So, while I have "I'm a commie btw" in my bio, I rarely talk about this. I guess I'll talk a bit about my politics.

When I started becoming politically active in 2003, this was essentially a response to Pim Fortuyn's rise as a rightwing populist. He quickly got killed, but my fire was kindled. I started out in the Dutch SP, at the time the only party of relevance that broke with the dominant free market narrative. Itself a post-Maoist formation, filling the electoral gap the Labour party and communist party left behind which moved to the right and ceased to exist respectively.

But it was not a marxist party by any stretch. In fact, it was far to the right compared to Labour of the 1970s. I was quickly finding out the political level inside the party was pretty meagre. I was yearning for more. So, I got into contact with a trotskyist group active inside the SP, at the time called Offensive, nowadays Socialist Alternative. From 2005 to about 2009, I count my political formation as communist to this organisation, which I learned inside out on all (mostly international) levels.

Eventually I realised (trying to keep this brief) that the 'trotskyist strategy' really wasn't working. Worse, there was no real understanding of a need for programme. I understood that it was supposed to be more than a wishlist, but I had no real idea where to begin.

When insisting on an answer to a comrade woth at the international office in London, I got the answer that "our program is the communist manifesto, the critique of the Gotha program, the first four congresses of Comintern, the transitional program..." the list went on. I kid you not. I was supposed to convince the working class to read a fucking library?!

At that time, 2009, I came across the Weekly Worker, of a small group calling itself the CPGB. This publication changed my views on democracy radically. The WW is one of the very few places on the left (at the time anyway, things did get better since) where you could actually read dissenting views. People disagreeing with eachother, all published and given room in your publication! What a concept!

Suffice to say I learned a thing or two and became a fellow traveler. I read a book by one of their leading figures, Mike Macnair, called 'Revolutionary Strategy' and was awestruck. Just having spent years in a 'dead Russians society' with the trotskyists, this was a guy that dared to question the legitimacy of Lenin et al, while making a ton of good sense.

Mike's argument, in a nutshell, is that we need to look back to the old SPD, Kautsky et al, to understand the Bolsheviks. Nowadays this is more common sense, but in 2009 this was a revelation. Listen to renegade Kautsky?! In 2006 Lars Lih published an academic book in the same vein, called Lenin Rediscovered. These two books provided a solid foundation for me looking for a new way forward.

On May Day 2014 I cofounded Communist Platform, which at the start was covert operation in the SP. In the SP because in our estimation this party was playing a central role in the Dutch workers movement, and covert because of its bureaucratic nature (I was already expelled once in 2009 for being a member of aforementioned trotskyist organisation).

Fast forward to 2020. Our group has moderate success in the youth wing, mostly because the party leadership is in crisis and is unable to give a political lead. We, small as we are, *are* able to provide a political lead and are starting to win elections for leadership positions.

The old leadership is rattled and expels us en masse. In their hysteria and seeing communists ghosts everywhere, they completely alienate their youth wing, which they 'disenfranchise'. Hundreds of active members are either expelled or leave the party.

This leaves us to today, where the expelled comrades and some fellow travels reformed to a new party, currently called 'the Socialists' (we are considering a new name), having just adopted a communist min-max program in the old Social Democratic tradition (although quite a bit longer) and building local chapters. A long way to go for sure, but getting there.

Meanwhile, my 'heresy' against the old Bolshevik hagiography got a new development when I came across a little book called "Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution". Awful title, awesome book.

Reading it, it put down some essential puzzle pieces I've been doubting about for years regarding conventional economic thinking on the far left. Instead of the state doing all the things, this book essentially described a cybernetic model where workers control is put front and center.

Little factlet from this book I never read anywhere from my trotskyist past: the Bolsheviks took power on 7 November 1917 (new calendar). Guess when they decreed that workers may no longer socialise factories themselves and had to accept one man leadership? 1923? 1921? 1918?

No.

A week later: 14 November 1917.