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For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism. That is because Marx's original prediction that capitalism would soon be replaced by soc

For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism. That is because Marx's original prediction that capitalism would soon be replaced by socialsm proved mistaken, and so the Marxist political movement split into Social Democrats and Marxist-Leninists. And then the Communists came to power, not in the advanced industrial countries as Marx had predicted, but instead feudal or semi-feudal ones like Russia and China. As a result the Communists put into effect not socialism, but state capitalism, in order to develop industrially to the stage where they would eventually be ready for socialism, a development that never happened. And then state capitalism bogged down, so China and Russia switched over to crony capitalism. And in China crony capitalism eventually slowed down, and the country became too Western in its values, so Xi Jinping is cracking down and puting things under more state control. I assume you are aware of this whole story.

gnulinux 8y ago
Few things I want to note. > For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves "Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School) > And then the Communists came to power The rest of your comment makes sense to me but I still want to be cautious to make such claims. In a Marxist sense ideological Communists weren't communists as communists can only be members of the working class willing to rise up against the bourgeoisie. The difference is the category: the Communists who came to power had ideological intentions and not material intentions whereas communism is a by-definition material concept. I believe it's true that maybe parts of Russian revolution started out as a communist revolution but, as you said, given the economic structure of the country (not highly developed) communism was already dead by the time revolution was over. And we can talk endlessly for hours whether Lenin was a good communist or an asshole; but this is irrelevant because communism (just like capitalism) is never about single persons but about classes. When the Russian Revolution started being more about Lenin and less about the people, it was already not communist regardless of the "ideology" of Lenin. Given the history, and how "Communist" is liberally used to attack Marx, it's intellectual laziness or intellectual dishonesty to mention USSR, China or other supposedly "Communist" countries to make an argument about Marx. I read the entire corpus of Marx and he very rarely talks about implementations, and oftentimes they're his very early work (like the Manifesto) or when he's critiquing other ideas on implementation (like the Critique of Gotha's Program). Given all these issues I have, I almost never find a good rational discussion about Marxism on the internet, not in HN, not on "socialist" sites like r/socialism, r/communism etc... It's always entirely about the ideology which is something Marx tried to criticise his whole life. It feels like when teenagers "discuss" Nietzsche and they think he's a nihilist when Nietzsche spent his entire life attacking nihilism.
- woodandsteel 8y ago
  >In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves "Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School) I should have been more clear. I meant Marxism that achieved real political power. My point is that Marx's original vision could never be carried out successfully in the real world. Your further comments don't really present an argument to the contrary.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    I don't suppose you read my comment since its entirety was about how there is no such thing as "Marx's original vision". If there is no political vision, there cannot be "Marxism that achieved real political power" so your argument is categorically wrong. I challenge you to give me examples of Marx's original vision; from what I understand Marx made himself pretty clear that communism is not an ideology and thus there cannot be a "vision" of it, the action of communists would be different depending on material conditions they live in. You can talk about personal vision of Communist revolutionaries (e.g. Lenin) but I already wrote an excessively long paragraph about why this is not relevant to Marxism.

gnulinux 8y ago

Few things I want to note. > For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves "Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School) > And then the Communists came to power The rest of your comment makes sense to me but I still want to be cautious to make such claims. In a Marxist sense ideological Communists weren't communists as communists can only be members of the working class willing to rise up against the bourgeoisie. The difference is the category: the Communists who came to power had ideological intentions and not material intentions whereas communism is a by-definition material concept. I believe it's true that maybe parts of Russian revolution started out as a communist revolution but, as you said, given the economic structure of the country (not highly developed) communism was already dead by the time revolution was over. And we can talk endlessly for hours whether Lenin was a good communist or an asshole; but this is irrelevant because communism (just like capitalism) is never about single persons but about classes. When the Russian Revolution started being more about Lenin and less about the people, it was already not communist regardless of the "ideology" of Lenin. Given the history, and how "Communist" is liberally used to attack Marx, it's intellectual laziness or intellectual dishonesty to mention USSR, China or other supposedly "Communist" countries to make an argument about Marx. I read the entire corpus of Marx and he very rarely talks about implementations, and oftentimes they're his very early work (like the Manifesto) or when he's critiquing other ideas on implementation (like the Critique of Gotha's Program). Given all these issues I have, I almost never find a good rational discussion about Marxism on the internet, not in HN, not on "socialist" sites like r/socialism, r/communism etc... It's always entirely about the ideology which is something Marx tried to criticise his whole life. It feels like when teenagers "discuss" Nietzsche and they think he's a nihilist when Nietzsche spent his entire life attacking nihilism.

woodandsteel 8y ago
>In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves "Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School) I should have been more clear. I meant Marxism that achieved real political power. My point is that Marx's original vision could never be carried out successfully in the real world. Your further comments don't really present an argument to the contrary.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  I don't suppose you read my comment since its entirety was about how there is no such thing as "Marx's original vision". If there is no political vision, there cannot be "Marxism that achieved real political power" so your argument is categorically wrong. I challenge you to give me examples of Marx's original vision; from what I understand Marx made himself pretty clear that communism is not an ideology and thus there cannot be a "vision" of it, the action of communists would be different depending on material conditions they live in. You can talk about personal vision of Communist revolutionaries (e.g. Lenin) but I already wrote an excessively long paragraph about why this is not relevant to Marxism.