You probably know how this basically went.
So this guy was in class and he had a shirt of Karl Marx. I said “Based!” and told him that he should get a Lenin shirt next. He said that Lenin was authoritarian, so we argued about whether Lenin was good or not and whether “authoritarianism” was required to succeed in a socialist revolution. I even told him to read “On Authority” and he still didn’t agree with me.
Some gems:
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“He (Engels) is saying that authoritarianism is required DURING the revolution, not after.” I tried to explain to him that such “authoritarianism” was also required to SECURE the proletarian state after the initial violent revolution, but apparently that went over his head.
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“You’re not a leftist, you’re far-right. You just use leftist rhetoric. You’re just like Nazis.” The classic red fash tankie line.
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“Killing fascists is bad because killing people for their different political beliefs is always bad. You are basically doing genocide.” He literally (if I recall) said that violence is required in a socialist revolution but all of a sudden if we do violence against fascists, which are harsh enemies of workers, that’s bad and us letting them off the hook totally isn’t going to lead to them becoming stronger. He said Lenin was bad because he “murdered political opponents.” (I assume he is referring to the Red Terror.)
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“Wouldn’t all the killing done in a Leninist nation cause similar destabilization as when the USA does imperialism such as in Iraq?” I have yet to see such destabilization in socialist nations, only exceptions being in Cambodia and when the Warsaw Pact nations fell to capitalism.
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“You aren’t fighting the bourgeoisie, you are fighting the workers.”
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I defined fascism as socialists define it: an open terroristic capitalist dictatorship in response to workers’ movement. Therefore, former AES nations and not even the current USA (yet) can be considered fascist. But he said “You’re just playing the definition game” or something like that.
This young man is very intelligent, I’ve got to admit. I can only hope he shares his wisdom with the socialists of the third world, to tell them why the evil Leninist line is just far-right and that they need to embrace his enlightened version of Marxism in order to succeed.
I love your comment. I have learned myself that we can’t just lecture our worldview at others to convince them, we must gradually guide them in the right direction.
I like to politely ask questions that I already know the answer to, but the answers to them should hopefully help open the mind of the listener. Like, “what might have been the outcome of the russian civil war if lenin HAD immediately dropped all ‘authoritarian’ tactics immediately after the revolution? Same question for WW2 and the nazi invasion of the USSR? Or how might the Paris commune have turned out differently if they HADN’T immediately dropped their ‘authoritarian’ strategies?”
Some of the other claims they made are just simply verifiable claims which you can press for futher evidence or details. “Specifically who were the political opponents that Lenin killed and why did he do that?” “What particular right-wing goals do you think I have? What exactly have I said that is ‘just like Nazis’?”
Ask questions like an English test asks questions about a book you’ve just read. Questions that make the answerer think more deeply. Then if/when they cite false information from western liberal propaganda, be prepared to politely correct them with verifiable evidence and even have some further questions like “well if X was the case, then wouldn’t Y and Z follow? Why do you think these things don’t add up?”