this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Yeah, that's a good analogy. They're people who emphasise idealism and perfectionism rather than messy, imperfect real world results. They tend to decry existing or past socialist projects for not being "pure" enough and for having issues and problems, like any nation would.
It's quite common in western leftist spaces as it is a way to be "socialist" without actually needing to unlearn a bunch of lies about socialist nations taught to people from a young age.
We mock them because they ultimately spend all their time "planning" a "perfect" revolution that will never come to pass, as if they actually tried to put their ideas into practice, they would meet messy reality and no longer have everything be perfect. So they claim to be against the capitalist status quo while doing nothing to actually try and change it. They're as old as communism itself. A core idea of communist thought is "materialism" as opposed to "idealism." When our ideas conflict with reality, our ideas need to change to match reality. Ultras refuse to do this in order to keep their ideals "pure."
Sorry for the semi-lecture, especially if some of it is stuff you already know.
Oh no I appreciate the details, and yeah that is kinda dumb. Isn't one of the tentants of communism that (I just woke up and smoked a bowl so sorry if I'm mis remembering WHO said it exactly) I'm pretty sure Lenin himself talked on was that the communist movement, revolution, and following state will look different in every region as geography, culture, and the current and future evolving political climate all create different conditions that we would have to find new and working solutions too. I'm an advocate of "Yeah shit's gunna get messy sometimes, so it's best to accept that, but to try and experiment with different policies in different parts of the region to see what works best both for the people, and for staying stable and sustainable, and we should strive to TRY different things as communists so we can find the things, whether structure of labor or production to ecological protections, what WORKS best for everyone." It seems wild to me that some people think we can just rely completely on theory. Yes its VERY important, but so is real world and practical experience, shit happens that no one expects and you gotta find solutions. That's just life.