Update: they have ascertained that Parabola was Wisconcom lmao. In that light, if correct, it’s more of a wrecker doing what he does than the project failing. We still don’t have a lot of info though. They’ve written about it here: https://wiki.leftypol.org/wiki/Leftypedia:Community_hub
Earlier today, the new rendition of Leftypedia finally imploded. Going off the block list, it’s a real mess.
Leftypedia was brought back from its last incarnation in early 2023. If you remember (or not), it had issues with Wisconcom then who latched onto it. The problem is because they had no active admins and couldn’t find them, they couldn’t ban him indefinitely.
Eventually, they did find new admins who kicked the project back into gear, or at least they tried to.
Earlier today though, it seems there has been a split and one of the admins (Parabola) basically banned all the others as well as several other users. Where it gets weird is that another admin (Aussig) then banned Parabola, but didn’t undo the bans Parabola issued. Aussig also banned me and Forte’s account, which we used back when Wisconcom was on there, for “ideological deviations”, but Aussig calls themselves a Marxist-Leninist on their user page.
From what I understand there was a split between the different tendencies. So anyway that’s how the “left unity” wiki is going lol sorry but this is funny.
Calling AES as revisionists is wrong, they’re developing their productive forces and are using the tools they seem fit to do it.
The main thesis of historical materialism is that production is the chief determinant force in the development of society. In order to reach a higher stage of development, the productive forces and the relations of production must be developed accordingly. Capitalism historical task, as marx pointed out, is to develop the productive forces, so these countries use capitalism to develop their productive forces.
The key difference between AES and other states is the role of the goverment, AES are held accountable by the people not the capitalists. We could argue about the degree of consolidation of power, the efficiency of their tasks, and many other things, but calling them revisionists? That’s just silly.
If we took as granted the claim that they are truly democratic rather than bureaucratic or some other antidemocratic form of government, including ones with populist paint like the liberal democracies we are so familiar with. What evidence do you have that they are democratically controlled? High approval ratings don’t cut it, kings can also be popular. I look at Xi’s speeches and, contrary to what we like to get out of his claims about democracy, most of his speeches are notoriously filled with pablum and dogmatism (mostly “Deng was right” a thousand different ways), not at all the way that you address an engaged populace that you have the slightest degree of intellectual respect for, much less one that has been given an effective Marxist education. You can make a very good argument for Cuba being democratic by pointing to various types of civic engagement, but I’m not confident that you can make the same claim about China.