/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Communism is neither related to "Leftism" nor "Socialism", in fact these reformist movements are antithetical to Communism.

Before some illiterate dumbass takes this as lazy "sectarianism", this was the key issue the Communist International meant to settle. In fact the entire Comintern was born out of the contradiction between the revolutionary content of Marxism and reformist nature of leftism, the murder of German communists at the hands of their left-socialist "comrades" cemented this seemingly forever (clearly not)

>In this connection all those parties that wish to belong to the Communist International must change their names. Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International must bear the name Communist Party of this or that country (Section of the Communist International). The question of the name is not formal, but a highly political question of great importance. The Communist International has declared war on the whole bourgeois world and on all yellow social-democratic parties. The difference between the communist parties and the old official 'social-democratic' or 'socialist' parties that have betrayed the banner of the working class must be clear to every simple toiler.
<Twenty-one Conditions, Comintern 1919

Going further back to Marx, this distinction was evident (hence the "communist" manifesto)

>in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, “respectable”; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that “the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,” there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it.
<Preface to the 1872 German Edition

>But why were the terms later used exchangeably by the early days of Lenin?
Simply, they were not. By "social democrats" Lenin was strictly referring to the membership of the SPD and its analogous party in Russia who upheld the doctrine of Marx at the time until the German SPD broke away from it.

>But why did Marx and Engels approve of the name SPD in the first place (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands)?
They did not. Both explicitly called the name unscientific and should always be treated as such by the party:

>The dialectician Engels remained true to dialectics to the end of his days. Marx and I, he said, had a splendid, scientifically exact name for the party, but there was no real party, i.e., no mass proletarian party. Now (at the end of the 19th century) there was a real party, but its name was scientifically wrong. Never mind, it would "pass muster", so long as the party developed, so long as the scientific in accuracy of the name was not hidden from it and did not hinder its development on the right direction!
<The State and Revolution, Chapter 4

They were the ones to re-name the League of Just to the Communist League of that wasn't obvious enough.

>acktuly Marx, Engels and Lenin were wrong. Leftist unity (class collaboration) now!!111
Okay. Just don't name yourself after the movement they represented then.

This is more than enough evidence to convince any serious communist that still using terms such as "Leftist" and "Socialist" or to identify with organisations that do, after this split was officially settled for over a century, has nothing to do with communism. This is not even to touch on the popular front slogan which is laughably opportunist.

>At the moment, while the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the proletariat general unity and reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is, they seek to ensnare the workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such a unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner.
<Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, 1850