> i agree with julio. if you don't have a marxist/heavy user of marxish
> analysis of social problems, then you aren't a leftist.
Actually, IMO, one does not need to be a Marxist to be a leftist. To be a leftist (e.g. a socialist, an anarchist, a communist, etc.) one need to be a social fighter, to fight on the side of the oppressed. Robespierre, Zapata, the Russian narodniki, etc. were all leftists and revolutionaries, but not Marxists. They fought on the side of the oppressed. How they did it, and how they rationalized what they did is a separate question.
As far as I'm concerned, people who struggle on the side of the oppressed and have the understanding that a particular type of oppression (e.g. lack of health care for working people) can be fully abolished within the framework of a capitalist society (i.e. without fundamentally subverting the state, the markets, and social inequality) are in the left, again, *as long as* they are fighting on the side of working people in a particular juncture. It's a broad tent.
On the other hand, to be a Marxist, all you need is to identify yourself as one, believe that you are a Marxist. It's not a very tough litmus test.
Now, the usage of these terms differs from place to place and time to time. I am not attempting a universal "definition" of the terms as much as responding to the question of what each of us, individually, means by the terms. This is what these terms mean *to me*.