this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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Oh he definitely leaned that way for most of the time, all that vanguard stuff I mean and not to mention Engel's infamous (and absolutely gaslighting) "On Authority" (I'll lump the two together), but in his final works he was way more amenable to Anarchist modes of organisation, as a reflection on the Paris Commune.
The "expanding democratic centralism to the whole populace" is basically Stalin's invention. Lenin wanted the party unified and not bogged down in constantly questioning already-made decisions, fair enough, it's quite a different ballpark to expand that kind of unity to a whole population. And that's where I draw the parallel to lemmy.ml's moderation policies: While you only see the whole deal on lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still very much up there when it comes to "We said there were no deaths during the Tienanmen incident, we decided it, it's not to be questioned, no we don't even care for you quoting the CCP itself to contradict us enjoy your ban".
His reflections on the Paris Commune weren't that Anarchism is better, but that the entire state needed to be replaced, and the old can't simply be siezed. Marx was never an Anarchist and never would be, even if he felt they had good intentions.
Lemmygrad's very own Prolewiki says there were 300 deaths. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that they believe there were no deaths, 300 may be low but is certainly higher than 0. Maybe you're referencing the bit where they say the killings didn't happen on the Square itself, and you took that to mean no deaths at all? An understandable confusion on your part, but not accurate to what even hard-line Lemmygradders say.
Well he pretty much stopped railing against anarchists being good for nothing idealists who are inherently incapable of getting things done or organised. The Paris Commune made mistakes, also readily acknowledged by Anarchists, but it was also very much run to a significant degree on anarchist principles.
Mao was the one going on a "What was wrong is that they didn't have a vanguard party" rant. I guess Yugoslavia would be a good example of Marx' late positions actually put into practice, without all that Bolshevik revisionism.
Honestly I was just pulling the details out of my ass to circumscribe the pattern.
Yep, he softened his bite, but ultimately there are still an extremely small number of successful Anarchist movements compared to Marxist ones. Anarchists can get things done, but usually a lack of organization leads to struggles.
Yugoslavia was supposedly nicer to live in, compared to the rest of the USSR, but I wouldn't say the Bolsheviks were revisionist. They saw their conditions and acted accordingly.
Fair enough to admitting that Lemmygrad bit, but it's an extremely common talking point here that Lemmy.ml "can't admit it happened." Not even Lemmygrad believes it didn't happen, it's deliberately bad actors putting words in people's mouths at this point.
If by "successful" you mean "took over a whole state, sustainably" then there's zero (both Rojava and Chiapas are mere territories), but then the only ML states left are basically Cuba and Vietnam, the USSR collapsed, China has richer billionaires than plenty of liberal democracies, etc.
If with "successful" we also mean "feed the poor, organise the disenfranchised, and punch Nazis" then there's uncountably many. It's all predominantly prefiguration and avoiding liberal democracies to regress, in line with more recent theory.
See I'm an anarchist, revisionist is not actually an insult to me. But it surely does rile up MLs if you point out that they're ever so slightly disagreeing with previous canon so I might be using it more liberally than them :)
China is still Marxist-Leninist, just with a strategy of welcoming international finance while maintaining a Dictatorship of the Proletariat to keep the bourgeoisie in check. They saw what happened to the USSR and opted to make concessions, staying intrgrated with global Capitalism while trying to subvert Lenin's idea of Imperialism. Whether or not this pans out in Socialism's favor is unknowable at this present moment.
I do believe feeding the poor, punching Nazis, and establishing Mutual Aid is fantastic, and I agree that in the Global North, Anarchists are more effective than Marxists have been. I still don't see any actual long-term success or movements in Anarchism's favor.
I wasn't calling you a revisionist, I understand that you're an Anarchist. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Deng absolutely was a revisionist.
...and you have to have billionaires for that? Also, heck, the GDR was integrated into capitalism and they had a mostly (asides from the trades) planned economy. They built industrial robots which then churned out cars in Wolfsburg, and stomped a silicon industry out of the ground to keep competitive in that area. Western mail-order catalogues were full of GDR washing machines, fridges, etc.
What's the cutoff point for how much a Capitalist should own? A good amount of China's top companies are state owned, and there is a good amount of planning too, so I am just curious at what point becomes too much.
I am all for good critique of China, but it's the strategy they have stated, and we can only wait and see how it pans out over time.
Once it has systemic impact. Turn their company into a foundation, put them on the board, rest of the seats go to workers and something like the local university, allow that their kids two generations down the line are rich enough to never have to work a second in their life (if they manage to not squander), but definitely don't allow inheritance of that kind of capital which is what China does. Interesting paper especially about the inheritance thing, ultimately that alone is sufficient to curb concentration of wealth:
How would that impact China's goal of luring in investment if it scares off Capitalists?
This is about Chinese billionaires. No foreign stock-traded company would ever care that Chinese can't inherit fortunes.
They would. If China cracks down too hard too quickly on Capitalists domestically, Capitalists may start to pull out.