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It is evident from the current top-level comments that more education is needed.
To be fair, these kinds of posts normally don’t attract people agreeing with the post to write about why they agree, but people disagreeing and then people countering. This is a very repeatable experience.
The only communist revolution I see where most of this elements were undoubtedly true is the Spanish one. Unfortunately, it was betrayed by the stalinists.
Most to all of these elements were in place in every major Communist revolution, from Russia to China to Cuba to Korea to Vietnam to Laos. The Spanish Anarchists only recieved aid from the USSR, when sectarian fighting broke out among the Spanish Revolutionaries, the Soviets backed the Marxist sections, it wasn’t a betrayal.
The class conscientiousness where not that high in Russia. And the vanguard party (the bolchevik) were severely weakened before the revolution. I don’t for others countries, but if “helping” consist in “stealing all the gold reserves, force self organized milicia to obey to officer coming from nowhere, and even attacking and killing selforganized workers”, yeah they definitely help.
For information, their where not once mass organization on those vanguard and hierarchical line before the intervention of the USSR. Using materialism dialectic would have make USSR to back the revolutionary force, not trying to lead them at all costs.
Class Consciousness was indeed high in Russia prior to the revolution. The Tsar was increasingly unpopular, as was the Provisional Government. Workers were already organizing into Soviets before the revolution, indicating a high level of importance on labor organization. The Bolsheviks prevailed because they were correct, and thus earned the support of the Working Class.
Further, the Soviets were not trying to lead the Spanish Civil War. The fact that groups sympathetic to the Soviets emerged isn’t a sign of the Soviet Union forcing the Spanish to adopt their line, but a natural element of leftist organizing, there are going to be Marxists and those sympathetic to Marxist states. The Soviet Union above all wanted to fight off the Spanish fascists, which is why they got involved in the first place, not a grand scheme to sabotage the Anarchists.
Again, the support of the women in the russian revolution is simply ignored to simp for some sacred vanguard.
Women such as Alexandra Kollontai played key roles in the Bolshevik Party, ie the Vanguard.
It’s in all the 5 of the ingredients, unless you think there were no women anywhere there.
This is severely moronic.
In what way?
Communist revolutions were always done by uneducated peasants
And after their revolutions their literacy rate rose pretty well.
Those peasants may have been uneducted, but they were smart.
So?
The peasantry historically plays a significant role, but the Proletariat typically is the most organized, and the Vanguard party is usually quite educated and linked to the masses. The Vanguard the spearhead, the people the mass behind it, only supporting the Vanguard as long as they trust and remain integrated and connected to it.
The fact that the peasantry plays a major part in its own liberation is in no way a bad thing.
Vanguardist?
Cringe
All revolutions will have an advanced, middle, and backwards selection of the population. Whether this advanced section is formalized into a party and thus democratized and organized, or left to form naturally, opaquely, and without accountability, the advanced segment will exist regardless. We can see throughout history that it is far more effective to formalize this segment to make it accountable than to let power structures form based on friendships and cliques.
I recommend reading The Tyranny of Structurelessness.
Unlike all the communist revolutions which succeeded without vanguard party? The grand total of zero of those suggest that not having vanguard party is way worse than just cringe.
This is like defending early flying machines with flapping wings.
Just because something is initially successful doesn’t mean it’s necessarily correct, and I’m saying that as a proponent of a vanguard party or similar form of centralized organization, given how it’s a necessity post-revolution.
USSR’s revolution was successful thanks to the Bolshevik Party, but after a while it was clear that the party had replaced the proletariat as the ruling class and instead had started to direct/rule over the workers (in order words, the party became Substitutionist). Later on, the party had fully succumbed to revisionism and eventual collapse. Similar thing happened to China.
For other revolutions like in Cuba or Vietnam, even though the same thing applies right from the get-go (given how Stalin is a revisionist), one could argue that they weren’t Marxist revolutions, but rather part of anti-colonial wave of the 20th century that’s more in the ballpark of “bourgeois-nationalist revolution”. Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh was particularly explicit about this.
And to go back to the first point I made, a fun example that would push this kind of logic would be what’s happening to US right now - Trump has successfully gone into power twice now, it doesn’t automatically mean that his success means that he and his policies are correct.
I don’t think it’s particularly productive to back up controversial claims within the Marxist current with statements like “it’s clear that xyz” or “it’s without question.” These topics are controversial because they aren’t clear and are questionable claims.
As an example, most Marxists don’t agree that the CPSU formed a “ruling class.” Socialized production requires administration, planning, and management, and we know from writings such as Pat Sloan’s Soviet Democracy that the soviet model had popular input and direction. The claim that the CPSU constituted a ruling class definitely needs more support. Same with the idea that Stalin was a revisionist.
Further, the idea that the CPC is a bourgeois party is also questionable. The State maintains firm control over the large firms and key industries in China, and billionaires like Jack Ma that try to undermine that are removed from the power they are allowed. Trajectory-wise, we see an increase in the proportion of the economy in the Public Sector, a fall in the number of billionaires, and a rise in the Proletariat’s purchasing power and living conditions, with mass, popular support. I would argue that this is a more classical approach to Marxism, which I have already done here and won’t repeat.
As for the national liberatory movements, the fact that Marxist-Leninists managed to successfully liberate themselves from Colonialism and Imperialism is a fact that should be celebrated, and further still the idea that the Cuban and Veitnamese revolutions were bourgeois revolutions demands special skepticism, considering topics like land reform and nationalization of industry in the hands of the state and Working Class were some of the most critical among early policy.
Flipping this on its head, what does rejecting AES as valid Socialism accomplish? What does it leave us to support? The answer is waiting around for a “perfect, pure revolution” that will be qualitatively different from the numerous existing Socialist revolutions in some factor, requiring us to interrogate why such a qualitatively different revolution even can occur in the first place. Jones Manoel was spot-on in Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, Not Real Revolution.
I am not saying this to be mean, or rude, or be “correct.” Criticism and self-criticism are key components of finding correct theory and practice. I am trying to say that if you want to effectively challenge dominant Marxist positions, you need more ammo.
I don’t think it’s particularly productive to back up controversial claims within the Marxist current with statements like “it’s clear that xyz” or “it’s without question.” These topics are controversial because they aren’t clear and are questionable claims.
I really appreciate this and you are right - the claims I made do go against ML theory, and whether something is right or wrong in this case is dependent on one’s views and perspectives (as in intra-Marxism) rather than cold, hard, unquestionable facts. I will definitely try to avoid such loaded language in the future.
In essence, I do largely agree with you - the material conditions in the historically socialist countries (USSR specifically in this case but can also more or less be applied to others) be it their peasant problem or being isolated due to international revolutions failing did require them to do what they had done and develop using state capitalism or “building socialism in one state”, and they were successful in that regard. Same applies to the anti-colonial national liberation movements - they were successful and historically progressive and indeed should be celebrated.
However, the issue that this is a win for (state) capitalism and all the baggage that comes with it rather than actual socialism, given how socialist mode of production was never realized and arguments such as “people’s billionaires who will get punished by going against the party” or “the economy was nationalized” don’t define socialism. Wage labor remained (therefore surplus extraction too), commodity production and markets both within the country and interaction with international capitalist world market had remained (Why Russia isn’t socialist talks about this). One could also make an argument that even in those countries where capitalists got done away with (which is a proletarian W) but state capitalism persisted, the functions of the capitalist remained and were carried out by mere managers, like how Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific points out:
Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.
And again to reiterate, rather than being a win for socialism, it’s instead a win for a regressive form of it which is state capitalism that’s comparable to social democracy.
As about your point about the rejection of AES, that’s not my argument at all - instead of rejecting any attempt outright and waiting for a perfect revolution, one should instead support all revolutionary attempts but, most importantly, realize when the revolution had failed/ended instead of clinging onto false hope which is something that ML’s tend to do at least from my perspective. Of course, when a revolution fails depends on ones perspective, but from mine it’s when the proletarian revolution (which must be internationalist) fails to spread and a country has to start fully focusing inwards for its survival within global capitalism and the inevitable participation in it, like what happened in USSR in 1920’s - at that point, it’s only a matter of time until the country falls to revisionism, degeneration of socialist ideas and the aforementioned full reintegration into global capitalist system.
That being said, I really do appreciate your responses, even though some of them might be too long for me to respond to.
I appreciate your POV. I still, however, think that, ultimately, the core of our disagreement still falls on your adoption of the One Drop Rule as both determiner of Socialism and as determination of whether or not something is a force for Socialism, or not.
Before I get into it, I want to address Engels’ statement in Socialism: Utopian and Scientitic. Engels is speaking of dictatorships of the bourgeoisie that nationalize industries while retaining their class character. Indeed, Norway as a Social Democracy nationalizing its energy industry to become a petro state is not Socialism, Private Property still dominates society and holds power. Engels further elaborates on that statement in a footnote:
For it is only when the means of production or communication have actually outgrown direction by joint-stock companies and therefore their nationalization has become economically inevitable – it is only then that this nationalization, even when carried out by the state of today, represents an economic advance, the attainment of another preliminary step towards the seizure of all the productive forces by society itself. But since Bismarck became keen on nationalizing, a certain spurious socialism has recently made its appearance – here and there even degenerating into a kind of flunkeyism – which without more ado declares all nationalization, even the Bismarckian kind, to be socialistic. To be sure, if the nationalization of the tobacco trade were socialistic, Napoleon and Metternich would rank among the founders of socialism.
Engels point is that dogmatic nationalization does not outstrip the development level of the productive forces. Engels is saying that nationalizing, say, the railways, or other large scale production that outstrips production by corporations, does actually result in a progressive movement. This wraps around to the idea that you can’t abolish the Value form without developing out of it, and why the State whithers away, rather than rapidly vanishes.
The biggest wedge, though, is that you can see states like the PRC, which are increasingly becoming publicly owned and controlled, and represent a progressive movement for the Working Class, and deem it a failure since a world revolution isn’t here. However, even if you want to call it “State Capitalism” (which I will get into in a second), the undeniable progress it is making towards becoming a fully publicly owned economy and the role it plays in offering a multilateral alternative to the US Empire’s hegemony are important to recognize. By only recognizing world revolution immediately as a valid revolution, despite no practical or theoretical basis for it, it ties your hands up neatly.
But how else can we bring about world revolution, than by steadily creating more Socialist states, and overthrowing Imperialism? The theory of cascading world revolution has proven incorrect, world revolution is a battle fought stone by stone. It isn’t a grand societal revolution in a short period of time, but requires the proletariat in each country to organize and overthrow Capitalism. There’s nothing wrong inherently with those who build up Socialism domestically, rather, it’s important so that the progress towards building world Socialism is made.
Why is the One Drop Rule a problem? Because its anti-Dialectical. Marx considered states where Capitalism was dominant yet a minority of the economy to have already been Capitalist overall, because contradictions were being resolved in the bourgeoisie’s favor and private ownership was the principle aspect. All systems and things have contradictions, what matters is which class is resolving them in whose favor. Skipping down the section on “Left” errors in What is Socialism? talks about the errors in over-applying the term Capitalism.
In my opinion, it’s clear that AES countries are building towards Socialism, and trying to mark the changes they make as they learn more about Socialism by building it as “revisionism,” you’re wiping away the existing practice of Socialists in pursuit of ever-purer ideas. We can make a clear distinction between what happened in the later Soviet period and what is happening in the PRC because we can track how advancements in knowledge of theories like Special Economic Zones can be a useful tool for those building Socialism.
