This is kind of tangential, but I wish people would make distinction between Marxism and Leninism. Marx didn’t say shit about the vanguard party. Imo, we can reject Leninism without having to reject Marxism.
Also don’t waste your time arguing with me, because I am woefully uneducated and stupid, but I can only work with what I have, ya know?
I accidentally wandered into a lemmy.ml bit recently and said ML can be rejected just on the basis of consistently devolving into cults. The reply came back of “why do you not like Marxism?” as of that’s what I said.
Oh, and they removed that comment and banned me, but that’s just as well.
Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset… anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.
Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.
I’d argue none of those were people’s revolution, and in none of those cases did the people seize the means of production. All of those cases were vanguard parties claiming to act on behalf of the people, which I view as a wildly different thing than the people themselves.
I don’t see those as communist because they immediately reject the Marxist notions of rule of the people. Vanguard parties are inherently not of the people, as I see it.
And again, I am stupid and uneducated, so you’re probably gonna have to talk slow and avoid jargon for me to get it.
Thing is, Marx didn’t have a Dear Leader mindset. Far from it. He is, in fact, focused on broad, sweeping, materialist strokes, something that has not survived quite as well as the more general ideas he advocated. When Marx talks about lacking revolutionary potential, he simply means that they aren’t going to be the instrumental class pushing the revolution forward. Peasants also lack revolutionary potential by Marx’s analysis, but few Marxists, if any, would advocate murdering them en masse.
By contrast, Marxism-Leninism thinks peasants DO have revolutionary potential, but tends to kill them en masse.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.
And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class, will you concede the point or would I be wasting my time?
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class
I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.
“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”
It’s the mechanical gaps in Marxist philosophy which arguably led to Leninist revisionism in that first era.
The annoying part is that there is now like 100 year of post-Lenin philosophy which MLs love to ignore because the thing they actually care about is relitigating 100 year old geopolitics.
I don’t think many people on lemmy conflate marxism with leninism outside of .ml, and even there folks seems to see leninism as something on top of marxism and not inherently mixed.
And then we also have people who feel stalinist style “communo facism” would work well because everyone you like will be fed and everyone you don’t like will be dead. I don’t think anyone ever liked those people, including themselves.
TBF even Leninism is a stark departure from what MLs believe.
If you look at the original plans for the Soviet Union, Lenin was basically planning a Syndicalist Representative-Democracy. Problem was that Lenin got too bogged down in crushing any chance that said democracy would vote against itself, and then Stalin just decided to go full corporate town with it.
This is kind of tangential, but I wish people would make distinction between Marxism and Leninism. Marx didn’t say shit about the vanguard party. Imo, we can reject Leninism without having to reject Marxism.
Also don’t waste your time arguing with me, because I am woefully uneducated and stupid, but I can only work with what I have, ya know?
I accidentally wandered into a lemmy.ml bit recently and said ML can be rejected just on the basis of consistently devolving into cults. The reply came back of “why do you not like Marxism?” as of that’s what I said.
Oh, and they removed that comment and banned me, but that’s just as well.
But he did write quite extensively on Lumpenproletariat.
That is quite a few groups he considered subhuman, where half the ‘cleansing’ operations under communism have derived their theoretical excuses from.
The point of the Lumpenproletariat isn’t that they’re subhuman, it’s that they lack cohesiveness as a class or revolutionary potential.
Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset… anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.
Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.
In modern times the Uighurs need reeducation etc.
I’d argue none of those were people’s revolution, and in none of those cases did the people seize the means of production. All of those cases were vanguard parties claiming to act on behalf of the people, which I view as a wildly different thing than the people themselves.
I don’t see those as communist because they immediately reject the Marxist notions of rule of the people. Vanguard parties are inherently not of the people, as I see it.
And again, I am stupid and uneducated, so you’re probably gonna have to talk slow and avoid jargon for me to get it.
Thing is, Marx didn’t have a Dear Leader mindset. Far from it. He is, in fact, focused on broad, sweeping, materialist strokes, something that has not survived quite as well as the more general ideas he advocated. When Marx talks about lacking revolutionary potential, he simply means that they aren’t going to be the instrumental class pushing the revolution forward. Peasants also lack revolutionary potential by Marx’s analysis, but few Marxists, if any, would advocate murdering them en masse.
By contrast, Marxism-Leninism thinks peasants DO have revolutionary potential, but tends to kill them en masse.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.
And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class, will you concede the point or would I be wasting my time?
what
I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.
I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.
“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”
It’s the mechanical gaps in Marxist philosophy which arguably led to Leninist revisionism in that first era.
The annoying part is that there is now like 100 year of post-Lenin philosophy which MLs love to ignore because the thing they actually care about is relitigating 100 year old geopolitics.
I don’t think many people on lemmy conflate marxism with leninism outside of .ml, and even there folks seems to see leninism as something on top of marxism and not inherently mixed.
And then we also have people who feel stalinist style “communo facism” would work well because everyone you like will be fed and everyone you don’t like will be dead. I don’t think anyone ever liked those people, including themselves.
TBF even Leninism is a stark departure from what MLs believe.
If you look at the original plans for the Soviet Union, Lenin was basically planning a Syndicalist Representative-Democracy. Problem was that Lenin got too bogged down in crushing any chance that said democracy would vote against itself, and then Stalin just decided to go full corporate town with it.
You’re absolutely not wrong. MLs are a… stark departure from Marx.
100%