Marxism

[Kremlinian Russia]

I believe Marx's views on class have held true since the dawn of civilization. Almost every modern society has had an upper class that often held more rights than the lower class, and in today's society that upper class consists of those who own capital. Class revisionism is a word made up by people with no interest in real progress posing as progressives. They focus on their own ethnic group or gender instead of focusing on the improvement of conditions for all people everywhere because they only care about their own group and no one else. Seriously, what kind of person says "what about black people?" When someone says "free healthcare for the poor." Like yes you stupid prick, black people will get free healthcare too if they can't afford healthcare. What, did you think we meant "free healthcare for everyone except blacks." Come on. We talk about getting workers rights for all workers and someone says "well what about latino immigrant farm workers." Uh, yeah? If we get rights for all workers then latino immigrant farm workers get rights too. Why is this concept so hard to grasp? If we help all poor people, your specific subset of poor people will be helped. You should frankly be happy we're helping all of the downtrodden instead of constantly making it about your group and yourself. At this point, the same people make the claim that left wingers think LGBT rights and women's rights are viewed as less important. They aren't. Once again, from the top, all human beings deserve equal rights. Everyone. I just think that class inequality is a more nagging issue in this current time than gender inequality. It doesn't mean I don't think gender inequality exists or that I approve of it. We can fight for the rights of more than one group of people without having to pick and choose who we fight for. You can walk and chew gum.

Okay now that I'm done ranting about why class reduction accusers are full of it, I think Marxist-Leninism is slightly revisionist. Marx observed society's ills of class conflict, and he explained his idea of what a better society looked like. Lenin put this into practice and showed what he thought was the way to create Marx's ideal society. He didn't create it of course, but marxist-leninists thought they would. Maybe revision isn't a good term for it. Maybe "an expanded philosophy" or "add on" is a better way to view Marxist-Leninism. Lastly, I think just the last 20 years alone have vindicated Marx's worldview. We're basically a world of workers and owners of profit. Some workers make more money than others and have better working conditions, but all workers share one thing in common. You're at the mercy of your employer. You don't have a choice but to work so you can eat, and whatever your employer decides to do is more often than not what ends up going down. Some of us are fortunate enough to he unionized like myself, but unions are a dying concept in America and to this day, even jobs that have unions often try to go around the unions anyhow. Even a top notch lawyer is relying on his boss for the means to buy food and keep a roof over head. If he gets fired, it's a pipeline to a tent city in San Francisco. There's a slippery slope down to the streets. The owners of capital don't have to worry about "losing their job." They have far more control over the way they acquire their money and while they may fall on hard times, only the total collapse of their business will damage them in a significant way. A simple recession could put you or I out of a job, onto the street. Think about that. I don't agree completely with Marx's solution to the problem, but I think Marx was correct in pointing out that there is a problem, and it seems to be getting worse nowadays.

I agree strongly with the idea that ML is an "add-on" to Marxism — a sort of filling of the blanks of the fill-in-the-blank parts of the Manifesto. In the same way that Хлeбъ и воля was a filling-of-the-blanks for an anarchist society based on mutual aid, ML fills in the blanks by extending the Marx-era ideas of vanguardism and proletarian dictatorship to cover more aspects of society than Marx had originally wrote about.

Also important is that Marxism-Leninism is the application of Marxism to the epoch of imperialism, the most important of Lenin's own theories was the analysis of imperialism and its development in the late 19th century from the 1860s onwards up until the point of modern day imperialism by 1900 and the true epoch of dominion of finance capital and monopolies, but also the full splitting of the world amongst the imperialist powers and their organizations. Leninism was the development of Marxism to analyse this imperialist world system which had developed, but also the development of critiques of groups such as the Narodniks (which have eerily similar policies to the Maoists, I mean the Maoists even considered the peasant commune to be the basis of communism, just like the Narodniks.), various Menshevik groupings, the Social-Democratic leadership of the 2nd International (namely Karl Kautsky, who receives the brunt of the attacks by far), and so on. Marxism-Leninism is thus the most important development in Marxism since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed their philosophy and killed the Old Philosophy, as Marxism was the only philosophy that became a science, as opposed to the older philosophies which claimed to explain the sciences and stand above them as they had since the days of Ancient Greece (Andrei Zhdanov does a good job explaining this in a critique to a Comrade Alexandrov here: https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/li ... phy.htm#s4). Marxism-Leninism is thus an essential tool of the Communist during this current epoch, and the guiding science of proletarian liberation.

And so stand my views on Marxism-Leninism. Also worth noting is that revisionism isn't when something is 'changed' in a Marxist context, but when the agents of the bourgeoisie attempt to mask themselves as communists, and revise Marxism to be anti-Marxist, to revise Marxism to the needs of capital. As such, ML is not revisionism, but an upholding of Marxist science and the application of those scientific principles by Comrade Lenin and the Communist Party. As for the development of the Vanguard and proper Marxist-Leninist tactics, such developments arose from the political lessons of the Paris Commune and 1905 in Russia, and these tactics were proven to be the correct tactics for the foundation of communist parties, which have achieved their successes as an advanced Vanguard of the working class, but also as the most advanced organization of the working class.

Marx has henceforth been proven right, his scientific analysis was not based on guesswork like those who came before him, but from objective analysis of the contradictions of capitalist society which are proving themselves correct once more. From overproduction crises to the concentration of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists, Marx has been proven correct again and again. As Marx and Engels are constantly barraged with all sorts of insults from being 'lazy troglodytes' to 'racist anti-semites', these insults show that the capitalists have not managed to uproot Marxism as the science of the proletariat, and instead must resort to slander and assault to keep Marx and Engels down. Worse still are their assaults on Lenin and Stalin, who they have turned into monstrous boogeymen who resemble horror movie villains more so than their actual real life characters. The defense of Marxism-Leninism from slanderers and attackers is the duty of all communists, who must show the capitalists that they cannot win, and that their toadies who spread their ideology are exactly that, toadies and pseudo-intellectuals who seek to poison the working class with all sorts of idealisms and fears, whether that is the preposterous argument that communism is when things get taken from hard working people to lazy people (despite the fact that even Marx addressed such an argument in Critique of the Gotha Program when talking about bourgeoise equality), or the argument that socialism is some kind of Utopian dream, when countless Marxists have exposed such an argument as a complete falsehood, especially Engels in his work Socialism: Scientific and Utopian. Today, the capitalists still send their intellectuals to slander, and accidentally prove Marx correct again when he said: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force" in the German Ideology

I agree with the Labour Theory of Value in general, and some of Marx's analysis of the relationships between the classes, but his conclusions about how society will progress through socialism into communism are highly suspect and haven't really been borne out by history. I have more of a problem with Lenin, who I consider to be the architect of the authoritarianism which pervaded 20th century socialist states. Personally, I'm a reformist and utopian at heart, and have very little trust in the viability or safety of insurrectionist revolutions.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs sounds nice and all until you realize sometimes people need more than they can produce.

What's funny is that Marx wrote that communism in its earliest phase (known to us as socialism, thanks to Lenin) recognizes that one man produces more than the other, and does not submit to the bogus theory of bourgeoise equality.

To quote: "But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal." - Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program

Homosexuality was legalized in the Soviet Union in 1917. Homosexuality was legalized in Cuba since 1979 (though it was still discriminated against.)

Women obtained the right to vote in the USSR in 1917. They were the first country to do so. Discrimination against blacks was not nearly as strong as it was in Soviet Russia as it was in the U.S., however this could be due to the fact there were very few blacks in the USSR.

The USSR had an extremely similar diet and calorie consumption, and at one time, had higher calorie consumption daily then the U.S. (that is from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization by the way.)

Cuba has practically eliminated hunger:
https://www.wfpusa.org/countries/cuba/#

But yeah, maybe Marxism sucks because the CIA written textbook you were given in school tells you so.

but then homosexuality was recriminalised.

Again why is the homosexuality issue such a big deal? Oh no Soviet boogeyman banned the gays, all achievements of socialism are therefore null and void despite the fact the USSR was just subscribing to the most prevalent and at the time 'most proven' scientific belief on homosexuality. Soviet criminal code on Homosexuality, introduced in 1934 isn't even that bad, considering there are countries which will straight up execute you for being gay. Not only that, but Lesbianism wasn't even illegal in the USSR, just sodomy, which the USSR prosecuted on the basis of Engels's criticism, that it was a practice arisen from the degradation of women by their husbands. (Sodomy under article 154-a, translated fully as: 154-a. Sexual intercourse between a man and a man (sodomy) -

imprisonment for a term of three to five years.

Sodomy committed with the use of violence or with the use of the dependent position of the victim, -

imprisonment for a term of five to eight years. [April 1, 1934 (SU No. 15, Article 95)]. A Russian version of the law code can be found here, google translate works semi-well.). Was the policy wrong? Ultimately yes, but it was a mistake as opposed to a full on sign of the evils of Stalin, a mistake grounded in the science of the time period. One cannot call Engels evil for the fact he called Sodomy a degenerate practice when Homosexuality was perceived negatively at the time. Gay rights in the USSR are often a taboo topic, and you're expected to hate the USSR for something that most countries and scientists thought at the time (with the notable exception of the German study for sexuality in the Weimar Republic). The truth is a lot more nuanced, and a topic which Marxists have talked about for a long time, with many Marxists believing it to be degeneracy according to the science at the time, and Marxists today seeing it as no more than a natural sexual behaviour. Even then, there are some which still believe the old criticisms, and the PSR of Albania had sodomy outlawed for the reasons of Engels.

The DPRK is not completely Marxist. It, if I remember correctly, has formed its own ideology.

Kim Jong-Un emphasized way back in the day that the DPRK couldn't follow ML principles, as they were too predicated on a culture of European capitalism that didn't exist in Korea and so would have an entirely different historical trajectory. They're doing they're own thing as far as they're concerned.

Their own thing being Bukharinism apparently:
“The entrepreneurs and traders of our country are fellow- travellers… not only in carrying out the democratic revolution but also in socialist construction”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘On the Immediate Tasks of the People’s Power in Socialist Construction’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 37).

“From the beginning our policy in regard to the national bourgeoisie was not only to carry out the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution together with them, but also to take them along with us to a socialist, communist society”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Let Us further Strengthen the Socialist System of Our Country’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 6; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 317).

“The national capitalists… came out in support of the Party’s line of the socialist revolution”, the Party’s line of the socialist revolution”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 20).

“The capitalist elements still remaining in town and country will have to be… remoulded along socialist lines, instead of expropriating them”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Every Effort for the Country’s Reunification and for Socialist Construction in the Northern Half of the Republic’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 9; Pyongyang; 1982; p. 201).

“The socialist transformation of private trade and industry… proceeded in close combination with the remoulding of men, with the result that private traders and manufacturers were reshaped into socialist working people”. (Kim Han Gil: op. cit.; p. 387).

“Since our Party adopted a policy of transforming capitalist traders and manufacturers peacefully, instead of expropriating them, the form of class struggle could not but assume a specific character. Class struggle attendant on the socialist transformation of capitalist trade and industry was unfolded mainly by means of persuasion and education”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 26).

As we can clearly see in the DPRK example, they have not progressed past the National Bourgeoise revolutionary stage, and have perverted Marxism to create 'Juche', a National Bourgeoise ideology that hides under words and phrases that sound 'socialist' to the untrained. In reality, the DPRK is nothing more than a National Bourgeoise regime, which has never progressed the revolution towards the phase of socialist revolution and class struggle against the National Bourgeoisie following the defeat of the Comprador Bourgeoisie. Additional reading on the DPRK subject can be read here: https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/ ... bkorea.htm, http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/KoreaNS.htm.

2 out of 3 of them were sucessful, but as far as i know, wasn't the PC destroyed by imperialists soon after it';s founding?

Yes; Marx wrote about the causes of their failure extensively.

Thankfully the sacrifice of the Paris Commune would give way to the development of new tactics, leading to the first successful socialist revolution in 1917. While it is a shame the PC lost, they provided an immense political education to the working class thanks to the analysis made by the Marxists afterwards.

---

This post is already too long and with too much time in the making, I will probably just drop it as is for now even if it does not address some of the other things that have been said on this thread (The Holodomor subject, an In-depth look at China, The 'MLs don't understand Marxism' argument, "Marx's outline was never followed", and so on)

[Cisairse]

I mean virtually every French government has failed so

[Stellar Colonies]

The Zapatistas, the Rojava, and the Paris Commune would like a word.

One of those failed, Rojava is about to fail, and i'm not sure how successful we can call the Zapatistas. They do exercise autonomy of a few of their local communities - but this is as the behest of a greater foreign power. I'm not sure that you would be able to call the Zap's a successful example, seeing as their survival is dependent upon a capitalist narco-state electing not to kill them.

That's only because of an overwhelming force from a hostile government controlling far more resources. No system or ideology is going to allow revolutionaries occupying a single city to fight off an entire country which surrounds them.

[Ostroeuropa]

Crypto-Marxists are one of the major reasons society is coming apart at the seams at the moment.



The critique informs a particular outlook and effectively compels people to view problems in a particular way. If their way of viewing problems is broken, their solutions will likewise be broken.

If the critique itself is wrong, then yeah in that instance you could say Marxism has failed. But to say the critique failed because programmes ostensibly built on it have failed doesn't track. A common liberal platitude on Marxist critique is that it gets the diagnosis right and the prognosis wrong, but the thing is it doesn't actually make a prognosis. That's made by programmatic ideological structures supposedly derived from Marxism.

The critique itself is wrong and that's why the programmes keep failing.

Crypto-Marxists are one of the major reasons society is coming apart at the seams at the moment.

What the fuck are "crypto-Marxists?"

They're the alt-right of communism.
They're Marxists who know that that shit won't fly, so they pretend not to be Marxists in order to mainstream their ideas, often engaging in bad faith tactics to do so.

What the fuck are "crypto-Marxists?"

It's the same old bitching about "cultural Marxism", reformulated anew.

Nah.
It's the same thing as the alt-right in terms of tactics, just for different ends.


Example:

A while back some Bluecheck crypto-Marxist asked Notch if he was willing to say "Fuck fascists".

Notch replied; "Fuck Communists And Fascists.".

Bluecheck crypto-Marxists absolutely lost their shit.

Hence:

The thing is only communists and those influenced by their idpol gaslighting techniques will think this is a big deal. He's essentially thrown out a statement akin to;
​
"Could you say fuck communism please?"
​
"Fuck communism and nazism"
​
And twitter erupts with a bunch of sieg heiling nutjobs apopleptic that he could dare do such a thing while normies are like; "Wow. Look, all the freaks are sieg heiling and saying how the holocaust has been greatly exagerrated".
​
By saying "Fuck commies" too, the people freaking out are outing themselves as crypto-marxists who normal people shouldn't take seriously and should understand are trying to infiltrate societal institutions.
​
It's like if he said "Fuck Nazis and Pedophiles" and the Epstein crew flipped their lid over it. If he added "Fuck Nazis and Pedophiles" would there be this outrage?No. Because the people outraged over it are crypto-communists only pretending to make sincere arguments about how "He can't just focus on Nazis" when their real beef is with the fact he's shittalking their shitty ideology. But they can't openly defend it because they are crypto, so they resort to bad faith arguments and gaslighting techniques instead. They've done it for years now if you pay attention. Same behavior the far-right does with their crypto bollocks, except with the crypto-marxists its usually media and education that they've overrun as opposed to law enforcement.

If a Nazi comes up to you and asks you to denounce communism, would you do it without pointing out the dude is a Nazi just because they asked nicely?

Once you realize crypto-Marxists are actually about as common as crypto-fascists, you'll begin noticing who they are and how they are often responsible for a lot of the division and problems in modern society.

[Zottistan]

If the critique itself is wrong, then yeah in that instance you could say Marxism has failed. But to say the critique failed because programmes ostensibly built on it have failed doesn't track. A common liberal platitude on Marxist critique is that it gets the diagnosis right and the prognosis wrong, but the thing is it doesn't actually make a prognosis. That's made by programmatic ideological structures supposedly derived from Marxism.

The critique itself is wrong and that's why the programmes keep failing.

Possibly, but you can't infer that the critique is wrong from the programmes not flying anymore than you can infer that flight is impossible from all the failed aeronautical machines before the first ones that worked. It you want to challenge the critique, you have to do so on its own merits as a critique, not on the merits of failed regimes that ostensibly extrapolated their own political programmes from it.

What the fuck are "crypto-Marxists?"

They're the alt-right of communism.
They're Marxists who know that that shit won't fly, so they pretend not to be Marxists in order to mainstream their ideas, often engaging in bad faith tactics to do so.

This is Jordan Peterson's postmodern neomarxist meme, and as far as I'm aware there's no historical evidence for it at all.

[Cisairse]

The critique itself is wrong and that's why the programmes keep failing.

Possibly, but you can't infer that the critique is wrong from the programmes not flying anymore than you can infer that flight is impossible from all the failed aeronautical machines before the first ones that worked. It you want to challenge the critique, you have to do so on its own merits as a critique, not on the merits of failed regimes that ostensibly extrapolated their own political programmes from it.

They're the alt-right of communism.
They're Marxists who know that that shit won't fly, so they pretend not to be Marxists in order to mainstream their ideas, often engaging in bad faith tactics to do so.

This is Jordan Peterson's postmodern neomarxist meme, and as far as I'm aware there's no historical evidence for it at all.

Indeed, most marxists are more than eager to proselytize.

[Ostroeuropa]

The critique itself is wrong and that's why the programmes keep failing.

Possibly, but you can't infer that the critique is wrong from the programmes not flying anymore than you can infer that flight is impossible from all the failed aeronautical machines before the first ones that worked. It you want to challenge the critique, you have to do so on its own merits as a critique, not on the merits of failed regimes that ostensibly extrapolated their own political programmes from it.

They're the alt-right of communism.
They're Marxists who know that that shit won't fly, so they pretend not to be Marxists in order to mainstream their ideas, often engaging in bad faith tactics to do so.

This is Jordan Peterson's postmodern neomarxist meme, and as far as I'm aware there's no historical evidence for it at all.

Wrong.

Your response to the observation is the equivalent of the fascist "You just call everyone you don't like fascists" meme.

See the edit:

viewtopic.php?p=37321022#p37321022

[Zottistan]

Possibly, but you can't infer that the critique is wrong from the programmes not flying anymore than you can infer that flight is impossible from all the failed aeronautical machines before the first ones that worked. It you want to challenge the critique, you have to do so on its own merits as a critique, not on the merits of failed regimes that ostensibly extrapolated their own political programmes from it.


This is Jordan Peterson's postmodern neomarxist meme, and as far as I'm aware there's no historical evidence for it at all.

Wrong.

Your response to the observation is the equivalent of the fascist "You just call everyone you don't like fascists" meme.

See the edit:

viewtopic.php?p=37321022#p37321022

Fair enough, jumped to an assumption there.

[Joohan]

One of those failed, Rojava is about to fail, and i'm not sure how successful we can call the Zapatistas. They do exercise autonomy of a few of their local communities - but this is as the behest of a greater foreign power. I'm not sure that you would be able to call the Zap's a successful example, seeing as their survival is dependent upon a capitalist narco-state electing not to kill them.

That's only because of an overwhelming force from a hostile government controlling far more resources. No system or ideology is going to allow revolutionaries occupying a single city to fight off an entire country which surrounds them.

Yes you've outlined the reason why they tactically failed. Someone tried pointing to the commune as a success... but it was destroyed in like 2 months.

[Zottistan]

That's only because of an overwhelming force from a hostile government controlling far more resources. No system or ideology is going to allow revolutionaries occupying a single city to fight off an entire country which surrounds them.

Yes you've outlined the reason why they tactically failed. Someone tried pointing to the commune as a success... but it was destroyed in like 2 months.

I mean a revolutionary movement being put down by superior pressure from an outside power hardly amounts to a failure of the ideas of that revolutionary movement itself. It's incidental. The commune didn't fail of its own accord, as one might argue about the Soviet Union or China.

[The Emerald Legion]

Yes you've outlined the reason why they tactically failed. Someone tried pointing to the commune as a success... but it was destroyed in like 2 months.

I mean a revolutionary movement being put down by superior pressure from an outside power hardly amounts to a failure of the ideas of that revolutionary movement itself. It's incidental. The commune didn't fail of its own accord, as one might argue about the Soviet Union or China.

Part of the point of a government is to fight off outside invaders.

[Zottistan]

I mean a revolutionary movement being put down by superior pressure from an outside power hardly amounts to a failure of the ideas of that revolutionary movement itself. It's incidental. The commune didn't fail of its own accord, as one might argue about the Soviet Union or China.

Part of the point of a government is to fight off outside invaders.

Liberal capitalist countries have fallen to invaders in the past too, you'd hardly call that a failure of liberal capitalism.

[Cisairse]

I mean a revolutionary movement being put down by superior pressure from an outside power hardly amounts to a failure of the ideas of that revolutionary movement itself. It's incidental. The commune didn't fail of its own accord, as one might argue about the Soviet Union or China.

Part of the point of a government is to fight off outside invaders.

Is capitalism a failure because the French Revolution descended into autocracy?

[Ansarre]

Marxism is a disease and its a good thing that we were so successful in combating it throughout the Cold War and beyond. Unfortunately it has had a resurgence in modern times, not-ironically among privileged people who haven't had to suffer under it. Marxism and the other diseases it has spawned must be suppressed and adherents & sympathizers should be no platformed and removed from any positions they hold that are influential in society (politics, business, diplomatic corps, academia, media etc.)

This seems like an extreme reaction to theories which seek to explain economics and history and have, in some cases, done so exceptionally accurately.

Marx can make his predictions all he wants. It the ideology he has helped forged, and all of its offshoots, that are the issue. Marxism is a threat to the liberal global order.

[Zottistan]

This seems like an extreme reaction to theories which seek to explain economics and history and have, in some cases, done so exceptionally accurately.

Marx can make his predictions all he wants. It the ideology he has helped forged, and all of its offshoots, that are the issue. Marxism is a threat to the liberal global order.

That was kind of the point I think.

[Cisairse]

This seems like an extreme reaction to theories which seek to explain economics and history and have, in some cases, done so exceptionally accurately.

Marx can make his predictions all he wants. It the ideology he has helped forged, and all of its offshoots, that are the issue. Marxism is a threat to the liberal global order.

I mean, yeah. The liberal global order is really not working out.

[Major-Tom]

Marxism has failed every time its been tried.

How? The USSR lasted 60+ years, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK and Laos still exist. I leave out China because i am not educated on China to know whether it is communist or not. Mao's China however, basically achieved full communism.

Failure is defined not always by life expectancy in terms of countries, but in terms of tangible standards of living for the populace. Marx, in my mind, was one of the most influential figures in modern history - and his fundamental idea of class hierarchy is something we can be thankful for.

But in terms of Marxist implementation, the difficulty arises because central planning simply is too inept to respond to the needs of the populace and to the market itself. And, yes, there are those who consider themselves communist or socialist that eschew the model of central planning, and that's a whole other argument to be had entirely, but in terms of countries that consider/considered themselves Marxist, all of them barring the DPRK, Laos & Cuba eventually had to respond to their respective economic realities by allowing some implementations of an open market.

Laissez-Faire capitalism is a cancer, because it prioritizes raw economic growth and raw wealth generation for those at the top before human happiness and equity, but the tenets of Marxist economics (be it through central planning, through Yugoslav ideas of associated labor), they also find themselves in a position where they cannot deliver the most tangible net benefit for an entire population. It's why, time and time again, we've seen that a relatively free market (with restrictions for consumers and against monopolies), coupled with a generous welfare state, provide the best balance for a country, even if that balance is still susceptible to imperfections and flaws.

[Dominioan]

I wouldn't know much honestly, I havent read any of his work and probably won't due to the fact that it's probably to complicated for me anyway.

[Nohle]

Hello NSG, I'd like to open a conversation about Marxism.

• Do you believe that Marx's views on the class dichotomy are valid, or reductionist? Some modern authors have claimed that Marx downplayed the role of intersectionality in oppression, but Marx himself wrote about gender roles etc often, including in the Manifesto.
• Is Marxism—Leninism revisionist, or is it merely an extension of Marx's views?
• Do you believe that Marx has been vindicated or damned by the more than 170 years since he began to publish his theories?

I find Marx's views on the class dichotomy reductive. I also find his views ignorant of human nature.

Marxism-Leninism is revisionist. Marx thought the lower classes would rise up spontaneously; Lenin thought the lower classes needed guidance by an elite.

Marx has been damned by the years since his publications. Communism has all but failed in every corner of the world.

[Dominioan]

How? The USSR lasted 60+ years, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK and Laos still exist. I leave out China because i am not educated on China to know whether it is communist or not. Mao's China however, basically achieved full communism.

Failure is defined not always by life expectancy in terms of countries, but in terms of tangible standards of living for the populace. Marx, in my mind, was one of the most influential figures in modern history - and his fundamental idea of class hierarchy is something we can be thankful for.

But in terms of Marxist implementation, the difficulty arises because central planning simply is too inept to respond to the needs of the populace and to the market itself. And, yes, there are those who consider themselves communist or socialist that eschew the model of central planning, and that's a whole other argument to be had entirely, but in terms of countries that consider/considered themselves Marxist, all of them barring the DPRK, Laos & Cuba eventually had to respond to their respective economic realities by allowing some implementations of an open market.

Laissez-Faire capitalism is a cancer, because it prioritizes raw economic growth and raw wealth generation for those at the top before human happiness and equity, but the tenets of Marxist economics (be it through central planning, through Yugoslav ideas of associated labor), they also find themselves in a position where they cannot deliver the most tangible net benefit for an entire population. It's why, time and time again, we've seen that a relatively free market (with restrictions for consumers and against monopolies), coupled with a generous welfare state, provide the best balance for a country, even if that balance is still susceptible to imperfections and flaws.

No economic system is ever going to make everyone happy. I agree that that system is the best possible, but it won't last long due to attacks from both sides. I mean, the USA used to be like that but it is already descending into laissez faire capitalsim. Partly due to influence from rising big business and corporate power, and partly due to fear of rising communism and determination to not be anything like that at all.

(It's started during the Cold War and continued after it)

[Major-Tom]

Failure is defined not always by life expectancy in terms of countries, but in terms of tangible standards of living for the populace. Marx, in my mind, was one of the most influential figures in modern history - and his fundamental idea of class hierarchy is something we can be thankful for.

But in terms of Marxist implementation, the difficulty arises because central planning simply is too inept to respond to the needs of the populace and to the market itself. And, yes, there are those who consider themselves communist or socialist that eschew the model of central planning, and that's a whole other argument to be had entirely, but in terms of countries that consider/considered themselves Marxist, all of them barring the DPRK, Laos & Cuba eventually had to respond to their respective economic realities by allowing some implementations of an open market.

Laissez-Faire capitalism is a cancer, because it prioritizes raw economic growth and raw wealth generation for those at the top before human happiness and equity, but the tenets of Marxist economics (be it through central planning, through Yugoslav ideas of associated labor), they also find themselves in a position where they cannot deliver the most tangible net benefit for an entire population. It's why, time and time again, we've seen that a relatively free market (with restrictions for consumers and against monopolies), coupled with a generous welfare state, provide the best balance for a country, even if that balance is still susceptible to imperfections and flaws.

No economic system is ever going to make everyone happy. I agree that that system USB the best possible, but it won't last long due to attacks from both sides. I mean, the USA used to be like that but it is already descending into laissez faire capitalsim. Partly due to influence from rising big business and corporate power, and partly due to fear of rising communism and determination to not be anything like that at all.

We are mostly Laissez-Faire, have been since Reagan though the roots of that system were growing here before then.

[Dominioan]

No economic system is ever going to make everyone happy. I agree that that system USB the best possible, but it won't last long due to attacks from both sides. I mean, the USA used to be like that but it is already descending into laissez faire capitalsim. Partly due to influence from rising big business and corporate power, and partly due to fear of rising communism and determination to not be anything like that at all.

We are mostly Laissez-Faire, have been since Reagan though the roots of that system were growing here before then.

After WW2 was the closest we got to being the middle system, but the Cold War (and Reaganism) destroyed all the progress we made.

[Cisairse]

We are mostly Laissez-Faire, have been since Reagan though the roots of that system were growing here before then.

After WW2 was the closest we got to being the middle system, but the Cold War (and Reaganism) destroyed all the progress we made.

After WW2 we coopted a lot of socdem policies but America was never even remotely close to abandoning capitalism.

[Kubra]

I agree strongly with the idea that ML is an "add-on" to Marxism — a sort of filling of the blanks of the fill-in-the-blank parts of the Manifesto. In the same way that Хлeбъ и воля was a filling-of-the-blanks for an anarchist society based on mutual aid, ML fills in the blanks by extending the Marx-era ideas of vanguardism and proletarian dictatorship to cover more aspects of society than Marx had originally wrote about.

Also important is that Marxism-Leninism is the application of Marxism to the epoch of imperialism, the most important of Lenin's own theories was the analysis of imperialism and its development in the late 19th century from the 1860s onwards up until the point of modern day imperialism by 1900 and the true epoch of dominion of finance capital and monopolies, but also the full splitting of the world amongst the imperialist powers and their organizations. Leninism was the development of Marxism to analyse this imperialist world system which had developed, but also the development of critiques of groups such as the Narodniks (which have eerily similar policies to the Maoists, I mean the Maoists even considered the peasant commune to be the basis of communism, just like the Narodniks.), various Menshevik groupings, the Social-Democratic leadership of the 2nd International (namely Karl Kautsky, who receives the brunt of the attacks by far), and so on. Marxism-Leninism is thus the most important development in Marxism since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed their philosophy and killed the Old Philosophy, as Marxism was the only philosophy that became a science, as opposed to the older philosophies which claimed to explain the sciences and stand above them as they had since the days of Ancient Greece (Andrei Zhdanov does a good job explaining this in a critique to a Comrade Alexandrov here: https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/li ... phy.htm#s4). Marxism-Leninism is thus an essential tool of the Communist during this current epoch, and the guiding science of proletarian liberation.

And so stand my views on Marxism-Leninism. Also worth noting is that revisionism isn't when something is 'changed' in a Marxist context, but when the agents of the bourgeoisie attempt to mask themselves as communists, and revise Marxism to be anti-Marxist, to revise Marxism to the needs of capital. As such, ML is not revisionism, but an upholding of Marxist science and the application of those scientific principles by Comrade Lenin and the Communist Party. As for the development of the Vanguard and proper Marxist-Leninist tactics, such developments arose from the political lessons of the Paris Commune and 1905 in Russia, and these tactics were proven to be the correct tactics for the foundation of communist parties, which have achieved their successes as an advanced Vanguard of the working class, but also as the most advanced organization of the working class.

Marx has henceforth been proven right, his scientific analysis was not based on guesswork like those who came before him, but from objective analysis of the contradictions of capitalist society which are proving themselves correct once more. From overproduction crises to the concentration of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists, Marx has been proven correct again and again. As Marx and Engels are constantly barraged with all sorts of insults from being 'lazy troglodytes' to 'racist anti-semites', these insults show that the capitalists have not managed to uproot Marxism as the science of the proletariat, and instead must resort to slander and assault to keep Marx and Engels down. Worse still are their assaults on Lenin and Stalin, who they have turned into monstrous boogeymen who resemble horror movie villains more so than their actual real life characters. The defense of Marxism-Leninism from slanderers and attackers is the duty of all communists, who must show the capitalists that they cannot win, and that their toadies who spread their ideology are exactly that, toadies and pseudo-intellectuals who seek to poison the working class with all sorts of idealisms and fears, whether that is the preposterous argument that communism is when things get taken from hard working people to lazy people (despite the fact that even Marx addressed such an argument in Critique of the Gotha Program when talking about bourgeoise equality), or the argument that socialism is some kind of Utopian dream, when countless Marxists have exposed such an argument as a complete falsehood, especially Engels in his work Socialism: Scientific and Utopian. Today, the capitalists still send their intellectuals to slander, and accidentally prove Marx correct again when he said: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force" in the German Ideology

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs sounds nice and all until you realize sometimes people need more than they can produce.

What's funny is that Marx wrote that communism in its earliest phase (known to us as socialism, thanks to Lenin) recognizes that one man produces more than the other, and does not submit to the bogus theory of bourgeoise equality.

To quote: "But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal." - Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program

but then homosexuality was recriminalised.

Again why is the homosexuality issue such a big deal? Oh no Soviet boogeyman banned the gays, all achievements of socialism are therefore null and void despite the fact the USSR was just subscribing to the most prevalent and at the time 'most proven' scientific belief on homosexuality. Soviet criminal code on Homosexuality, introduced in 1934 isn't even that bad, considering there are countries which will straight up execute you for being gay. Not only that, but Lesbianism wasn't even illegal in the USSR, just sodomy, which the USSR prosecuted on the basis of Engels's criticism, that it was a practice arisen from the degradation of women by their husbands. (Sodomy under article 154-a, translated fully as: 154-a. Sexual intercourse between a man and a man (sodomy) -

imprisonment for a term of three to five years.

Sodomy committed with the use of violence or with the use of the dependent position of the victim, -

imprisonment for a term of five to eight years. [April 1, 1934 (SU No. 15, Article 95)]. A Russian version of the law code can be found here, google translate works semi-well.). Was the policy wrong? Ultimately yes, but it was a mistake as opposed to a full on sign of the evils of Stalin, a mistake grounded in the science of the time period. One cannot call Engels evil for the fact he called Sodomy a degenerate practice when Homosexuality was perceived negatively at the time. Gay rights in the USSR are often a taboo topic, and you're expected to hate the USSR for something that most countries and scientists thought at the time (with the notable exception of the German study for sexuality in the Weimar Republic). The truth is a lot more nuanced, and a topic which Marxists have talked about for a long time, with many Marxists believing it to be degeneracy according to the science at the time, and Marxists today seeing it as no more than a natural sexual behaviour. Even then, there are some which still believe the old criticisms, and the PSR of Albania had sodomy outlawed for the reasons of Engels.

Kim Jong-Un emphasized way back in the day that the DPRK couldn't follow ML principles, as they were too predicated on a culture of European capitalism that didn't exist in Korea and so would have an entirely different historical trajectory. They're doing they're own thing as far as they're concerned.

Their own thing being Bukharinism apparently:
“The entrepreneurs and traders of our country are fellow- travellers… not only in carrying out the democratic revolution but also in socialist construction”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘On the Immediate Tasks of the People’s Power in Socialist Construction’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 37).

“From the beginning our policy in regard to the national bourgeoisie was not only to carry out the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution together with them, but also to take them along with us to a socialist, communist society”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Let Us further Strengthen the Socialist System of Our Country’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 6; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 317).

“The national capitalists… came out in support of the Party’s line of the socialist revolution”, the Party’s line of the socialist revolution”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 20).

“The capitalist elements still remaining in town and country will have to be… remoulded along socialist lines, instead of expropriating them”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Every Effort for the Country’s Reunification and for Socialist Construction in the Northern Half of the Republic’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 9; Pyongyang; 1982; p. 201).

“The socialist transformation of private trade and industry… proceeded in close combination with the remoulding of men, with the result that private traders and manufacturers were reshaped into socialist working people”. (Kim Han Gil: op. cit.; p. 387).

“Since our Party adopted a policy of transforming capitalist traders and manufacturers peacefully, instead of expropriating them, the form of class struggle could not but assume a specific character. Class struggle attendant on the socialist transformation of capitalist trade and industry was unfolded mainly by means of persuasion and education”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 26).

As we can clearly see in the DPRK example, they have not progressed past the National Bourgeoise revolutionary stage, and have perverted Marxism to create 'Juche', a National Bourgeoise ideology that hides under words and phrases that sound 'socialist' to the untrained. In reality, the DPRK is nothing more than a National Bourgeoise regime, which has never progressed the revolution towards the phase of socialist revolution and class struggle against the National Bourgeoisie following the defeat of the Comprador Bourgeoisie. Additional reading on the DPRK subject can be read here: https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/ ... bkorea.htm, http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/KoreaNS.htm.

Yes; Marx wrote about the causes of their failure extensively.

Thankfully the sacrifice of the Paris Commune would give way to the development of new tactics, leading to the first successful socialist revolution in 1917. While it is a shame the PC lost, they provided an immense political education to the working class thanks to the analysis made by the Marxists afterwards.

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This post is already too long and with too much time in the making, I will probably just drop it as is for now even if it does not address some of the other things that have been said on this thread (The Holodomor subject, an In-depth look at China, The 'MLs don't understand Marxism' argument, "Marx's outline was never followed", and so on)

because it's emblematic of the general thermidorian reaction that occurred.
"Not killed for it" is, um, a pretty low bar.

[Philjia]

A while back some Bluecheck crypto-Marxist asked Notch if he was willing to say "Fuck fascists".

Interesting characterisation of small time YouTube music critic Crash Thompson as a "Bluecheck crypto-Marxist" since he's, you know, neither, but obviously this is an Ostro post so we can't let facts get in the way of reds-under-the-bed paranoia.