I keep seeing self-identified socialists, communists and leftists falling for liberal anti-communist memes and even self-identifying with them. Namely:
Collectivism. There is no such thing as "collectivism" as imagined by the liberals. By which, I mean there is no ideology that is the vulgar antithesis of bourgeois individualism. "Collectivism" in the socialist sense essentially refers to common ownership and management of institutions.
Under feudalism, almost every aspect of your life was predetermined before you were born, and the few decision that remained after birth were likely determined for you by your parents while you were still a very young child. Individualism, as originally formulated by the classic liberals, was essentially just a refutation of this. It asserted that people should be free to live their lives in accordance with their own conscience and pursue whatever path they chose, instead of these things being determined by birth or being prearranged by their parents. In this sense, communists are individualists.
Now, once liberalism started supplanting the feudal order with a capitalist order, the rising bourgeoisie was less keen on this interpretation since a person living their lives in accordance with their conscience didn't serve the ends of capital. You then begin to see the rise of a bourgeois individualism which re-centered individualism around the accumulation and reproduction of capital. This individualism pushed the idea that the ultimate form of freedom and self-expression was saving all your pennies in the hopes of starting some kind of business and rising through the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Communists are not this kind of individualist, but that doesn't make us some kind of antithesis of that.
It's been doubly confused by the entry of the counterculture movement in the West which, while it pushed for many good things such as the Civil Rights Movement, LGBT rights, rights for women, etc, also pushed a sort of cultural narcissism and has called these cultural narcissistic tendencies "individualism."
Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is a meaningless liberal snarl word. All it means is either that you aren't a liberal or that you want people to submit to an authority the liberals regard as illegitimate. But all politics after the collapse of the feudal order have basically been about who or what the legitimate authority is. Any order that isn't libe
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