a good communist¶

Just saw someone suggest that, to be a good communist, one must lower their material prospects to that of the proletarian masses.

Cool concept in theory -- hey btw, any chance you guys are familiar with the lumpen? Or are they too dirty for your labor aristocrat sensibilities 🤔 Let's be real: the way you feel about "rich bitches" is the way 30% of the US and 90% of the world feels about you. But unlike those communists who happen to be petty bourgeois while aligning with the proletariat, you believe the REAL oppressed masses are beneath consideration. I believe you care about them; you (probably) want to help, to create better circumstances for them. But you center Proletarian™️ as the pinnacle of revolutionary potential, even in a context where the imperial proletariat is thoroughly enmeshed in the well-being of the empire. If you engage with them at all, it's in the form of charity work. You treat them like set dressing, or noble savages to be ameliorated, lest you be accused of being uncaring. The concept that they would be leaders in the movement is laughable to you, although you would deny it. How do I know this? Because if you truly believed there was any revolutionary potential to be found in the precariat AND you truly held this notion of "eschew wealth and live like the masses," you would not be employed. You'd deliberately try to be in a position of scraping by. And if you actually did that, you would be rightfully scorned by those same masses. They would see right through your cosplay. They would treat you like a bourgeois poverty fetishist, wealthy and entitled enough to choose to throw away the very stability they wish they had. Far better for someone with wealth to recognize their class position and use everything they have to build the movement, rather than discard it in some ritualistic purification rite. If I was handed a million dollars, I could think of a million ways to use it for the movement. (Side note: to anyone in that vaunted status of being both petty bourgeois/labor aristocrat AND wannabe revolutionary, hit me up. I've got plenty of ideas for how to use that money besides throwing it away.) Anyway, stop being a LARPer. Live in the real world. You clearly don't know or respect real poverty if you think this way.