‘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
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.
The fact it was more difficult doesn’t help the failures, really. Post-soviet national conflicts didn’t just happen out of the blue. Karabakh flared up when the Union was formally still there even.
But, WPK might not be a great comparison here, ok. CPC did better too though, and China isn’t mono national.
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.
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on Teddit and Libreddit, which are Reddit frontends that protect your privacy.
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?
The fact it was more difficult doesn’t help the failures, really. Post-soviet national conflicts didn’t just happen out of the blue. Karabakh flared up when the Union was formally still there even.
But, WPK might not be a great comparison here, ok. CPC did better too though, and China isn’t mono national.
I guess 30 years of observing Russia did paid off.
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.
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on Teddit and Libreddit, which are Reddit frontends that protect your privacy.