The dictatorship of capital is worldwide and doesn’t respect the borders of ‘countries’. The degree of despotism or authoritarianism seen in one place or another has to do with the intensity of the class struggle there. It’s most obvious during war-time or severe economic strife, where any pretenses of ‘freedom’ are generally tossed in the trash. Also, no where is ‘ruled by one person’. If you think that then your understanding of geopolitics is naive.
It’s not ‘capitalism vs. communist dictatorship’, it’s ‘bourgeoisie dictatorship vs. proletarian dictatorship’. If the abolition of class dictatorships is aimed at, only a communist revolution that abolishes class society can accomplish that. If not, then dictatorship is the state of affairs you want to preserve, not the communists
China is so socialist that independent labor unions are illegal
The transitory phase is called the dictatorship of the proletariat. It’s not equivalent to socialism - read State and Revolution. The DoTP also must be an international process to be successful. Tankies don’t understand the importance of the international revolution and think dotp = “socialism” = state capitalism because they don’t actually read Lenin, they just took Stalin’s word on what Lenin said
Actually reading Marx or Lenin is a great way to cure yourself of the tankie brain rot.
There are 2 types:
Marxist-Leninist - followers of the ideology of the Stalinist counter-revolution. These people are still around but are barely relevant anymore since the fall of the USSR.
Terminally online leftoid who thinks they’re a Marxist-Leninist, is really just a soc-dem who hates America and likes soviet aesthetics. Believes a ton of mutually contradictory shit because they don’t take communism seriously and get all their info from memes and other terminally online leftoids.
Last I messed with backtrack, it was basically just Debian pre-loaded with pen-testing and security software. I never thought to install it to my hard drive - I’m pretty sure it was not meant for that. I haven’t messed with Kali so I’m not sure how it’s different.
The several chickens that died for this: 😐
“Okay, here are are options on the company ballot this quarter. The first choice is to lay off 500 of us and cut our pay by 15% to stay competitive, the second choice is to go out of business”.
Sounds cool and extremely different from regular capitalism.
He didn’t create it, he created the principles for it, expanding on Marx.
He did not add to Marx, he only applied Marx to the specific conditions of 20th century Russia. The challenge remains for you to show that Lenin updated Marx or believed that he was.
…This is necessary to pave the way for the solution of the economic problem, i. e., that of the economic transition to socialist principles
Do you understand the context of what you posted? Apparently not. He’s alluding to the ongoing international struggles. He knows that socialism will be impossible in Russia without those victories.
Our backwardness has put us in the forefront, and we shall perish unless we are capable of holding out until we receive powerful support from workers who have risen in revolt in other countries."
Source: “Letters on Tactics,” 1917
“We are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had any illusions on that score, and we know how difficult is the road that leads from capitalism to socialism.”
Source: “The Tax in Kind,” 1921
“We always staked our play upon an international revolution and this was unconditionally right… We counted upon a revolution of the world proletariat and were of the opinion that Europe after the war would rise so rapidly that either the spark of our revolution would kindle it, or that it would kindle our damp squib.”
Source: Speech at the 4th Congress of the Comintern
These statements stand in stark contrast to the policy of “Socialism in one Country” of Marxism-Leninism. ML has nothing to do with Marx or Lenin.
It is an insult to the socialist system to say that an “opportunistic and traitorous” Stalin would be able to become a “dictator” within it.
Not even Lenin thought they had reached socialism yet. Even the quote you posted said as much, so I can only assume you can’t read.
You’re certainly correct that “Marxism-Leninism” is a deviation from Marxism. I find that a welcome concession, because Stalin would certainly have never admitted that. The cynic in me says that you simply slipped, but I hold on to a glimmer of hope that it’s a realization that will lead toward your cult deprogramming one day. I’m not holding my breath though.
Lenin, however, didn’t create Marxism-Leninism, and never said anything that deviated from Marx. I dare you to find anything in his writings that contradicts Marx or claims to “update” Marx.
Lenin applied Marxism to Russia’s conditions- a backward, pre-capitalist agrarian country, and wrote about his challenges and experiences. He did not change the historical content of the communist programme.
Your term “mixed economy” is not a Marxist term, it is a bourgeois one. Marx never used such a term. A “mixed economy” is a capitalist welfare economy.
Additionally, the move towards this “mixed-economy” you refer to, and the move closer and closer to capitalism signified a retreat, not a step towards socialism. Lenin says this in multiple speeches and reports.
Read Lenin’s Report On The New Economic Policy.
The statements made in this report towards the further and further retreat towards capitalism stand it stark contrast to the positive portrayal of the policies painted by later “communist” leaders. “Marxism-Leninism” paints the actions taken by the soviet government at the time as strategic, deliberate steps towards socialism, when it was in fact, the opposite.
In addition Lenin never once suggested that socialism could be built in absence of the successes of the revolutions in Europe (the key Marxist-Leninist content of “socialism in one country”), the international revolution. Again, I dare you to find anything in Lenin’s writings to suggest that he thought such a thing.
Marxism, Lenin’s programme, and the content of “Marxism-Leninism” are not reconcilable.
Just because Stalin stimulated economic growth through a mixed economy doesn’t make him a ‘traitor’ or a ‘capitalist’, as it helped develop the industries the USSR needed to fend off the fascist threat during WW2, as the Chinese and Vietnamese are doing today. Also, what was so ‘nationalist’ about the USSR’s foreign policy? It promoted local languages and cultures in all the Soviet republics, and just because Russian was the lingua franca, that doesn’t mean that Stalin was ‘Russifying’ the many republics. Lastly the USSR started collectivization of farms and nationalization of the many industries (Increasing the quality of life dramatically) during his time along with an alliance with independent politicians (Bloc of Communists and Non-Partisans),
These words could have come from any Bernstein enjoyer. Nationalization of industries and the implementation of a welfare state does not signify any step towards socialism. By the time this was all happening the Soviet governing body had betrayed and lost all connection with the international working class movements. The collectivization of farms signified a capitalist primitive accumulation.
as for the Red Guard, some of them were opportunists or traitors (Like Trotsky, Yezhov, or Bukharin)
Many of the people targeted were Lenin’s old friends and associates. Many were heroes of the civil war. These were people who were heavily involved in the revolution- people who risked everything to bring about revolution in Russia. You’re saying that you honestly believe that Lenin died and that caused hundreds of thousands of them all to transform into anti-communist traitors? That’s easier to believe for you then the simple fact that Stalin was actually the opportunist and traitor, and needed to purge threats to his power? If you believe that, then I might as well be arguing with a cultist.
Actual
communiststankies
Your questions betray a terrible confusion. There was never a DotP “established” by Marxism-Leninism. There was no such thing as “Marxism-Leninism” when the Bolsheviks siezed power from the provisional government in October. By the time “Marxism-Leninism” was created by Stalin, there was no longer a DotP in Russia as the world revolution had degenerated and capitulated to class collaborationist opportunism. “Marxism-Leninism” is the result of and the excuse for that opportunism and from its inception took the role of the ideology of the nationalist foreign policy of the capitalist Soviet State divorced from the historical communist programme.
Why do you think Stalin need to jail, kill, or exile all the old guard?
Pray the fascists away! Okay everybody join hands…
A tankie with a Stalin avatar asks “what’s communism?” You can’t even make this up.
I’ll let Marx tell you:
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
-Manifesto of the Communist Party
Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.
-Critique of the Gotha Programme
https://www.international-communist-party.org/BasicTexts/English/45Platfo.htm
- In the forefront of the party’s political tasks is the work in the trade unions for its development and strengthening. The criterion, by now common to both fascist and democratic union politics, of attracting the workers’ unions among state bodies, under the various forms of its regulation with juridical framework, must be fought against. The party aspires to the reconstruction of the trade union Confederation, fully independent from the direction of State Offices, acting with the methods of class struggle and direct action against the bosses, from local and category claims to whole class interests. Workers belonging to different parties or to no party at all can join the workers’ union; the communists neither propose nor provoke the division of the unions due to the fact that their governing bodies are wholly in the hands of other parties, but they fully openly proclaim that the purpose of the union is completed and integrated only when the political class party of the proletariat is at the head of the economic bodies. Any other influence on the proletariat’s union organizations not only takes away from them the fundamental character of revolutionary organizations demonstrated by all history of class struggle, but makes them sterile for those very purposes of immediate economic improvements, by making them passive instruments in service of the interests of the bosses.
TLDR; It’s because the unions were fully integrated into the bourgeois state machinery and thus has lost their class independence.
communism is when government does stuff
Tankies unironically
Nobody who did any serious reading of Marx or Lenin could possibly stay a tankie. I hate these idiots