While I fully agree with the opinion behind this, it feels like a bad faith argument for the sake of mocking.
Especially with how it uses the word “create”.
I’d say the good faith argument for
communismLeninism would be them trying to take over the government, and then corrupt the government’s purpose to achieve their own.Still in my opinion, a bad way to go about it, prone to red cops, but this meme feels dishonest.
Edit: correcting words, comments below are right to distinguish those things.
That’s Leninism. And it’s always led to corruption and even fascism just the same. Communism is classless and stateless. Leninist just like to use the word communism like the smurfs used the word smurf. It means whatever they think they need it to mean. The state and state power corrupts. Every time.
In b4 cowb comes in with some long winded, convoluted rant.
But he has dozens of links to sources that don’t actually say anything meaningful and has dozens of orbiters!! You’re the bad guy for not reading walls of text justifying murder!!!
It would work this time except the CIA!
Now I’m not a Leninist nor am I a fan of party vanguardism in general, but Leninism has only been implemented once, and in its defense Lenin was basically out of commission as soon as the civil war was done before he actually got to do things. It’s Marxist-Leninism (aka Stalinism) that was implemented all over the place, to predictably disastrous results.
Leninism, Maoism whatever you want to call it. The ploy of “just let us be the state bro, we won’t abuse it like everyone else in history bro” has and is being tried multiple places.
Had lenin lived longer, maybe things would have taken a couple decades longer to collapse. But all the people that led to it were already in the borscht with Lenin. His poor choices put the people that brought it about within reach of the ability to do it. If he’d lived longer it wouldn’t have changed that. I wouldn’t trust myself with that power, much less anyone else. Why would anyone honestly believe Lenin could be different.
By the way, as an anarchist seeing the vitriol against tankies, I wanted to ask you your opinion on this vibes-based opinion of mine:
State-vanguardist communists, until they act against the anarchists (see: many historical attacks, where the “communists” in government oppose the anarchists, before being slaughtered themselves by the fascists (I think I heard about that happening in Spain, before Franco’s fascistic takeover?), are not necessarily an enemy, since a Leninist socialist state has less hierarchical oppressive power, compared to an authoritarian one.
I know of some of the horrible things, but the way my reasoning tells me it probably works, is that “authoritarian communism” is corruptible, and therefore shouldn’t be treated with trust, but I worry there’s an amount of red-scare in all that hate.
Not thw person you asked, but I found your question interesting and wanted to share ny thoughts.
From an anarchist perspective all authoritarians seem to be enemies. I think an in depth analysis might be needed to find out who to prioritize when it comes to fighting. For my local context (Germany) the capitalist, liberal, conservative and fascist threat to autonomy and liberation is way bigger than the communist one, so in general it makea sense to focus on that. But in antifascists organizing, labor unions, leftist spaces the main authoritarian force often is state-socialist/communist, so in that context an opposition to their strategies and modes of organizing might be more important than lets say opposing liberal politics.
Also this type of question might spark interesting discussions when posted as a thread in anarchist communities on Lemmy such as !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com or !anarchism@slrpnk.net.
My enemy’s enemy, isn’t a friend. But they can still be useful. When both groups are outsiders with no power. They can share a lot of immediate goals. The problem is. It’s not chance corruption. The moment vanguardist get a jot of state power. If you aren’t them, you’re the enemy. If you disagree with them as the state. You are an enemy of the state. It’s just a function of vanguardism and why it always devolves similarly.
Leninism, I’d argue, not communism is what that argument is against. I agree with you elsewise I’m just a massive pedant.
Comunism is the end point. A moneyless, stateless, classless society where people provide what they can and recieve what is needed.
The vanguard party, the state, is intended as an intermediate. A fucking terrible intermediate but an intermediate indeed.
Not a communist by the way but I do like to make sure the best argument can be given. Vanguard parties are a part of Leninism, intended to achieve communism over time
I’d argue that we shouldn’t be seeing communism as just the endpoint, isolated from how we get there, and historical precedents should absolutely be part of its modern definition rather than “it was not real communism”.
I mean, there’s already a word for classless and stateless type of society, that doesn’t bear an implication of preceding century of vanguard party rule.
I’d say we risk chasing words and definitions in a circle without much benefit with that method. If we don’t differentiate between the two it makes redicalization easy. People can easily state “no, they’re an idiot, here’s all the factual historical evidence. See? Believe me, don’t believe them, they don’t know what they’re talking about”
There’s value in differentiating. If someone comes along stating “I believe in communism” and it’s entirely different than what you state you’re going to argue against a specter and be disapointed when the person isn’t a leninist. Most communists aren’t, pretending they are isn’t going to help anything.
What value does conflation hold? You get to “own the libs” sure with a trump card of “but the USSR!” to any communist sure but that only makes you feel good with no value outside of it. If they use a new term then we completely divorce their belief from its historical context.
Nobodies stating we ignore precedent. The opposite in fact. Your conflation attempts to seperate the reality of communism and its beliefs from the historical reality of those trying to bring it about. We should be accurate in our representation. These people tried to bring communism to society. Here’s what they’ve tried, here’s how it failed, and here’s why it was wrong. That’s the conversation we should have. Communists should look back at that past and look for another way which isn’t horrific to further their cause. The insistence that we conflate Leninism with the whole idea of communism typecasts the communist into that hole without value to anyone. Do we want that to be the only thing we talk about? Ignore all else? Shut down conversation?
No, I think not. Communism is an economic and societal system. Leninism is policy. The difference is important. They’ll do it to what you believe too by the way. Find whatever horror they can to justify dismissing you completely. Sure, you should think on that horrible action, address it, but its obviously not defining.
Sorry for the screed sincerely I understand your point of view. I will always prefer preciseness in speech. Lastly, language is a tool, the fact that others misuse it is meaningless towards how it should be used. If we follow that logic, socialism is now defined as “whatever joe biden did” with how many people call him a socialist. People conflating communism the economic and social system with the policies of the USSR are doing the same.
Um, what? This makes no sense.
Is this referring to Russia? Or more abstractly just dunking on communism? How do I unpack this?
creating a state
The Bolsheviks didn’t create a state, the Russian federation already existed
just to solely provide a vanguard
That’s not why either the February Russian revolution, or the October Russian Revolution happened, at all. The February revolution was workers seizing power and deposing the monarchy. The October revolution happened to prevent the provisional government from instituting martial law and restoring the Tsar to power. Tsar Nick filled the army with political opponents and sent wave after wave into suicide missions for years and years. The Bolsheviks were the only political group that could have kept the Tsar out of power, because they opposed the death penalty for deserting soldiers, supported land ownership for the peasants, and giving power to the worker councils (soviets). Every other faction would have sent the soldiers back to war, abolished the worker councils and sided with the large landowners over the peasantry; which would have quickly, intentionally degenerated back into a military dictatorship. Even anarchist historian Paul Averich blames the failure of the Russian revolution on the civil war and invasions that came after the revolution, rather than a failure of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
The failure of the Bolsheviks to preserve the socialist spirit of the revolution is due to the failure of the revolution in Germany, which was always a precondition to socialism in Russia. Some of this was the fault of the Bolsheviks, maybe. Between that and the utter destruction of the productive capacity of Russia during the civil war, it’s clear that events and not “vanguardism” is responsible for the failure of the revolution.
The “vanguard” just means the revolutionary workers. Anarchists are often part of the vanguard in this sense. The vanguard is created by the excesses of capitalism. Organizing the vanguard into a “vanguard party” is a different matter, and I’m also usually critical of the way this gets defined by communists. But the vanguard exists with or without Leninism – Lenin was just a big advocate of actually creating a serious and revolutionary org to overthrow the Tsar, not just to empower himself and his tendency.
of a moneyless, stateless, decentralized power structure
Isn’t this actually the aim of most anarchists? Communists are not stateless or decentralized, in fact the inclusion of this phrase seems to contradict the premise of the whole post. I really don’t understand it.
Counterrevolutionary but counterproductive
Why?? Because you don’t like states? Neither do I but don’t anarchists need to like control territory and defend it in a revolution? I don’t have an axe to grind with anarchists ideologically, but this is the part that doesn’t make any sense to me. Like, I think it’s possible to have authentically working class, bottom-up management of national production. I think this can be achieved through robust democratic processes. But unless you can flip a switch to turn every bourgeois and self-interested petty bourgeois into a can of tomatoes instantaneously all over the world, which also educates and empowers the working classes to abolish divisions of labor, chauvinisms, etc., then there has to be some transitional period where the ruling capitalist class is suppressed and the aspirational middle class are liquidated into the larger working class. This just is not possible without a transitional state.
Except the post is arguing against a decentralized state for the vanguard? What does the post suggest we struggle for? Like this post makes no fucking sense and I don’t understand the comments about it in this thread. Some people see the world “vanguard” used in a negative way, and choose to read this as a condemnation of communism. Except this post has nothing to do with communism or anarchism. If anything it seems like a defense of capitalism which shouldnt get any support in a left wing meme comm.
There is quite literally no better way of doing it
There quite literally is, it’s called anarchism.
Any revolutionary theory which rejects vanguardism is unphysical
jesse what the fuck are you talking about
Revolution is inherently authoritarian mistah White. It’s, like, the forceful imposition of one social classes’ interests over another, or something.
