Our community is growing larger and larger. Two weeks ago, we had finally passed the 1,000 users mark after years, and right now we are already at almost 2,000 users. Possible causes for this are the very recent US government censorship of Reddit. In the course of 3 weeks, Reddit banned the left-leaning r/chapotraphouse, r/MoreTankieChapo, and left the subsequent ideological refugees in r/MoreMoreTankieChapo also homeless.

Good news, we exist, and our community welcomes all revolutionaries, especially marxist-leninists. In this website, we uphold the past and current* socialist experences. We love hate speech, we are only against bourgeois ideology and reactionary language**.

We have been entering Reddit, albeit slowly, but we’re still trying to make our way to be known before the r/communism and r/communism101 are banned and loses all its subscribers and consequently awareness of our space. We shouldn’t worry about it, though, we can make an organized effort to bring comrades here later, also.

The thing is, we need a name, comrades. Most of the time I’ve seen the comrades share our community around was either saying “the communist Lemmy instance”, the “Communist Lemmy”, “communism.lemmy”, or something along those lines. These are not easy to remember.

Comrade @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml suggested that we could do a public poll to decide a name, to be approved by both users and administrators.

Let’s keep in mind the most voted one shouldn’t necessarily be the chosen one, but would certainly influence admin decision. The reason for this is that while the majority may vote for simple and catchy names (which is good), it may actually be also useful to check for distinctive names that could make our community appear on top on search engines, for example.

What are you waiting for? Get going, comrade. We will need a name to begin our propaganda effort.

*Current socialist experiences include China, Cuba, Vietnam and People’s Korea.
**Reactionary language means any discrimination against historically oppressed peoples, like women, trans folk, non-white folk, etc. Racism, sexism, ableism, xenophobia, and LGBT discrimination should not be allowed, not even ironically.

  • Muad'DibberMA
    5•4 years ago

    Naming it after Lenin who was corrupted by his power and eventually became fascist.

    Citation needed. Also did you notice Lenin on the sidebar?

    that the only way to implement a communist state is to have no intermediate state of dictatorship

    There has never been a successful anarcho-communist revolution. The only successful revolutions have been explicitly anti-imperialist, or ML / communist. From Parenti’s Left Anti-communism, the unkindest cut:

    For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.

    Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta),” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”

    Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency–which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. “The time has come,” he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, “to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.

    Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party’s Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution–like every other–that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.

    doomed to fail as power corrupts

    This is a standard liberal talking point, that power corrupts, IE all people are selfish individual units, and no one in a position of power can act for the collective good, and use that power to benefit others. What matters, in class society, is in whose class interests leaders work towards. Otherwise you end up with nonsense like equating richard nixon to fidel castro.

    • @Sawyer
      1•4 years ago

      I am a communist, just because I disagree with part of your views does not make me anti-communist. You have the right to believe what you wish, I will not infringe upon that right. I am not an anarcho-syndicalist, I believe money should not exist. To play the capitalist’s game by continue to generate goods for the sole purpose of profits like the Syndicalists try to only plays into their hands, in my opinion. Please refrain from calling me what I am not.

      Yes, the single instance of anarcho-communism did not succeed and was crushed by fascists. It is my hope that a revolution in the modern age with the coordination and communication the internet offers would remedy or at least compensate for that lack of organization.

      I do not believe people have an inherent selfish nature, I believe power corrupts because power itself has a need to protect itself, to maintain the system. If people had an inherently selfish nature Anarcho-communism would not function. People are raised to be selfish because of how capitalism put everyone except the rich in a constant struggle for survival. It is much harder (but by no means impossible) to work for the common good and not be selfish when you are enslaved. Please refrain from strawmanning me by inventing an argument that I did not make.

      All elected power must be instantly dismissable by a majority vote. If you can find a dictator willing to step down at a moments notice when he acts against the will of the collective go for it. I believe an equal distribution of power acts more towards the collective good than a dictator. But hey, we won’t know for certain until it happens, so let’s form both a communist country with a temporary dictator and an anarcho-commune that skips that step and see which is more successful. Good is not the enemy of perfect, and we both have the same ultimate goal.

      • Muad'DibberMA
        6•4 years ago

        Yes, the single instance of anarcho-communism did not succeed and was crushed by fascists.

        Lots more than that, as I said anarcho-communism has zero historical successes. Free territory, Catalonia, Patagonia Rebelde, Shinmin, the french anarchists in the 1960s… all lasted less time than it took most people to get through high school. Meanwhile anti-imperialist revolutions have lasted for more than 80+ years, defeated nazism / japanese fascism, raised the life expectancy and uplifted millions of people out of poverty.

        I believe power corrupts because power itself has a need to protect itself, to maintain the system.

        Is power sentient now? “Power” doesn’t make decisions, people and groups of people do. You hid this liberal take now behind a term, ignoring the vast differences of people and the organizations they make up.

        All elected power must be instantly dismissable by a majority vote.

        This has been done (the bolsheviks had this in the early days for example in soviets), but its been found that

        If you can find a dictator willing to step down at a moments notice when he acts against the will of the collective go for it.

        Is this the part where you start calling all communist leaders t o t a l i t a r i a n dictators now? Again, extremely liberal thinking. These leaders were hugely popular due to their actions and push for collective betterment of the people.

        Authoritarianism just means when you tell westerners they can’t do imperialism.

        • @Sawyer
          -4•4 years ago

          We cannot have an intelligent discussion if you keep strawmanning. I never said power was sentient. I never said “all communist leaders” are totalitarian. If you are unwilling to discuss this in good faith, then further discussion is pointless. I respect your opinion, even though I disagree with it. It is unfortunate that this is not mutual.