chapotraphouse

This is just plain wrong, in my view. You don't learn Communism; you learn to hate life itself, instead of the terrible system in which your shitty life happens.

The impoverished Brazilian gig worker delivering food to rich people while riding a motorcycle with Bolsonaro stickers begs to differ. I see this guy all the time. He struggles to feed his family (because communists are making groceries more expensive), he wants more police brutality (against other people), he wants followers of certain religions (not his) arrested, he says he works 18 hour days and life is tough but he works hard (and you're a lazy crybaby if you don't want to do it too).

Sure, Marx explains why his life is miserable, but there's plenty of other people willing to offer misleading but more immediately compelling explanations and these are all very appealing to somebody who was born and raised immersed in anticommunist propaganda.

This is just romanticizing suffering for purpose of anti-intellectualism. Nobody is capable of contextualizing all they go through let alone formulate that into a coherent worldview without prior cumulative analysis and knowledge. Even those who believe they do like this romanticization do so because they had some prior familiarity with the ideas, probably through second-hand knowledge, to relate it to theory or communism.

If any of that was remotely true, every poor person on earth would be a communist, obviously that's not the case

If the theory of anti-theory is not true in practice then of what use is the theory?

"Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement"

-Guy who actually led the first successful communist revolution

There are plenty of people who misread Marx, either willingfully or not, and become opportunists. Almost nobody truly understands the methods, requirements, and goals of Marxism without reading him though.

this sucks, pure anti intellectualism, if this were true the whole world would be red by now

I'd say it's both. It's not impossible to have a perfect grasp of theory without proletarianization and suffering, and it's not impossible to have a clear grasp of what needs to be done and why without theory. However, for the vast majority, you must have theory and practice. Theory is a tool that makes practice easier and more effective, it identifies the sources of problems and tells you how to think about solving them. To avoid theory is a mistake, that's fighting a terrible and great enemy while handcuffed or blindfolded. Not impossible, but unnecessarily difficult.

If you don't learn the lessons our predecessors gave us and spent their lives figuring out and testing, do you really care?

I dont like the word theory. I feel like it turns people off to it. I think a better word is strategy. We might all agree on the whole capitalism must go thing, but ask most people wtf are we gonna do about it and theyll shrug. Lenin literally wrote a book called What is to be done. Theory is more about being able to recognize the cracks in capitalism and learn how to exploit those cracks. When its put into practice anyway. A lot of people are honestly just politics nerds who study it without ever putting it into practice. Which is... Fine i guess. But dont think you have to be like that to read it. Its not a college class. Just think of it as Lenin, the guy who founded the USSR, talking to you directly and being like "so this is what im thinking". Its very valuable insight. Not all of it still applies in 2025 obviously, but most does.

Like your meme says Marx explains why it happens. Lenin tells you what to do about it.

I think what would be more accurate is to say that studying Marx (or any theorists) alone doesn't give one the willpower to truly commit to being a communist. This helps explain the issue in the western left as a labor aristocracy with an understanding of class dynamics. There are many well read people who can emulate the aesthetics, language, and cultural relics of communism history but when push comes to shove, they aren't truly committed to destroying the system they benefit from.

Poverty and oppression alone obviously doesn't produce Communist thought, if it did we would already be living under Communism.

"I've never read Marx's Capital, but I've got the marks of capital all over my body."

-Bill Haywood

why that happens is kind of important tho

Revolutionary consciousness isn't spontaneous! Empiricist, subjectivist, and cannot see the world beyond their own nose. Scientific socialism was brought to, and fused with, the workers' movement--a cursory reading of Lenin would tell you that. Y'all are backwards as fuck.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play

My boy Engels can get no love

communism is really obvious if you think about reality for like 10 seconds

I mean most of these things arent yet experienced by the workers in the Global North. perhaps I'm an ally of the JDPON after all.