From a guy bragging about bad faith shifting the goal posts on Marxism-Leninism I give to you, a mini masterclass in dialectics and global polity. Enjoy.
“Tankies can’t answer my questions, they keep blocking me”
First:
Red rising, iron front is rusted.
So yeah, if you’re a disingenuous fuck, sure, why wouldn’t they refuse to engage in discussion? However, I’m taking the patience approach, and explaining despite preconceived biases.
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1.)
You’ve already dug in that horseshoe theory is a thing, are you here to learn, or reassert preexisting beliefs? Dialectics concerns itself with qunantitative change over time of systems until they become qualitative changes. Of course capitalism isn’t and the state isn’t dismantled immediately. But ML governance is governance by the will of the people. We’ve been the only people historically to actually participate in anti-fascist action, such as the 1941 defense and of Leningrad and the march back to Eastern Germany against the nazis on the Eastern front.
Same as anti-fascism in Ukraine this very moment…
Chechens de-nazifing.
—anyway—
When you’re asserting metaphysical ideas of what you think socialism, communism, and Marxism Leninism is, you eternalized them into forms—the exact opposite of how the philosophy behind dialectical materialism works.
Instead of looking at the various economic stages as property relations and the changing development of them over time, and as inspired and upheld by the material conditions within their countries—you get a utopian ideal of pure socialism which is never attainable.
We live in the real world—not the world of ideas
States will not wither away so long as international imperialist capitalist cartels exist.
You’re asking for a black and white change instantly, when change takes time.
Marx wrote of the birth of a new system holding onto vestiges and pock marks of the old system as the change occurs. (Communist Manifesto, & Capital Vol 1)
Engles wrote of the first stage being state capitalism, not as the final solution but the kernel of the solution lying within it—then as imperial capitalism erodes, as does the need for state capitalist control. (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific)
Lenin envisioned socialized means of distribution. (Imperialism, The Highest Stage Of Capitalism)
Western capitalist warmongers have prevented this at every opportunity with every actually existing socialist republic.
But China is rising. Russia is taking a stand. The Sino-Soviet brotherhood is alive and well.
India is rising,
Africa is rising.
Latin America is rising.
The Anglosphere is shook.
Socialism is coming into fruition. Labor is already socializing production, we want the socialization of the distribution of the fruits of labor.
How does that in any way sound “red fascist” to you other than your own preconceived notions?
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Next, On idealism and Utopia socialists.
// 2.
Communists are not necessarily left on social issues. I happen to be, but there have always been progressive and conservative elements in every successful in every communist movement. Mao wrote extensively about right and left deviations in the party that neglected to serve the people in “On contradiction”
Take Putin for example, he’s being pressured to rule as a popular front president; the Russian communists are an actual political force, to rein in his liberal right deviation. And the nationalization of industry is a very socialistic action. This is again material and not ideological analysis
Take Lenin’s work “Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder” where he dismantles Trotsky’s arguments for instant socialism and permanent revolution, where he discredits ultra-left deviations, predicting the Maoist tendencies well before they ever became a thing. That’s incredible explanatory power of dialectal materialist analysis.
So by “Tankie” I assume you mean Marxism-Leninism
here:
Ideology is nothing without actual material change. Our ideological alignment wants to change property relations and end class society. Not just talk about what it would look like ideally
How we get there? Well, that changes within each of various countries’ material economic conditions and the political alignments of the people that make up the nation. This nation is distinct from the formal state, with defined borders and a formal governance. Many nations can exist within a single state.
The dialectical model of analysis sees the interactions and forces of systems upon other interconnected systems. In current economics and property relations—it is a the guiding model for the process of change wherein one system, capitalism, today in its imperialist form, is dialectically replaced by socialist economic relations. Then, at the socialist stage, as capitalism ceases to exist except in vestiges, communistic distribution and production can begin. There’s always a balance of the past affecting the present, and the present aiming for a future that eradicates the past’s property and class relations to a more equitable form.
We use Marxist dialectical materialism to guide our analyses, but we’re not orthodox dogmatic Marxists, which is why you could very easily get two differing answers to the same general question depending on the context of the question in regards to the historical moment. To simplify, the answer to “What Is To Be Done” is quite different now in 2022, than it was in 1917.
We also rely on historical materialism, the story of interactions of systems in different epochs and how they affect the current social relations. The dialectic changes from country to country, and in different material circumstances. This isn’t hard to understand—the material world matters. And history affects the present.
So why democratic centralism in Marxist-Leninist programmes? It is a necessary tenet inside the party, as it provides a united front once a decision is made to do something. And it disallows for saboteurs who would undermine the democratically decided direction. Unlike in a liberal democracy, like the US Senate legislating from minority power, where the minority can hold up the passage of bills popular with the vast majority of the population. *ahem* Medicare for All *ahem*
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3. On historical inaccuracy and dogmatism or rather lack thereof.
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Our radlib chud says:
“Lenin dismantled the workers councils” [Citation Needed]
Put your money where your mouth is, the affirmative claimant bears the burden of proof.
Edit: the proof, anarchist thought, upholding Makhno.
That said:
Lenin didn’t dismantle the councils.
Grover Furr was a better historian than most western sources. You should read him sometime, on both Lenin and Stalin specifically.
Just like the current Ukraine conflict, context matters. Our anti-Soviet critics lack the coherence to understand the USSR was at war for nearly it’s entire existence, was the first global socialist project, and was an experiment, not the dogmatic model for all countries. It had flaws, no one denies this. But it taught us so, so much on both what did and didn’t work in building socialism. It also showed us how relentlessly and ruthlessly the imperialist capitalists would fight to maintain their class positions
Assuming your hypothetical true, the workers councils were dismantled, (they weren’t) but benefit of the doubt, we have to ask why. What material change would necessitate that?
I’d love to see your source.
Fact checking in the chat.
Fact check.
Tagential to my point anyway. Moving forward.
Literally all former socialist experiments using Marxist thought to build a socialist economy, have been a little different than Marx predicted. Revolution didn’t happen in the most advanced capitalist countries, but in the poorest, most exploited countries. Any serious marxist acknowledges this fact.
But Western hegemony of the dollar did undermine most socialist projects, especially the Soviet Union. China learned from their mistakes. Vietnam Cuba and Laos too.
The worker’s control of the means of production, as Engles explained in anti-Dühring comes as a process, again, it doesn’t just go like this:
Revolution—>instant worker control of all means—>abolition of state.
The rest of global economic systems need to be taken into account, defense against them needs to be planned. That’s why a strong authoritarian state has always been necessary to maintain control in socialist experiments.
China’s genius was this: it allowed and entangled itself with capitalism to industrialize rapidly, and integrated itself so much into the global dollar hegemonic banking system, it could, at any time, destabilize the world banking system because of this. And by expanding it’s trading partnership to Africa and Latin America, with the goal of mutual prosperity and development.
The anti-communist left always seems to miss the bigger picture of the polity of the rest of the world and socialist experiments having to exist within it alongside global capitalism. Focusing on a single tree wishing it to a perfect socialist form, missing the budding forest as socialism in the real world grows around them.
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