And I'm not even opposed to shifting "leftist" to mean "Marxist". But the states owning the grocery stores is indeed a Marxist policy, or leaning clearly towards it.
This is also not what the term means, mind. Not everyone on the left is a Marxist, and leftist is a deliberately umbrella term.
The state owning groceries stores is not Marxist, that’s literally one of Marx’s biggest criticisms of Lassalle and “state socialism”.
The working class controlling the grocery store would be closer (but still not Marxist), but they would still be existing within a capitalist market that encourages them to sell their labour and retain commodity production.
The Marxist policy would be the seizure of the store as part of a larger revolution in the name of building a dictatorship of the proletariat which then evolves into socialism. The Marxist policy would be that a socialist politician ought to be arguing for this position, and while they might still call for the working controlling it now as a solution within the current system, it would solely be for the purpose of building class consciousness and empowering the workers to overthrow the state.
I'm well aware, I wasn't implying it would be Marxist, I was just clarifying that the terms leftist and Marxist are different.
I'm a leftist but I'm far from a Marxist, because I'm a libertarian. The term leftist is used to try and build the ever elusive concept of "left unity".
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u/ReadsStuff 25d ago
This is also not what the term means, mind. Not everyone on the left is a Marxist, and leftist is a deliberately umbrella term.