Tag: lenin

Can you be a Marxist/Leninist/Kropotkinist/Chomskyist?

Short answer? Yeah. Long answer? It’s complicated, but that’s never stopped me before.

Look, these four thinkers don’t exactly hold hands and sing the Internationale together. They’ve got different blueprints for tearing down capitalism and building something better. That doesn’t mean you can’t steal the best tools from each of them and sharpen your own.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Marx gives you the blueprint.

He’s the one who showed us that capitalism isn’t a glitch, it’s the whole fucking operating system. Class struggle. Alienation. Historical materialism. Without Marx, you’re just vibing in the ruins, not naming the enemy.

Lenin says “Great. Now do something.”

Marx diagnosed the disease. Lenin started the surgery. He understood that capitalism doesn’t die politely. You need pressure, structure, and a strategy. That’s the whole vanguard party thing: not perfect, but a reminder that wishful thinking doesn’t start revolutions. Power has to be seized, not begged for.

Kropotkin asks, “But what are you building?”

The anarchist in the mix who is the heart. He reminds you that the goal isn’t just a new boss in a red hat. It’s no boss. Mutual aid. Voluntary cooperation. No centralized state. No boot, no neck. A vision beyond power games.

Chomsky cuts through the bullshit.

The living dissident. He’s not storming palaces, but he’s tearing down lies. He’s a scalpel for empire, for propaganda, for power dressed in liberal clothing. Chomsky shows you how to spot the cage even when it’s painted blue.

So can you be all four?

Only if you’re okay with contradiction. With mess. With not having all the answers but refusing to settle for anyone else’s either. You take Marx’s critique, Lenin’s urgency, Kropotkin’s ideals, and Chomsky’s clarity, and you use them all to fight the system while knowing none of them alone are enough.

It’s not a clean ideology. It’s a war room.

Capitalism is adaptive, violent, and relentless. Fighting it means pulling from every angle: materialist analysis, revolutionary strategy, anarchist ethics, and relentless truth-telling. That’s not confusion, that’s firepower.

So yeah, I’m a Marxist/Leninist/Kropotkinist/Chomskyist. Call it a contradiction. I call it a strategy.

What I take from Marx, Lenin, Kropotkin, and Chomsky

American politics are broken. Not just crooked or corrupt, but structurally, irredeemably broken. Corporate power is propped up, sociopaths are rewarded, and it dangles just enough hope to keep people from revolting. Voting feels like choosing flavors of decay, while the wealthy buy policy and workers beg for crumbs.

Instead of looking to the ballot box ever four or two years for salvation, I’m looking to four thinkers: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Peter Kropotkin, and Noam Chomsky. I’m not looking to them as prophets, but as strategists, builders, and demolition experts. Each of these people offer a different tool for ripping this thing apart and reimagining what politics could be. I’m not interested in dogma. I’m interested in results.

From Marx, I take the foundation that class struggle is everything. Marx didn’t give us a blueprint. He gave us a lens, a way to see power for what it is. Capitalism isn’t just unfair; it’s a system that demands exploitation to survive. You can’t vote away the class war. You have to understand that politics is economics in disguise, and that real change starts by confronting the structures that divide labor from power.

You want to change America? Then start by naming the enemy: capital.

From Lenin, I take the strategy that power doesn’t surrender, it gets taken.

Lenin knew that moments of chaos don’t organize themselves. He built a disciplined machine not to preserve power, but to capture and redirect it. I don’t want a vanguard party or a permanent state, but I do believe in planning, timing, and coordination. American politics love spectacle but fear movement. If we want to be more than angry individuals yelling online, we need to move with purpose. The system isn’t going to implode on its own. You either build power or beg from it.

From Kropotkin, I take the vision that mutual aid is not utopia but strategy.

This country is obsessed with bootstraps and billionaires. Kropotkin said fuck that. Cooperation is how we survive, and always has been. Fuck waiting for the state to save us. Let’s build networks, councils, co-ops, and clinics … parallel structures that meet people’s needs now, not after the revolution. Politics don’t just happen in voting booths. It happens in kitchens, strike lines, and occupied buildings. Real change starts when we stop asking permission and start taking care of each other.

From Chomsky I take the filter, meaning if an institution can’t justify its power then burn it down.

Chomsky taught me to look at power and say: “Prove you deserve to exist.” The state, the police, the military-industrial complex, corporate media … none of them pass that test. He also taught me to not waste time reinventing the wheel. If a structure is doing harm then dismantle it. If it’s helping people then democratize it. Reform what you must. Abolish what you can. Build what they fear.

American politics are a shell game designed to keep us chasing scraps while the ruling class counts profits. I’m done playing. If we want to change things then we have to stop trying to fix a broken system and start building a new one from the ground up.

The state won’t save us. The market won’t feed us. But we might if we finally get to work.