I was walking across the bridge when I saw someone standing on the ledge, looking ready to jump.

I rushed over and shouted, “Don’t do it! Think of the collective struggle! There is so much worth organizing for!”

They looked up, wiping away tears, and asked, “Like what?”

I said, “Well… are you a reactionary, or do you fight for systemic progress?”

They sniffed. “I fight for systemic progress.”

“Great!” I said. “Are you a liberal reformist, or an anti-capitalist leftist?”

“An anti-capitalist leftist,” they replied.

“Fantastic! Are you an anarchist or a Marxist?”

“Marxist.”

“Incredible! Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist, or Maoist?”

“Trotskyist.”

“Amazing, comrades in the vanguard! Fourth International, or the International Socialist Tendency?”

“Fourth International!”

“Unbelievable! Posadist revolutionary permanent struggle, or orthodox United Secretariat?”

“Orthodox United Secretariat!”

“We are practically reading the exact same pamphlets! Now, tell me: when analyzing the Degenerated Workers’ State hypothesis regarding post-1928 Soviet bureaucratic collectivism, was the bureaucracy an emergent ruling class with unique exploitative relations to production, or merely a parasitic caste misallocating surplus value while preserving the proletarian property base?”

They frowned. “Clearly, state ownership meant it remained a distorted workers’ state, so the bureaucracy was merely a counter-revolutionary caste, not a true class.”

I took a step back, clenched my fist, and yelled:

“Die, class-collaborationist counter-revolutionary revisionist scab!”

…and shoved them off the ledge.