We aren’t born revolutionaries, we all come to revolutionary conclusions in different ways. This series is about how our comrades came to revolutionary politics.
I knew that coming to university would allow me to meet people that shared my political views. Coming from a small college, I’d never talked about the issues that face human beings and our planet with my friends at home. Most political talk was limited to surface level drama Read more…
It took half a decade of deliberation before I joined the Labour party. Born at the start of the millennium, I’m not quite old enough to remember the Blair years with any clarity – I was two years old on the onset of the Iraq War, and still wearing Read more…
Like many people today, I first encountered Marxism online. With a growing interest amongst young people in socialism and Marxism, there is equally a growing number of online “Marxist meme” pages, Twitter accounts and Facebook groups. Quickly, social media became my go-to for Marxist theory, history and politics. Although Read more…
The book that made me a Marxist was Lenin’s State and Revolution, which I first read at the age of 13. It was almost revelatory in how it showed me the façade of the ‘democracy’ that we live in. This was no ‘free society’, with elections where people have a Read more…
I arrived at Marxism for one reason: my search for an alternative. I’ve lived all my life, bar the period I spend studying at Swansea University, in the strong Labour constituency that is the Torfaen County Borough. This year is the 35th anniversary of the county’s inception, and it Read more…
I am a primary school teacher from London and I used to believe in reformism. I wished for someone like Corbyn to come along with new ideas and shake everything up. Sure enough, he has now come along and promises housing, free education and childcare. However, now he is Read more…
In truth, there are many experiences and thoughts which have led me to Marxism. Having traveled extensively as a child, it’s hard not to visit the Global South and its poor masses and question the economic structures which exploit them. Also, as the son of a father whose childhood Read more…
The most significant turning point in my life to date was a brief conversation in the Fitzroy Tavern in central London, after a demonstration against tuition fees in 2011. My friend had taken me along to meet some supporters of the organisation she’d got involved with that summer, the Read more…
I was brought up by French financiers and former Cambodian aristocrats, which is an unusual childhood through which to develop communist ideas. Ever since primary school I was taught that you cannot redistribute wealth because “people are inherently greedy”. These ideas characterised my upbringing. But the society I lived Read more…
Things have been getting worse. Students are being saddled with debt and their mental health is deteriorating as a result. At the same time, the NHS is being bled dry and can no longer take care of an ailing population. It seems the only jobs available for young people Read more…
Growing up I always considered myself a Marxist and was always vocal in criticising capitalism during lessons at school. My parents had struggled with four children and having to move around the country to find work. My childhood was quite austere in some respects and I could see how hard-working Read more…
Growing up in an old mining village, I have always been acutely aware of the effect Thatcherism had on Britain. Those around me would reminisce about how it used to be; a shop, a church, a train station and a pub all gave life to the area. But by Read more…