this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2022
0 points (NaN% liked)

Communism

9332 readers
10 users here now

Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.

Rules for /c/communism

Rules that visitors must follow to participate. May be used as reasons to report or ban.

  1. No non-marxists

This subreddit is here to facilitate discussion between marxists.

There are other communities aimed at helping along new communists. This community isn't here to convert naysayers to marxism.

If you are a member of the police, armed forces, or any other part of the repressive state apparatus of capitalist nations, you will be banned.

  1. No oppressive language

Do not attempt to justify your use of oppressive language.

Doing this will almost assuredly result in a ban. Accept the criticism in a principled manner, edit your post or comment accordingly, and move on, learning from your mistake.

We believe that speech, like everything else, has a class character, and that some speech can be oppressive. This is why speech that is patriarchal, white supremacist, cissupremacist, homophobic, ableist, or otherwise oppressive is banned.

TERF is not a slur.

  1. No low quality or off-topic posts

Posts that are low-effort or otherwise irrelevant will be removed.

This is not a place to engage in meta-drama or discuss random reactionaries on lemmy or anywhere else.

This includes memes and circlejerking.

This includes most images, such as random books or memorabilia you found.

We ask that amerikan posters refrain from posting about US bourgeois politics. The rest of the world really doesn’t care that much.

  1. No basic questions about marxism

Posts asking entry-level questions will be removed.

Questions like “What is Maoism?” or “Why do Stalinists believe what they do?” will be removed, as they are not the focus on this forum.

  1. No sectarianism

Marxists of all tendencies are welcome here.

Refrain from sectarianism, defined here as unprincipled criticism. Posts trash-talking a certain tendency or marxist figure will be removed. Circlejerking, throwing insults around, and other pettiness is unacceptable.

If criticisms must be made, make them in a principled manner, applying Marxist analysis.

The goal of this subreddit is the accretion of theory and knowledge and the promotion of quality discussion and criticism.

Check out ProleWiki for a communist wikipedia.

Communism study guide

bottombanner

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Eastern Marxist Leninists have refuted this position multiple times. I refuse to be apart of this community if its going the route of maoists.

[–] muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Maoists can post articles here, but they don't control the community. You are 100% allowed and encouraged to ridicule them and their dogmatic ideas.

[–] Rafael_Luisi@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Bullying dogmatic people is based

[–] juchebot88@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is a long essay, so right now I'll just respond to a few points.

(1) Cultural Revolution. This is a very complicated topic, with much more nuance than either ultras or ML's give it. But to speak very broadly, the problem isn't that it mobilized the people to do nasty things to the bourgeoisie; the problem is that it was voluntarist and anarchistic. Hurting and shaming the bourgeoisie is a worthy goal, but it accomplishes nothing if it isn't accompanied by a real increase in people's living standards. The tendency of late Mao, and even more, of the Gang of Four, was to think that communism could be built simply by instilling in people the right ideology; which is idealist rather than materialist, for ideology is a function of material conditions. Thus Deng's corrective, "socialism is not poverty," was desperately needed. One can argue that Deng went to far, and ultimately fell into right deviation. But we should not allow this to obscure the fact that Gang of Four were massively left-deviant, and that Deng's occasional rightism was simply the inevitable reaction. Thus, if China during the 1990s came dangerously close to neoliberalism, it was ultimately the fault, not of Deng, but of the Gang of Four.

The DPRK, by the way, does uphold a cultural revolution -- it is an integral part of the Three Fronts theory, so the writer of this article is wrong again. The difference is that here the cultural revolution is ongoing process, proceeding alongside economic development and gradually transforming the whole of society. It is planned, rather than voluntaristic. And this brings us to the central problem with "Maoism" and all forms of ultraleftism. Processes need to be guided; you cannot simply hand people guns and assume good things will happen.

(2) On "Vladimir-Fucking-Putin." The author finds it odd that MLs give critical support to the Russian Federation in its fight against Ukrainian Nazis, but not to the Shining Path in its struggle against the Fujimori and his goons. The difference is this: Putin, by stomping the Ukro-Nazis, is actually performing a useful service. What Gonzalo did was the reverse of useful: it alienated the masses, and drove people who otherwise might have sympathized with socialism straight into the arms of the Fujimori regime. There is a reason that many Peruvian leftists today believe (in the face of any real evidence) that the Shining Path was a CIA op. Which brings us to --

(3) Gonzalo was violent, but so were the Bolsheviks. The implied "goodness" of violence smacks of anarchism, or of Georges Sorel. As Marxists, we are not for violence; we merely recognize its occasional necessity. We don't do the fascist thing of walking around and advocating violence for its own sake; that is adolescent. We would all prefer a peaceful transition to socialism; the problem is that the bourgeoisie never lets it happen. We advocate, not violence as such, but the right of people to defend themselves by any means necessary. If some Gonzaloite can explain to me how killing pregnant women and scalding peasants to death constitutes necessary and appropriate revolutionary violence, I'll gladly become an ultra; but until then, I'll keep thinking of the Shining Path as basically Azov with a red flag.

(4) Why don't AES states export revolution anymore? The DPRK does, in a limited way; obviously it can't do much given present circumstances, but they do give what aid they can to revolutionary movements around the world. The question really comes down to: Why doesn't China export revolution?

The flippant answer is that we should be grateful China doesn't; after all, their attempts to export revolution during the 1970s led to some of the strangest foreign policy the world has ever seen. The serious answer is this. Global capitalism is in its last, decadent stage: accumulation through destruction. No longer able to produce real wealth, the bourgeoisie create wealth in the imperial core by destroying it elsewhere. Thus, it is imperialism that now must export revolution in order to survive. To uphold stability, and global trade, in the face of never-ending destruction is now, ironically, the revolutionary position.

Appreciate your answer, especially for the cultural revolution. It always irked my how ML's just dismiss it without analysis. This could lead to incredible danger in the future, where it could lead to abandoning the idea altogether, ignoring not even Mao, but the post-october Lenin realising that precisely this is the hardest part of socialist revolution, which needs to be done if we are to think of truly building the socialism.

[–] muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If I wasn't really busy and this wasn't so long, I'd tackle the arguments, because this is rehashing everything the maoists are completely wrong about, disproven by history. I hope others tackle these arguments in the spirit of zhou enlai and deng xiaoping.

I stopped reading at the point when he quoted Marx about top-down. Literally the same quote was also chosen by mensheviks almost 120 years ago for basically the same purpose.

[–] Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Maoists do make compelling points. As communists we should be considering the Maoist point of view without shit-slinging and we should consider criticisms to be in good faith.

The obstacle for me is that Maoist organizing has only gotten weaker support from the masses since the 90s and there has not been any successful projects. From an analysis of theory standpoint, I often find them spot on in many of their observations. The global communist movement is a lot weaker than we (in the West at least) would like to admit. China may be making advances for China and helping to weaken Western imperialism's hold on the world, which we all obviously applaud, but there's no concrete evidence to suggest that they will be leading the global communist movement from a place of ideology anytime soon.

We are in a period of retreat and concession to the bourgeoisie still. Are there encouraging signs for the future? Sure. But we've got a long way to go. It's no surprise that there are some overwhelming obstacles for M-L parties in the world that have nerfed the revolutionary energy. But communists are still in the position of gaining support among the masses and you can't force the revolution without a truly revolutionary situation, especially after 30+ years of unimpeded neoliberalism. Perfect theory is never perfect in practice, and Maoism from Peru and the RIM is proof of this. Meanwhile, the general strike happening in India is a result of the M-L party organizing workers, not the Maoist party. We're really only just getting started. We can't let our desperate hopes put the cart before the horse.

Sorry if this comment wasn't the most clear or connected. I'm just kind of spitballing what's coming to mind. I personally thought it was a good article. Thanks for sharing.

[–] muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

but there's no concrete evidence to suggest that they will be leading the global communist movement from a place of ideology anytime soon.

SWCC, the Doi Moi reforms, and other similar measures are showing that utilizing markets to serve socialism is 100% effective. China is either already beating or about to beat the US on every meaningful metric: % of world trade, life expectancy, home ownership rates, education, patents / tech advancement... etc.

Maoists on the other hand are still playing theory games in their heads, constantly bickering with each other about who is more revisionist, and killing and alienating themselves from every group / peoples they encounter.

[–] arisu_magatoroido@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

He supports Cultural Revolution. I can say it’s not a good article just by this point

[–] American_Communist22@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

why shouldn't we support the cultural revolution?

[–] arisu_magatoroido@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I have to say during Cultural revolution you could attack anyone and then many red guards would follow you. He mustnt to be capitalist or rightist. Many schools were destroyed for it's teachers, names or histories. During Cultural revolution, the laws didnt work. Imaging you argued with your neighbour yesterday and now he is leading hundreds of red guards standing in front of your home.That was happening every day

[–] cameraandsickle@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The evidence for the Marxist-Leninist position becoming increasingly correct is a few reddit posts and one excellent Roderic Day article. Lol. A lot of my pro-China comrades hate Duterte and support Maoist revolutions in India and the Philippines, as do I, not even Joma hates China as much as online Maoists do.

This chasing of ideological purity and discarding real-world information is undialectical.

[–] cameraandsickle@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

In fact, Rosa Luxemburg made another great point here. Marxism should be treated as a living thing, at its best when it is interacting with the world, but all of the meaningful interactions of the past forty years have been Maoist actions. Marxism-Leninism and the respective, remaining ‘Marxist-Leninist’ organizations and parties have been caught-on-the-back foot, or docile, or lacking in direction, with few consequential actions taken, at best, and useless, irrelevant, if not outright misguided or wrong in many parts of the world at worst.

Marxism-Leninsm-Maoism has yet to produce a successful revolution, unless you are counting Nepal which I know you hate to talk about so let's discard it. How can you look at what Marxist-Leninist countries have done over the past fifty years and say that Marxism-Leninism has not advanced? It has advanced greatly, but you just dismiss these advances as "revisionism".