My grandfather was a through-and-through Communist - a Red Russian who came to the US after escaping a Nazi firing squad and living in the forest for months. Once in the US, he organized labor, and got blackballed by McCarthy. And yet what he taught me, for as long as I can remember, was that life was not fair and I had no business expecting it to be.

He taught me that if I failed, it was no one's fault but my own. He taught me to live by my wits - how to survive outdoors in winter, how to shoot, how to fix machines, how to work wood. He raised me to survive a collapse of civilization because he had lived through one.

For him, self-reliance wasn't opposed to his politics. It was forged by them. I'm not sure what to make of your post, but I wanted to offer a different picture of what a Communist might teach.