‘This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order,’ said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, a month after the invasion. ‘The unipolar world is irretrievably receding into the past … A multi-polar world is being born.’ The US is no longer the world’s policeman, in other words – a message that resonates in
Now if only Putin were actually a communist instead of a hyper-wealthy oligarch who actually imprisons communists in his country on the reg, cuz then this image would be just… chef’s kiss
Most of those types of people don’t know what communism looks like. They think having affordable access to privatized healthcare (subsidized by the oppression of the global south abroad, though they don’t see or know about this part of the idea either) qualifies as communism. Many USians unironically believe Canada is socialist. It is the: “Communism = bad, and all bad things are communist so…” kinda brain
Exactly, it prevents white people from having to reconcile the vile history of our ancestors and our personal contributions to that legacy.
What the hell even is “more socialist” lmao, wouldn’t “too much socialism” just be communism?
In their minds, yes. This is why they think the Nordic countries are still in the acceptable zone but start becoming like Vietnam or whatever and that’s “too much socialism”.
Putin is an anti-communist and a reactionary for sure, but so far i have not seen any convincing evidence of him being “hyper-wealthy” as the liberal media always claim. He governs in the interest of oligarchs to a considerable extent, that’s indisputable, but i am not sure we can say that he is one himself. At the same time the Russian government is not controlled by oligarchs, it is in a sort of weird position where it is in partnership with many of them but also frequently makes demonstrations of its power over them by disciplining those whose greed endangers the stability of the state. It is not the same kind of oligarchy that the West has where corporate interests basically directly control the government, and the state itself is relatively weak and little more than their puppet.
Russia is in a weird in-between state at the moment where the transition to a mature capitalism like the West’s never quite finished and instead you have a precarious balance of state and private interests brought about by the need to put an end to the total devastation and chaos of the kleptocratic 90s lest the new bourgeois state face the danger of another revolution. This is probably not sustainable in the long run, it will have to tip one way or the other. Either Russian capitalism matures and it transitions fully to a Western-like liberal system, or the communists will grow stronger and stronger until they return to power.
The problem for the Russian bourgeoisie is that the imperialist core has made it virtually impossible for them to integrate into the West’s neoliberal system as equals, the West demands Russia’s total subjugation. Without integration into that global system the completion of the transition is impossible and they will remain in this limbo. Putin is a keystone of this precarious balance and i am not sure what will happen when he retires.
who actually imprisons communists in his country on the reg
Well, I don’t know about that one, most of the “communists” who end up in prisons are CPRF and nazbols (MLs don’t have an organization worth opressing, unfortunately, and the only one I can think of in recent memory is a unionist Kirill Ukraintsev), but Putin sure is no communist, yes.
P.S. Oh, and trots started running away from the country around this autumn even though noone was after them xD
I don’t know enough about CPRF and have only seen high level overviews of their platform, don’t know enough specifics to say they aren’t communist or whatever. Also am always hesitant to go around declaring “yes this is communist” and “no this isn’t communist” when referring to people and orgs self identifying as communist. Feels too “gatekeepy” or “no true Scotsman”-esque.
Also, not saying you are doing that since I don’t know what basis makes you hesitant to view CPRF as communist.
Feels too “gatekeepy” or “no true Scotsman”-esque.
It needs not to be either with ML though? It’s a specific ideology with philosophical footing in diamat, we are not talking about favourite food here nor do we have to engage in postmodern “what is X really” bullshit. I guess, when we broaden that to “communists” that’s more fair, but succdems and anarchists can self-identify as reincarnations of Marx for all I care, they’re misguided at best and are unknowingly helping the capitalists at worst.
My basis is seeing this stuff from inside the country. CPRF is a pocket opposition party with some based low level personnel.
Yeah I’m referring to communists overall, not just MLs, when I say Putin is jailing communists. I don’t include Anarchists in that since part of Communism includes a recognition for the need for authority in Socialism, while Anarchists don’t, and I don’t include SocDems because… well many reasons… like that they are explicitly about limiting capitalism instead of eliminating it entirely.
While I have my own tendencies which are, as far as I can tell, closest to ML, I don’t feel like I can afford to discredit or discount any particular tendency. ML worked for establishing the USSR, MLM worked for China, Castroism for Cuba, Ho Chi Mihn thought for Vietnam, etc.
As a USian, I’m not convinced the ~ism which might one day bring a successful revolution here has even been conceived yet, and that ~ism will take from and invoke numerous aspects of numerous other ~isms in addition to adding its own unique contributions to Marxist thought.
I know I am starting to digress, but it just feels like we are doing ourselves a disservice when we intentionally “don’t invoke” certain Marxist thinkers or start to go down the rabbit hole about how such and such communist ~ism is wrong in some way, discount it completely, and thus place another brick in the wall preventing solidarity. Throwing out the baby with the bath water kind of thing.
While I have my own tendencies which are, as far as I can tell, closest to ML, I don’t feel like I can afford to discredit or discount any particular tendency. ML worked for establishing the USSR, MLM worked for China, Castroism for Cuba, Ho Chi Mihn thought for Vietnam, etc.
They’re all ML though. The word “leninism” isn’t there because it was a particular regime with a particular leader, but because it’s theory born of practice, where Marx was all theory (and pointed out, to his credit, that practice will change the theory) and CPSU’s revolutionary experience proved , well, a lot of things, but most of all the importance of a vanguard party and consideration for national specifics when applying Marxism to material conditions of a particular country. Revolutionary theory doesn’t get much more complete than ML without actually becoming nation-specific.
That’s why you’ll find both references to ML in works of Mao, Ho Chi Mihn, Kim Il-sung and Kastro as well as acknowledgment of them taking a lot of notes. Application was different both because of the national specifics part (as it should’ve been) and in how successful it was (for example, CPSU fucked up a lot with national question and WPK passed that part with flying colors).
Contributions to Marxist thought are a separate thing. Kim Il-sung’s works are quite popular with Russian ML’s for example (guess why, considering what I already wrote=) and the only Marxist thinkers that get discounted by MLs are the ones whose theory very obviously sucks and doesn’t pass attempts at application, like Trots. As a matter of fact, I think breeding too many -isms is a disservice to ourselves. Just look at Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought confusion.
That seems to stem from not understanding the difference between a “thought” and an ~ism, which I’ll admit in my previous post I inadvertently mixed the two interchangeably. Apologies comrades for that. This section from here (https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/6dgngc/maoism_vs_maozedong_thought/) does a great job of explaining this, far better than I can at any rate:
A thought is more particular to a certain situation. For example, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-"Gonzalo Thought"is particular to the people's war in Peru because of Comrade Abimael Guzman's contradictions in enriching Maoism to the particularities of the external conditions in Peru. You could say what Lenin applied is Marxism-"Lenin Thought" because his contributions put Marxism to the social conditions of Russia. However, you say Marxism-Lenin-ism because it would refer to the universality of his contradictions, the universality of imperialism, the universal urgency for the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. It takes from the lessons of the Russian revolution and puts it higher. Similarly, Mao Zedong Thought is simply Marxism-Leninism in Chinese conditions. It doesn't talk about the universality of the cultural revolution, the universality of the people's war, the universality of contradictions. Maoism does that.
- Comrade "theredcebuano" of Reddit
Basically when helping to educate comrades we should try to spell out this difference in our lingo.
That’s precisely the fear. Western economies are intrinsically built on being able to exploit labour and resources in the global south. As the exploited countries shake off the exploiters that’s going to have a profound effect on deindustrialized western economies built around financial capital.
We are living through genuine decolonization right now where global south is becoming both politically and financially decoupled from western hegemony. A billion people in the west are no longer going to be charting the course for the entire world.
I hear you, but it’s not a billion people in the West. It’s a small minority composed of wealthy psychopathic bloodsuckers in the West that’s been charting that course.
Yeah, that’s a good point. On the other hand, the rest of the population is at least somewhat complicit by allowing this nightmare to continue unabated. Given that westerners claim they have democracies in their countries, that makes them complicit by their own admission.
Yeah as an American I didn’t mean to absolve that, and personally it’s tough not to struggle with the immense guilt that comes with. Most people are genuinely kind in this country but they are also genuinely brainwashed. I think one thing to note when it comes to US imperialism specifically, is that most Americans have never actually experienced war, which lets politicians weaponize their compassion. Americans that do support war genuinely think they’re doing the world a favor by spreading “democracy.” In the US, the citizens are so removed from geopolitical conflict that it makes them extra susceptible to propaganda because they don’t actually face the direct violence of imperialism like the global south does. We feel the consequences still, but it’s economic and it takes more logical steps for people to connect their struggles with what’s happening outside their borders.
There’s also a huge generational divide. Millenials and Gen Z are more left than the US population has ever been in its history. There may be an overall lack of knowledge when it comes to foundational theory, but that’s where the current struggle is.
It’s not an excuse, but for most people here it’s not malice either. If more Americans genuinely understood what our military and financial system did, there would be a whole lot less complicity in it. Which is why there is the most sophisticated propaganda system in history obscuring those truths and keeping people ignorant. But even if most people here weren’t ignorant and pushed back against Western imperialism, they would still have no say in their farce of a political system. We have absolutely no say in what our government does when it comes to militarization and imperialism, even on the more local level.
While it is technically true that only a small minority have any real power here, at least in the US (where I live, can’t speak for the rest of the West) a lot of the “powerless majority” still voice support for a lot of the horrific things we do. In my hometown there are plenty of people I hear vocalizing their desire to turn the lands of whoever the enemies are at the time “to glass” and other similar genocidal talk.
Fuck, even a survey by a bourgeois “neutral pollster with a great reputation” (Pew or Gallup, can’t remember which) found that one in three respondents who were Trump supporters during his first campaign in either North or South Carolina (can’t remember which) wanted the return of chattel slavery as it was before the US Civil War. So since about half the population wanted Trump, that means about one in six people you walk past in that state want to fully re-enslave minorities plantation style.
So even if the US was a “true democracy” and people’s votes and wishes did actually matter, the course would likely not be different and if so, could very possibly be even worse.
Oh I wish common working westerners could decide anything, we can’t even decide who’s in power often, as in every other state, the capitalists (a small minoruty of the West’s population) makes the decisions
At least Putin’s so-called “World Order” won’t result in exploitation and brutal colonization of the Global South.
Speaking of the Global South. The illustration is accidentally based…
Muh garden
It would’ve been fully based if Mexico and the rest of the Central Americans weren’t still stuck with the Great Satan in the picture…
Now if only Putin were actually a communist instead of a hyper-wealthy oligarch who actually imprisons communists in his country on the reg, cuz then this image would be just… chef’s kiss
I’ll never understand why westerners like to portray Russians/Putin still as Soviets, despite the forced termination of the USSR.
Most of those types of people don’t know what communism looks like. They think having affordable access to privatized healthcare (subsidized by the oppression of the global south abroad, though they don’t see or know about this part of the idea either) qualifies as communism. Many USians unironically believe Canada is socialist. It is the: “Communism = bad, and all bad things are communist so…” kinda brain
You forgot another thing: They don’t care about what happens to us Global Southerners, as long as they get to live “luxuriously”.
Do they? I thought they consider the Nordic Countries as
the, quote-unquote, “acceptable form of”Socialism incarnate.if communism is bad then god i wanna be a bad girl
This is likely why they don’t know.
Yup, the Nordic countries are just generally seen as ‘more socialist’.
And who says you aren’t a bad girl?
Blissful ignorance?
What the hell even is “more socialist” lmao, wouldn’t “too much socialism” just be communism?
fair point
Exactly, it prevents white people from having to reconcile the vile history of our ancestors and our personal contributions to that legacy.
In their minds, yes. This is why they think the Nordic countries are still in the acceptable zone but start becoming like Vietnam or whatever and that’s “too much socialism”.
Putin is an anti-communist and a reactionary for sure, but so far i have not seen any convincing evidence of him being “hyper-wealthy” as the liberal media always claim. He governs in the interest of oligarchs to a considerable extent, that’s indisputable, but i am not sure we can say that he is one himself. At the same time the Russian government is not controlled by oligarchs, it is in a sort of weird position where it is in partnership with many of them but also frequently makes demonstrations of its power over them by disciplining those whose greed endangers the stability of the state. It is not the same kind of oligarchy that the West has where corporate interests basically directly control the government, and the state itself is relatively weak and little more than their puppet.
Russia is in a weird in-between state at the moment where the transition to a mature capitalism like the West’s never quite finished and instead you have a precarious balance of state and private interests brought about by the need to put an end to the total devastation and chaos of the kleptocratic 90s lest the new bourgeois state face the danger of another revolution. This is probably not sustainable in the long run, it will have to tip one way or the other. Either Russian capitalism matures and it transitions fully to a Western-like liberal system, or the communists will grow stronger and stronger until they return to power.
The problem for the Russian bourgeoisie is that the imperialist core has made it virtually impossible for them to integrate into the West’s neoliberal system as equals, the West demands Russia’s total subjugation. Without integration into that global system the completion of the transition is impossible and they will remain in this limbo. Putin is a keystone of this precarious balance and i am not sure what will happen when he retires.
Well, I don’t know about that one, most of the “communists” who end up in prisons are CPRF and nazbols (MLs don’t have an organization worth opressing, unfortunately, and the only one I can think of in recent memory is a unionist Kirill Ukraintsev), but Putin sure is no communist, yes.
P.S. Oh, and trots started running away from the country around this autumn even though noone was after them xD
I don’t know enough about CPRF and have only seen high level overviews of their platform, don’t know enough specifics to say they aren’t communist or whatever. Also am always hesitant to go around declaring “yes this is communist” and “no this isn’t communist” when referring to people and orgs self identifying as communist. Feels too “gatekeepy” or “no true Scotsman”-esque.
Also, not saying you are doing that since I don’t know what basis makes you hesitant to view CPRF as communist.
It needs not to be either with ML though? It’s a specific ideology with philosophical footing in diamat, we are not talking about favourite food here nor do we have to engage in postmodern “what is X really” bullshit. I guess, when we broaden that to “communists” that’s more fair, but succdems and anarchists can self-identify as reincarnations of Marx for all I care, they’re misguided at best and are unknowingly helping the capitalists at worst.
My basis is seeing this stuff from inside the country. CPRF is a pocket opposition party with some based low level personnel.
Yeah I’m referring to communists overall, not just MLs, when I say Putin is jailing communists. I don’t include Anarchists in that since part of Communism includes a recognition for the need for authority in Socialism, while Anarchists don’t, and I don’t include SocDems because… well many reasons… like that they are explicitly about limiting capitalism instead of eliminating it entirely.
While I have my own tendencies which are, as far as I can tell, closest to ML, I don’t feel like I can afford to discredit or discount any particular tendency. ML worked for establishing the USSR, MLM worked for China, Castroism for Cuba, Ho Chi Mihn thought for Vietnam, etc.
As a USian, I’m not convinced the ~ism which might one day bring a successful revolution here has even been conceived yet, and that ~ism will take from and invoke numerous aspects of numerous other ~isms in addition to adding its own unique contributions to Marxist thought.
I know I am starting to digress, but it just feels like we are doing ourselves a disservice when we intentionally “don’t invoke” certain Marxist thinkers or start to go down the rabbit hole about how such and such communist ~ism is wrong in some way, discount it completely, and thus place another brick in the wall preventing solidarity. Throwing out the baby with the bath water kind of thing.
They’re all ML though. The word “leninism” isn’t there because it was a particular regime with a particular leader, but because it’s theory born of practice, where Marx was all theory (and pointed out, to his credit, that practice will change the theory) and CPSU’s revolutionary experience proved , well, a lot of things, but most of all the importance of a vanguard party and consideration for national specifics when applying Marxism to material conditions of a particular country. Revolutionary theory doesn’t get much more complete than ML without actually becoming nation-specific.
That’s why you’ll find both references to ML in works of Mao, Ho Chi Mihn, Kim Il-sung and Kastro as well as acknowledgment of them taking a lot of notes. Application was different both because of the national specifics part (as it should’ve been) and in how successful it was (for example, CPSU fucked up a lot with national question and WPK passed that part with flying colors).
Contributions to Marxist thought are a separate thing. Kim Il-sung’s works are quite popular with Russian ML’s for example (guess why, considering what I already wrote=) and the only Marxist thinkers that get discounted by MLs are the ones whose theory very obviously sucks and doesn’t pass attempts at application, like Trots. As a matter of fact, I think breeding too many -isms is a disservice to ourselves. Just look at Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought confusion.
What do you mean by that? Weird comparison between multinational USSR and half of Korea?
That seems to stem from not understanding the difference between a “thought” and an ~ism, which I’ll admit in my previous post I inadvertently mixed the two interchangeably. Apologies comrades for that. This section from here (https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/6dgngc/maoism_vs_maozedong_thought/) does a great job of explaining this, far better than I can at any rate:
A thought is more particular to a certain situation. For example, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-"Gonzalo Thought" is particular to the people's war in Peru because of Comrade Abimael Guzman's contradictions in enriching Maoism to the particularities of the external conditions in Peru. You could say what Lenin applied is Marxism-"Lenin Thought" because his contributions put Marxism to the social conditions of Russia. However, you say Marxism-Lenin-ism because it would refer to the universality of his contradictions, the universality of imperialism, the universal urgency for the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. It takes from the lessons of the Russian revolution and puts it higher. Similarly, Mao Zedong Thought is simply Marxism-Leninism in Chinese conditions. It doesn't talk about the universality of the cultural revolution, the universality of the people's war, the universality of contradictions. Maoism does that.- Comrade "theredcebuano" of RedditBasically when helping to educate comrades we should try to spell out this difference in our lingo.
Poor Mexico and southern parts of North American…
That’s precisely the fear. Western economies are intrinsically built on being able to exploit labour and resources in the global south. As the exploited countries shake off the exploiters that’s going to have a profound effect on deindustrialized western economies built around financial capital.
We are living through genuine decolonization right now where global south is becoming both politically and financially decoupled from western hegemony. A billion people in the west are no longer going to be charting the course for the entire world.
I hear you, but it’s not a billion people in the West. It’s a small minority composed of wealthy psychopathic bloodsuckers in the West that’s been charting that course.
I believe there are about 2600 billionaires worldwide. An even smaller number of those are in the west.
Yeah, that’s a good point. On the other hand, the rest of the population is at least somewhat complicit by allowing this nightmare to continue unabated. Given that westerners claim they have democracies in their countries, that makes them complicit by their own admission.
Yeah as an American I didn’t mean to absolve that, and personally it’s tough not to struggle with the immense guilt that comes with. Most people are genuinely kind in this country but they are also genuinely brainwashed. I think one thing to note when it comes to US imperialism specifically, is that most Americans have never actually experienced war, which lets politicians weaponize their compassion. Americans that do support war genuinely think they’re doing the world a favor by spreading “democracy.” In the US, the citizens are so removed from geopolitical conflict that it makes them extra susceptible to propaganda because they don’t actually face the direct violence of imperialism like the global south does. We feel the consequences still, but it’s economic and it takes more logical steps for people to connect their struggles with what’s happening outside their borders.
There’s also a huge generational divide. Millenials and Gen Z are more left than the US population has ever been in its history. There may be an overall lack of knowledge when it comes to foundational theory, but that’s where the current struggle is.
It’s not an excuse, but for most people here it’s not malice either. If more Americans genuinely understood what our military and financial system did, there would be a whole lot less complicity in it. Which is why there is the most sophisticated propaganda system in history obscuring those truths and keeping people ignorant. But even if most people here weren’t ignorant and pushed back against Western imperialism, they would still have no say in their farce of a political system. We have absolutely no say in what our government does when it comes to militarization and imperialism, even on the more local level.
Yeah, I very much agree with all that. Hopefully, younger people will be able to change course going forward.
While it is technically true that only a small minority have any real power here, at least in the US (where I live, can’t speak for the rest of the West) a lot of the “powerless majority” still voice support for a lot of the horrific things we do. In my hometown there are plenty of people I hear vocalizing their desire to turn the lands of whoever the enemies are at the time “to glass” and other similar genocidal talk.
Fuck, even a survey by a bourgeois “neutral pollster with a great reputation” (Pew or Gallup, can’t remember which) found that one in three respondents who were Trump supporters during his first campaign in either North or South Carolina (can’t remember which) wanted the return of chattel slavery as it was before the US Civil War. So since about half the population wanted Trump, that means about one in six people you walk past in that state want to fully re-enslave minorities plantation style.
So even if the US was a “true democracy” and people’s votes and wishes did actually matter, the course would likely not be different and if so, could very possibly be even worse.
Oh I wish common working westerners could decide anything, we can’t even decide who’s in power often, as in every other state, the capitalists (a small minoruty of the West’s population) makes the decisions
I do hope the masses in the west say enough is enough one day.