Early on I poked around ml, and it wasn’t so much hate but more like some really… interesting views on how to organize politically
It boiled down to “unite the workers of the world and seize the means of production”, but like… That was it. No answer to how to do that, or what to do next
The most annoying part was honestly just how hard some of them simp for China and Russia, sometimes even North Korea
Marxists absolutely have advice on how to organize, the problem is that it’s very regional. Some parties are good, others are horrid, but the basics are to find a good organization local to you and join it. Protesting, reading theory, doing direct action and mutual aid, unionizing and striking, all are good ways to organize.
None of us “simp” for the PRC or DPRK, and certainly not for the Russian Federation. We support socialist countries and critically support those working against the US empire.
Marxists do. Ml? It’s like… Unite the workers of the world by teaching then dielectrical materialism!
No… No. That’s not how reality works. You do have to restrict your ideology to reality, I don’t mind if your ideas spill over the sides, but they do have to exist in material reality
I’m not sure I follow your point. The Leninist aspects of Marxism-Leninism are mostly Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, the heights of which capitalism had not quite reached in Marx’s time, and in practical organizational theory. Marxism-Leninism posits that we should create a working class party, study the given conditions of the country we are in (history, contradictions, class struggle) in order to correctly identify the key issues to organize around. In doing so, the working class needs to gradually choose the vanguard party, meaning a vanguard party that fails to do so is no vanguard. Only then, when the conditions of revolution appear, can the vanguard direct the great quantity of the working class to achieve a qualitative change in society, into socialism.
Marxism-Leninism is based on practical struggle, based on reality, on the material world. The point of philosophy is to change the world for the better, not simply understand it. Education is merely one aspect of Marxist-Leninist praxis, used to create more effective revolutionaries, but is by no means the only.
Marxism-Leninism posits that we should create a working class party, study the given conditions of the country we are in (history, contradictions, class struggle) in order to correctly identify the key issues to organize around. In doing so, the working class needs to gradually choose the vanguard party, meaning a vanguard party that fails to do so is no vanguard.
This. This right here. What is the vanguard party? Oh, it’s the party the workers rally behind! We’ll know it because the workers will rally behind it!
Marxism is a useful analytical framework to use when looking at capitalism and alternate systems
Ml is a belief system full of holes plastered over by no true Scottman logic. No part of it is effective in the current day and age as political guidebook, we live in an entirely different era
Marxism-Leninism is Marxism but with Lenin’s analysis of imperialism and organizational theory, and is still applicable today as it guides some of the largest and most successful economies. It sounds like you aren’t actually sure what it is, in which case I made an intro ML reading list.
The vanguard is just the organized segment of the advanced of the revolutionary class, essentially a popularly supported communist party.
Lmao, I deleted that part of my response, but real political movement don’t have reading lists
Throw out the imperial analysis. It’s not useful. It’s not some bold lens that sees through capitalism - it’s just the observations of a guy. Not an insightful guy like Marx, like… Just like a normal, average academic
You don’t need a fresh analytical lens to look through imperialism. It’s just history. It just happened. You can just study it, it’s not subtle or special
This is incredibly ignorant. Analysis of imperialism is crucial because it explains why the global south has largely remained underdeveloped while western countries prosper, why workers in the west are more likely to not support revolution, and how we solve both of those problems. Without analyzing the mechanics of imperialism, and instead just pretend its a thing purely of the past, any org will be helpless to stop it.
Same with decrying the utility of theory. Correct practice is informed by correct theory, and affirms or denies what we think of as correct theory. It’s a cycle driven by practice that helps us more accurately tackle the struggles we face.
I bet I can describe the mechanisms of imperialism better than you, because I’m not weighed down by a weird religion
I just witnessed something strange while doing a job in the “global south”, and started reading. And kept reading. There was no analytical lens required. It’s all pretty naked and unapologetic
After WW2 the US came in with warships and made deals at gunpoint, but while also “offering” industrialization. Today, the IMF and the world Bank keep nations on debt treadmills to force austerity under threat of being removed from the global trade network, as their natural resources are drained away under those deals
It’s not complex. No further reading required to understand, further reading will just expand on that short paragraph I just wrote. No special analytical lens required to view it, it’s just the uncomfortable truth. It just gets worse as you dig into it
Yeah, I have to admit the anti-US sentiment did align nicely with my eurocentric views. But the pro-Russia and pro-China sentiment did not jell with me very well, and was a factor of why I left
Early on I poked around ml, and it wasn’t so much hate but more like some really… interesting views on how to organize politically
It boiled down to “unite the workers of the world and seize the means of production”, but like… That was it. No answer to how to do that, or what to do next
The most annoying part was honestly just how hard some of them simp for China and Russia, sometimes even North Korea
Marxists absolutely have advice on how to organize, the problem is that it’s very regional. Some parties are good, others are horrid, but the basics are to find a good organization local to you and join it. Protesting, reading theory, doing direct action and mutual aid, unionizing and striking, all are good ways to organize.
None of us “simp” for the PRC or DPRK, and certainly not for the Russian Federation. We support socialist countries and critically support those working against the US empire.
Marxists do. Ml? It’s like… Unite the workers of the world by teaching then dielectrical materialism!
No… No. That’s not how reality works. You do have to restrict your ideology to reality, I don’t mind if your ideas spill over the sides, but they do have to exist in material reality
I’m not sure I follow your point. The Leninist aspects of Marxism-Leninism are mostly Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, the heights of which capitalism had not quite reached in Marx’s time, and in practical organizational theory. Marxism-Leninism posits that we should create a working class party, study the given conditions of the country we are in (history, contradictions, class struggle) in order to correctly identify the key issues to organize around. In doing so, the working class needs to gradually choose the vanguard party, meaning a vanguard party that fails to do so is no vanguard. Only then, when the conditions of revolution appear, can the vanguard direct the great quantity of the working class to achieve a qualitative change in society, into socialism.
Marxism-Leninism is based on practical struggle, based on reality, on the material world. The point of philosophy is to change the world for the better, not simply understand it. Education is merely one aspect of Marxist-Leninist praxis, used to create more effective revolutionaries, but is by no means the only.
This. This right here. What is the vanguard party? Oh, it’s the party the workers rally behind! We’ll know it because the workers will rally behind it!
Marxism is a useful analytical framework to use when looking at capitalism and alternate systems
Ml is a belief system full of holes plastered over by no true Scottman logic. No part of it is effective in the current day and age as political guidebook, we live in an entirely different era
Marxism-Leninism is Marxism but with Lenin’s analysis of imperialism and organizational theory, and is still applicable today as it guides some of the largest and most successful economies. It sounds like you aren’t actually sure what it is, in which case I made an intro ML reading list.
The vanguard is just the organized segment of the advanced of the revolutionary class, essentially a popularly supported communist party.
Lmao, I deleted that part of my response, but real political movement don’t have reading lists
Throw out the imperial analysis. It’s not useful. It’s not some bold lens that sees through capitalism - it’s just the observations of a guy. Not an insightful guy like Marx, like… Just like a normal, average academic
You don’t need a fresh analytical lens to look through imperialism. It’s just history. It just happened. You can just study it, it’s not subtle or special
This is incredibly ignorant. Analysis of imperialism is crucial because it explains why the global south has largely remained underdeveloped while western countries prosper, why workers in the west are more likely to not support revolution, and how we solve both of those problems. Without analyzing the mechanics of imperialism, and instead just pretend its a thing purely of the past, any org will be helpless to stop it.
Same with decrying the utility of theory. Correct practice is informed by correct theory, and affirms or denies what we think of as correct theory. It’s a cycle driven by practice that helps us more accurately tackle the struggles we face.
I bet I can describe the mechanisms of imperialism better than you, because I’m not weighed down by a weird religion
I just witnessed something strange while doing a job in the “global south”, and started reading. And kept reading. There was no analytical lens required. It’s all pretty naked and unapologetic
After WW2 the US came in with warships and made deals at gunpoint, but while also “offering” industrialization. Today, the IMF and the world Bank keep nations on debt treadmills to force austerity under threat of being removed from the global trade network, as their natural resources are drained away under those deals
It’s not complex. No further reading required to understand, further reading will just expand on that short paragraph I just wrote. No special analytical lens required to view it, it’s just the uncomfortable truth. It just gets worse as you dig into it
Yeah, I have to admit the anti-US sentiment did align nicely with my eurocentric views. But the pro-Russia and pro-China sentiment did not jell with me very well, and was a factor of why I left