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Marxism

Not to be confused with communism.

Marxism comprises of ideas, theories and ideologies strongly based in works of Karl Marx (and also Friedrich Engels), roughly aiming for a violent revolution that should end capitalism, replace it with "socialist" society and eventually a truly communist society. Despite the terms Marxism and communism NOT being equal (communism is a general idea with many branches, e.g. anarcho communism, Christian communism etc.), most common people see them as equivalent, which is unfortunate because communism is a purely good idea while Marxism is mostly a bad way of trying to achieve and sustain their own idea of communism (the relationship between communism and Marxism may be roughly compared to the relationship between Christianity and Catholicism). Marxism comes with aggressive, revolutionary mindset that has caused great tragedies mainly during the 20th century (see especially USSR). Many non-Marxist communists even see Marxist "communist" states as capitalist (so called state capitalism). Marxism sees itself as a scientific effort, it is studied by intellectuals and lives mainly in written works of Marxists.

We, LRS, are communists but do NOT embrace Marxism! Though we do agree with Marxists on many things (mostly identifying issues of capitalism and the desire to replace it with some form of communism) and Marxism is still probably better than capitalism (as anything is better than capitalism), we can't ever approve of some inherent traits of Marxism, mainly the following. Marxism is violent, aggressive and revolutionary, often highly hostile to anarchism and pacifism (which we highly embrace), wanting to FORCE communism. Marxists promote establishment of temporary dictatorship of the proletariat as they see it the only way to ending capitalism. Marxists are NOT altruists, their desire of communism doesn't come from love of life, they simply see it as a more efficient societal system than capitalism that's a natural and inevitable next step in evolution of society, they see a man as servant of society, they are obsessed with work (even preferring to call themselves workers rather than people; language matters) and see people who don't share their values as undesirable -- these undesirable people are not only capitalists, but also people who don't want to work, religious people or people who refuse to fight for their society. They say that ends justify the means and will happily utilize means such as war, dictatorship, executions, censorship, cults of personality and propaganda. We cannot ever stand behind this.