Students may have seen communist stickers or people selling books and magazines about communism around the Student Center. This has caused many reactions from many students but there is not much information around these people.
Drew Ambrosino is a junior majoring in computing and informatics. He is an aspiring musician and a communist. Currently, there is no official communism club at Rowan, but Ambrosino believes that they are going to have a club called the Rowan Communists in the near future.
Ambrosino’s interest in communism started last year while unsatisfied and exhausted by his daily routine. He would go to school then go to work and come home and have dinner with his family, work on some homework, and stay up till four in the morning making music.
“I hated it,” said Ambrosino. “It was a horrible process. I just hated the fact that one day I could be working some Schmucky desk job that I didn’t want to do. I wanted to be fulfilled in my life. And I realized that that wasn’t really possible under capitalism.”
He states that it wasn’t until his best friend Owen O’Connell, a fellow communist and the person trying to get the Rowan Communist club started, showed Ambrosino an article. The article talks about the art fund in Russia back in 1917, when they overthrew the government. The article stated that artists could be a part of this art fund and get paid a living wage.
“A comfortable living wage to just perform and create music or any type of art. And from then I was like, wow, sign me up,” said Ambrosino.
Ambrosino’s parents know that he is a communist, but neither are communists themselves. His mother attended one meeting, with a surprising reaction.
“She loved it,” said Ambrosino. “She’s not a communist by any means, but she really saw how much effort we were putting into building the organization. She saw how much study and preparation went into all of our interventions and all of our lead-offs, and was really surprised about the thoroughness of all of our ideas.”
Ambrosino said that the easiest way to break down communism is a moneyless, classless, and stateless society. Ambrosino states people have misconceptions about communism and recounts that people have yelled, screamed, and threatened him. People have called him a murderer and asked if they needed help with the gulags. Gulags were labor campuses maintained in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1955, where many people died.
“None of this is what communism represents at all,” said Ambrosino. “None of this is what we represent at all. What we represent is, you know, Marxism, we represent the working class or we fight for workers’ rights and the liberation of the working class. And people don’t understand that.”
The club is invested in the idea of bringing a Marxist perspective to campus.
“There are no clubs on campus putting forward concrete demands, putting forward concrete ideas, and guiding revolutionary movements towards something substantial,” said Ambrosino. “There are other leftist clubs on campus, but none of them do those things. None of them are Marxists.”
When Ambrosino states the revolutionary movement, he states the overthrow of the bourgeoisie government to replace it with a proletarian state. The Bourgeoisie, in a Marxist context, is the capitalist class who own most of society’s wealth and means of production.
“Smash the bourgeois state to pieces,” said Ambrosino. “It’s something that’s very important. Will this be violent? I think that’s the big question that we get asked a lot. And I would love a peaceful revolution. I think a lot of my comrades would love a peaceful revolution. Who wouldn’t, right? But we would be fools to expect a peaceful revolution. So while we would love one, we understand that the bourgeoisie will most likely not love to be overthrown. They will retaliate. And for that, we need to be prepared.”
He reiterated that he would prefer a peaceful revolution, but he believes that it is very unlikely.
“We need to be prepared,” said Ambrosino. “It would kind of be, you know, a little silly for us to not, but we’re not gonna start the violence. We’re not terrorists.”
They currently do hold meetings as an open discussion and people can be invited to the meetings and hear others’ perspectives. They do not want people talking over each other and don’t want people to come and put forward ideas that aren’t communist or Marxist.
“We would like to brief some people before they get invited to the meetings,” said Ambrosino. “Not some rigorous process, but like, if I have a nice conversation with you. Yeah, come on down. But like, ultimately, no, I don’t want people flooding these meetings with like, random ideas and stuff.”
Ambrosino stated that if someone is interested in learning about communism, you can go on socialistrevolution.org as there are many articles that people can read.
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You can definitely come to our meetings and put forward ideas that aren’t communist or Marxist, but expect a very thorough opposition to any ideas that are ultimately harmful to the interests of the working class!