Communism
Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.
Rules for /c/communism
Rules that visitors must follow to participate. May be used as reasons to report or ban.
- No non-marxists
This subreddit is here to facilitate discussion between marxists.
There are other communities aimed at helping along new communists. This community isn't here to convert naysayers to marxism.
If you are a member of the police, armed forces, or any other part of the repressive state apparatus of capitalist nations, you will be banned.
- No oppressive language
Do not attempt to justify your use of oppressive language.
Doing this will almost assuredly result in a ban. Accept the criticism in a principled manner, edit your post or comment accordingly, and move on, learning from your mistake.
We believe that speech, like everything else, has a class character, and that some speech can be oppressive. This is why speech that is patriarchal, white supremacist, cissupremacist, homophobic, ableist, or otherwise oppressive is banned.
TERF is not a slur.
- No low quality or off-topic posts
Posts that are low-effort or otherwise irrelevant will be removed.
This is not a place to engage in meta-drama or discuss random reactionaries on lemmy or anywhere else.
This includes memes and circlejerking.
This includes most images, such as random books or memorabilia you found.
We ask that amerikan posters refrain from posting about US bourgeois politics. The rest of the world really doesn’t care that much.
- No basic questions about marxism
Posts asking entry-level questions will be removed.
Questions like “What is Maoism?” or “Why do Stalinists believe what they do?” will be removed, as they are not the focus on this forum.
- No sectarianism
Marxists of all tendencies are welcome here.
Refrain from sectarianism, defined here as unprincipled criticism. Posts trash-talking a certain tendency or marxist figure will be removed. Circlejerking, throwing insults around, and other pettiness is unacceptable.
If criticisms must be made, make them in a principled manner, applying Marxist analysis.
The goal of this subreddit is the accretion of theory and knowledge and the promotion of quality discussion and criticism.
Check out ProleWiki for a communist wikipedia.
view the rest of the comments
I suspect that China is not truly so controversial outside of the western "left." It may help to understand that there are more CPC members then there are people in Germany. Marxism-Leninism is the dominant ideological strain of leftist thought, globally speaking. "Maoists," Hoxhaists, Anarchists, etc. are extremely marginal and don't even have the power and influence proportional to their minuscule population of adherents. They have no states, irrelevant parties, zero organization, and consequently no capacity for struggle, armed or otherwise. I cannot emphasize enough that these so-called socialists and communists can be safely ignored. They can not help or even meaningfully hinder their own political "projects," much less those of typical Marxist-Leninists.
As for why they exist, it boils down to an unscientific, anti-dialectical and idealist worldview. They don't conceive of political and economic systems as containing contradictory elements, but as pure, static forces that only change due to external influence. Notice how the libertarian types will insist that the presence of any public industry, welfare state, or regulatory agency in a capitalist country indicates it has "fallen to socialism/communism" and "isn't real capitalism" anymore. Likewise, ultras and leftcoms will take the existence of a stock market in China as evidence that the CPC has "abandoned Marxism/communism" and "isn't real socialism" anymore. Both of these groups will go on to insist that their pure, unadulterated version of their ideal system has "never been tried." One has to wonder why.
In capitalist/liberal economies, private profit is the guiding principle of all economic and political activity. The presence of "socialist" elements in these systems always serves that purpose, albeit sometimes indirectly. In socialist economies, the guiding principle is social necessity, and likewise, seemingly liberal elements of their systems serve the worker-led state. This is the difference between a Dictatorship of the Proletariat vs a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The composition of these systems will be similar, but will serve different functions. This understanding is essential not just to being a good ML, but for making sense of the world in general and avoiding the purist mindset.
Let's be fair, there are a couple of Maoist groups that are engaged in meaningful struggle, e.g. in India and the Philippines.
Personally, I view those groups as fellow travellers and not as comrades. For me, the only distinction between those two terms being that we can both talk about the destination down the road we're heading to, but I will tune you out if you start talking about how we should be riding donkeys rather than driving the EV.
I mean, there's a difference between anprim bugbears and waging protracted guerilla warfare against an imperialist-aligned government. There are shitty maoists out there too, but also ones too involved in actual fights to be concerned with fighting over whether it's okay to drive an EV.
That there is, but there is also no rule that denies the capacity of any non-ML struggle from achieving good or combating imperialism and the philosophical distinction I gave above were made precisely for those groups.