What the heck does “intellectually communist” mean?
Are you somebody who defines any amount of redistribution as intrinsically communist? If so, I suspect what your term maps to in my lexicon is “a social democrat”.
If you mean “intellectually believes that by any means necessary we must transfer 100% of capital into the hands of the proletariat” then, OK, wow, I agree that’s communism.
The latter option seems unlikely to me, given that I lived for many many years on an actual commune with hundreds of extremely left leaning visitors per year, and I have literally never met anyone who believes in transferring all capital into the hands of the proletariat.
Well by "intellectually" I meant to indicate that they were not actually practising Communism :). By Communist I was covering a lot of different things I've observed:
1. Perfectly intelligent and reasonable people wearing Lenin badges
2. People talking without irony about "dismantling the Capitalist system"
3. People who actively engage with Marxist ideas and view Marx as a thinker with ideas that are readily applicable in the current political climate.
There's certainly Hyperbole in what I said. I would view even much lesser things as a bit "Commie" but I'm coming from a very different background. They would view me as a neo-liberal or a Centrist depending - I don't really know if I am...but sure you get what you get and you don't get upset...
Are you somebody who defines any amount of redistribution as intrinsically communist? If so, I suspect what your term maps to in my lexicon is “a social democrat”.
If you mean “intellectually believes that by any means necessary we must transfer 100% of capital into the hands of the proletariat” then, OK, wow, I agree that’s communism.
The latter option seems unlikely to me, given that I lived for many many years on an actual commune with hundreds of extremely left leaning visitors per year, and I have literally never met anyone who believes in transferring all capital into the hands of the proletariat.