt my life in any way.”