For former socialists, there’s one argument I see them use for why they are not socialist anymore.
That argument is that they felt guilty about wanting to push their ideology onto others and so they started believing in parliamentary politics again where every opinion is valuable. My dad who used to be an anarchist as a teenager used this reasoning, as well as one of my teachers.
But this argument doesn’t make sense to me, because it makes politics into something which only revolves around opinions, while we communists and the capitalist class know it’s about power.
I feel like these people never learned much about their ideology when they were socialists. I think I will never stop being a communist, I know too much.
Have you seen this reasoning yourself?
As much as I agree with you, I would be careful with saying “I will never stop being a communist” and “they just weren’t socialist enough”. When I left a religious cult there came very similar arguments from people who are still in it now. They “will be Christian forever” and anyone who leaves the church “just didn’t believe enough”
Note that I do in fact agree with you here, it seems strange to change your analysis of the world and believe that all opinions are equal and valuable. They aren’t. But we also need to be aware of ourselves and our susceptibility to propaganda from the other side too. We are not immune and it’s important to show caution.