Well I had a bad experience, which made me research the history of the party I was in, and its predecessors, and the underlying ideology; and I found leninism and its branches (ML, trotskyism, maoism, etc) hold as a core tenet that there is a small group of people (the vanguard) who must have absolute uncontested authority over all others and must eliminate all contestation. Regardless of whether you believe that ideology by itself is justifiable, it has historically been used over and over as a rhetorical hammer to justify and fortify the power of power-hungry individuals (this is also true of other marxist branches, even beginning with Marx himself). I learnt “co-secretary” means supreme leader, “materialism” means trust me bro, “democratic centralism” means shut the fuck up, and “petty-bourgeois” means you are a bad person regardless of your actual deeds or social situation.

I also realized that the party sociology was deeply divided, with the upper ranks being political science graduates who were planning a career within the system while the lower ranks thought they were fighting against the system. Votes were a masquerade in which the upper ranks decided what the best outcome would be before discussing how it could be passed — there was absolutely no belief in any “collective wisdom”, only shepherds looking to guide their flock. None of this is part of leninist doctrine, but the social split and patriarchal outlook absolutely were characteristic of Lenin’s party — and is it a wonder that technocrats who look down on the common people would be attracted to an ideology that promotes there being a small cadre of very smart people who should yield absolute power over the rest of them?

All this sounds a bit naive of me; I sort of knew about this stuff before joining, but I didn’t really think it could happen to me, you know? I thought 1920s USSR had little in common with my life, and I just wanted to support some leftist organization that had at least some bite and radical character. I wouldn’t have though it necessary to read all these books and articles on the subject beforehand. Probably had I read them before, I wouldn’t really have grokked them anyway.

So yes I do believe at the very least leninism is fundamentally rotten. Revolutionary leninist parties turn into sects, electoral leninist parties turn into alternate career paths for the social-conscious lower managerial class. I also regard marxism as a mere historical artifact due to its keystone (materialist dialectics) being pseudoscience that can be used to claim or explain anything and glaring omissions in its social analysis. I do think “post-marxist” thought can be very interesting though; that is, thought that is in line with marxist lineage but deconstructing parts of the marxist orthodoxy.

And I wouldn’t write off a person based on the organization they find themselves in, since many people just want to help and find themselves in one organization or another based on luck. I’m sure many left-anarchists are assholes but I don’t think we’ll ever see a dictatorship that uses left-anarchism as its ideological underpinnings, for obvious reasons.