glad to see lemmygrad’s version of r/communism is still as cringe as ever

Two of the posts linked in this text that supposedly show how the pro-China position is bad, the ones he calls “increasingly incorrect” and “vile and reactionary” are anything but. They are very well grounded in Marxist theory and there is absolutely nothing reactionary about them unless you already proceed from the pre-assumption that modern China is wrong and Maoists are right. The third linked post praising Duterte is from one of those subs which are known for their socially reactionary “conservative socialist” line (sometimes called “nazbol”), which most of us MLs who are pro-China and socially progressive denounce. Those kinds of subs represent a tiny online sect that is essentially insignificant in the real world.

Overall this article even in its introduction fails to make the case for why modern ML should be abandoned in favor of Maoism, a tendency which is becoming increasingly irrelevant even as ML continues to grow and flourish encouraged by the rise of China, the sharpening of contradictions in capitalism, and the dawn of the multi-polar era.

I see no point in clinging dogmatically to some (real or imagined) “philosophical purity” and mechanical “anti-revisionism” when the very essence of dialectical materialism is acknowledging that the world is constantly changing. As such Marxism must also change and adapt tactics (without sacrificing its socialist core as the USSR did when it repudiated the dictatorship of the proletariat and paid the ultimate price for that mistake). China has managed to become the socialist success story it is today because the CPC has proven incredibly adaptable and flexible and willing to experiment and try new things. Our ideas must reflect the material conditions. We "seek truth from facts

The correct ideology will be shown by whose revolution manages to succeed and thrive and build a prosperous socialist society. I have yet to see Maoists build their own China, their own Cuba, their own Vietnam, their own DPRK or their own USSR.

The gist of the article seems to be that any sort of capitulation to revisionist tendencies will lead to the failure of any socialist project (in the article, he points out how Stalin didn’t do enough to stop revisionist factions even prior to his death) and that current AES aren’t doing much to further global socialism because they aren’t actively trying to topple capitalism by funding revolution world wide.

The first part, I don’t necessarily disagree with, but he then comes to the conclusion that anything that serves to facilitate bourgeoisie power will give rise to revisionism. Lenin was quite clear on the necessity of needing to subjugate bourgeoisie machinery to build out your productive forces.

Over the next few years we must learn to think of the intermediary links that can facilitate the transition from patriarchalism and small production to socialism. “We” continue saying now and again that “capitalism is a bane and socialism is a boon”. But such an argument is wrong, because it fails to take into account the aggregate of the existing economic forms and singles out only two of them.

Capitalism is a bane compared with socialism. Capitalism is a boon compared with medievalism, small production, and the evils of bureaucracy which spring from the dispersal of the small producers. In as much as we are as yet unable to pass directly from small production to socialism, some capitalism is inevitable as the elemental product of small production and exchange; so that we must utilise capitalism (particularly by directing it into the channels of state capitalism) as the intermediary link between small production and socialism, as a means, a path, and a method of increasing the productive forces.

• Lenin, The Tax in Kind

Lmao, he quotes Lenin and casually just skips a whole chapter between “and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it…” and “Abolishing the bureaucracy at once, everywhere and completely, is out of the question. It is a utopia. But to smash the old bureaucratic machine at once and to begin immediately to construct a new one that will make possible the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy”.

On his point about AES’s, he seemingly diminishes their efforts in striving to provide a higher standard of living because they don’t ultimately lead to world revolution, which seems to be his condition of whether a country is socialist or not. He asks, “is Cuba/Vietnam/etc., in its current configuration, capable of helping to produce or advance socialist revolution in the world?” while completely ignoring how these countries’ very existence poses a bulwark against a complete capitalist hegemony over the planet. The guy really didn’t stop and ponder as to why a nation like Cuba doesn’t just up and try to invade Florida. It’s almost like standing up to global hegemons isn’t a straight street.

He also makes a number of weird assumptions like modern ML’s thinking Nato is the final boss to achieving socialism. About how the denunciation of Khrushchev and Brezhnev as revisionists is some new development in ML circles, etc.

He also tries to compare the cultish violence displayed by the Shining Path and the violence of former revolutionaries. Lmao there’s quite the difference between tossing scolding water on babies and pregnant women and say, the Bolshevik execution of the Romanovs.

He has a dumb rant about electoralism supported by, once again, cherrypicking Lenin tossed in their, because why not.