zlacker

I'm not advocating going Stalin or Mao is the solution, I'm saying that the current status quo needs re-adjustment.

I'm also from an underprivileged background (in a first world country as well), I witnessed first hand how the odds stacked against me have translated into my lived experiences.

Maybe unlike you, I have fought and lost against people with better parental financial situation I have a perspective that this is an issue, not something that can just be gritted through. Not all success is through hard work.

>>Aviceb+(OP)
Fair enough. I didn't expect that the "ultra" in ultra-left meant softer-than-mao. After all ultra is a pretty super superlative, right?

If I were to be just cynical, I could argue that your loss may be due to processing your uphill battle via this whole marxist framing and not via a more independent "OK, how can I improve my situation?" (e.g. switch companies/sector/trade/town/country).

But I agree, Not all success is through hard work. . Absolutely. My success is a proof of this, because I'm a mediocre programmer at best. Which invigorates my disbelief in programmers advocating the ultra-left Marx: In the programmers job-market how can one feel disadvantaged at all? The financial crisis 2008 left us untouched, while the majority of society were furloughed or fired. Same story this year.

My advice: This odds-stacked-against-you-framing is your biggest waste of time. Financially and spiritually.

>>idownv+T2
Stalin and Mao were autocrats. Autocracy and leftism/communism are not the same thing -- there have been just as many right-wing/fascist autocrats (if not more given the US' propensity to prop them up past their expiration dates) who have genocided their own people. I would argue that it's the consolidation of power that leads to bad outcomes regardless of political ideology.

What I would call "ultra-left" are militant anarcho-communists who believe in abolishing strong systems of centralized control in favor of community rule. So no nations, only self-governed communities of some arbitrarily small size. This jives with "ultra-left" in areas with leftist militia uprisings. Not saying it's practical, but there are well-established schools of leftist thought at play that predate Stalin and Mao.

Liberalism is a center-right ideology that tries to marry right-wing capital control economies with left-wing social values. Many on the left regard liberalism (and neo-liberalism) as a failed project, because with any clash between economics and social values, the economics tend to win out. I'm not saying communism is the answer, but a move away from a scarcity-based economy would be a good start.