For those struggling to find the time with everything going on, try to make an effort to find the time to read, for it is precisely in periods of crisis that Marxist theory is most relevant.

I trust that this pamphlet will help the reader to understand the fundamental economic question, that of the economic essence of imperialism, for unless this is studied, it will be impossible to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics.

Special attention has been devoted in this pamphlet to a criticism of Kautskyism, the international ideological trend represented in all countries of the world by the “most prominent theoreticians”, the leaders of the Second International

This ideological trend is, on the one hand, a product of the disintegration and decay of the Second International, and, on the other hand, the inevitable fruit of the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie, whose entire way of life holds them captive to bourgeois and democratic prejudices.

To combat these tendencies is the bounden duty of the party of the proletariat, which must win away from the bourgeoisie the small proprietors who are duped by them, and the millions of working people who enjoy more or less petty-bourgeois conditions of life.

Also:

It is precisely the parasitism and decay of capitalism, characteristic of its highest historical stage of development, i.e., imperialism. (…) out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the “advanced” countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.

Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution.

Even a century later this text is still extremely relevant, for imperialism still rules over most of the world, and as such it is a necessary read for anyone trying to understand modern day politics and economics, what the imperial core is doing, and how on the long-term their dependency on financial capital will always be outperformed by the sheer productive power of the AES.

While it’s impossible to give an absolute answer to that problem, we must remember that people change their ideas based on their material conditions. Stalin mentions how this exact problem was dealt with during the 1917 revolution:

To put in the forefront precisely those forms of struggle and organization which are best suited to the conditions prevailing during the flow or ebb of the movement at a given moment, and which therefore can facilitate and ensure the bringing of the masses to the revolutionary positions, the bringing of the millions to the revolutionary front, and their disposition at the revolutionary front.

The point here is not that the vanguard should realise the impossibility of preserving the old regime and the inevitability of its overthrow. The point is that the masses, the million should understand this inevitability and display their readiness to support the vanguard. But the masses can understand this only from their own experience. The task is to enable the vast masses to realise from their own experience the inevitability of the overthrow of the old regime, to promote such methods of struggle and forms of organisations as will make it easer fro the masses to realise from experience the correctness of the revolutionary slogans.

The vanguard would have become detached from the working class, and the working class would have lost contact with the masses, if the Party had not decided as the time to participate in the Duma, if it had not decided to concentrate its forces on work in the Duma and to develop a struggle on the basis of this work, in order to make it easier for the masses to realise from their own experience the futility of the Duma, the falsity of the promises of the Cadets, the impossibility of compromise with tsarism, and the inevitability of an alliance between the peasantry and the working class. Had the masses not gained their experience during the period of the Duma, the exposure of the Cadets and the hegemony of the proletariat would have been impossible.

The Party would have become detached from the working class, and the working class would have lost its influence among the broad masses of the peasants and soldiers, if the proletariat had followed the “Left” Communists, who called for an uprising in April 1917, when the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had not yet exposed themselves as advocates of war and imperialism, when the masses had not yet realized from their own experience the falsity of speeches of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries about peace, land and freedom. Had the masses not gained this experience during the Kerensky period, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries would not have been isolated and the dictatorship of the proletariat would have been impossible. Therefore, the tactics of “patiently explaining” the mistakes of the petty-bourgeois parties and of open struggle in the Soviets were the only correct tactics.

Some think that Leninism is opposed to reforms, opposed to compromises and to agreements in general. This is absolutely wrong. Bolsheviks know as well as anybody else that in a certain sense “every little helps,” that under certain conditions reforms in general, and compromises and agreements in particular, are necessary and useful.

To a reformist, reforms are everything, while revolutionary work is something incidental, something just to talk about, mere eyewash. That is why, with reformist tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are inevitability transformed into an instrument for strengthening that rule, an instrument for disintegrating the revolution.

To a revolutionary, on the contrary, the main thing is revolutionary work and not reforms; to him reforms are a by-product of the revolution. That is why, with revolutionary tactics under the conditions of bourgeois rule, reforms are naturally transformed into an instrument for strengthening the revolution, into a strongpoint for the further development of the revolutionary movement.

The revolutionary will accept a reform in order to use it as an aid in combining legal work with illegal work to intensify, under its cover, the illegal work for the revolutionary preparation of the masses for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

The reformist, on the contrary, will accept reforms in order to renounce all illegal work, to thwart the preparation of the masses for the revolution and to rest in the shade of “bestowed” reforms.

What is contained in Lenin’s method was in the main already contained in the teachings of Marx, which, according to Marx himself, were “in essence critical and revolutionary.”(…) As a matter of fact, Lenin’s method is not only the restoration of, but also the concretisation and further development of the critical and revolutionary method of Marx, of his materialist dialectics.

Some think that Leninism is the precedence of practice over theory in the sense that its main point is the translation of the Marxist theses into deeds, their “execution”; as for theory; it is alleged that Leninism is rather unconcerned about it.

I must declare that this more than odd opinion about Lenin and Leninism is quite wrong and bears no relation whatever to the truth; that the attempt of practical workers to brush theory aside runs counter to the whole spirit of Leninism and is fraught with serious dangers to the work.

Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect. Of course, theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory. But theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice;

I must add to this that saying that Marx only cared about theory is such an absurd lie that only revisionists could come up with it, the man was exiled from multiple countries and persecuted until his last days because of his definitely practical participation in proletarian movements.

I have to recommend both:

Anti-Dühring by F. Engels and Materialism and Empirio-criticism by V.I. Lenin

They are both considerably long but can be easily divided considering they are structured of multiple short chapters.

I personally believe that those are the best books to learn about Dialectics and Materialism, the two aspects of Marx’s Philosophy which became the basis of all Marxist theory, and therefore, are crucial reads to anyone who wants to learn Marxism without falling for ultras or revisionists’ traps.

Ok, everyone can have their opinion. Could you then, considering you agree with him, give me that source for Diamat with Fitchean dialectics that I asked? I really want to know what made people start using it considering none of the books I read ever used contradictions as “thesis–antithesis–synthesis”.

Repeating something over and over isn’t going to make it true. Throughout this discussion, you’ve consistently avoided engaging with what I’ve said to you and kept misrepresenting what I said. I did not avoid anything here. I simply rejected your misrepresentation of what I said.

Wow, this is literally what I was saying a couple of comments ago. You have “engaged” so much with what has been said to you that you can’t even point out the flaws in my comments and can only attempt to reflect your own mistakes at me.

I do not use Fchtean dialectics in diamat, but you’re clearly going to keep repeating that

Well, I am only repeating that because you keep avoiding it. And you might say that you are not using Fichtean dialectics but there is a source that disproves you on that, your own post:

Dialectical Materialism describes the cyclical process of development where an initial thesis is countered by an antithesis, leading to a synthesis that retains aspects of both but transcends them to a new level.

In case you didn’t make a quick search (which would be on character), from the very first paragraph on Fichte in Wikipedia:

Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, an idea that is often erroneously attributed to Hegel.

Back to you, on your text linked at the top of this post:

Finally, the principle of the “negation of the negation” describes a spiral of development where a thesis is challenged by an antithesis, leading to a synthesis that incorporates elements of both. (Chapter 8)

A mishmash of an attempt to explain Hegelian concepts using Fichtean logic, the fine work of a true muddler.

So even tough you might claim to not use Fichtean dialectics in diamat, your own writing proves otherwise, I wonder why that is.

There is no point trying to have a good faith discussion with such characters. Bye.

And there it is, the ultimate way of avoiding your mistakes, blaming others and turning away, no surprises here.

If there is anything out of this discussion that I hope has become clear to you, it is that if you are going to write a text on a matter that you don’t understand, only to stroke your own ego, be aware that there might be people out there that have actually studied it and will call you out on your mistakes.

Well, that is one way to attempt to avoid a question, but it’s definitely not subtle.

I don’t think it is necessary for me to add more to the “materialism” side of this discussion considering the amount of times I’ve pointed out your idealism or agnosticism in this thread, while also leaving a great source on the matter which was Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”.

But what I am asking you now is about Dialectics and if you could possibly give an example of a Marxist source that actually uses Fichtean dialectics, another example of sophistry was not necessary, it’s the other Greek word that you are lacking of.

Considering you continue to try to avoid a crucial part of this discussion, I will repeat the question once more: Why do you use Fichtean “thesis–antithesis–synthesis” in diamat?

Why do you use Fichtean dialectics in diamat? Why use contradictions as “thesis–antithesis–synthesis”? Where did you learn that? Have you found a Marxist author using it like I asked you to link me 3 months ago? Do you just replace Hegelian Dialectics or try to mesh both? If you claim that to you the abstraction of “third order” isn’t the conclusion what is the “synthesis” then?

The fact that you think the word salad you wrote corrected anything really says all I need to know. Simply regurgitating things you’ve read does not constitute genuine understanding of the subject you’re attempting to debate. You are utterly incapable in engaging with an argument you’re presented with in good faith and you use sophistry in lieu of argument. I’ve said all I have to say to you.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, so much so that it becomes very ironic that it came from you, so I will just give my last point, which was also my first one, but has been skillfully avoided so far.

Why do you use Fichtean dialectics in diamat? Why use contradictions as “thesis–antithesis–synthesis”? Where did you learn that? Have you found a Marxist author using it like I asked you to link me 3 months ago? Do you just replace Hegelian Dialectics or try to mesh both? If you claim that to you the abstraction of “third order” isn’t the conclusion what is the “synthesis” then?

I made this point literally on my first comment on this thread, and yet it has never been responded by you. Personally, I think that your muddle might be plenty enough for other matters, but in this one your separation from Marxist Dialectical Materialism is so crystal clear that avoiding it entirely was the only way to maintain your ownership of the truth, so you just looked away and pretended it wasn’t there.

So I will end my argumentation by bringing even more attention to what you have avoided the most: Why do you use Fichtean “thesis–antithesis–synthesis” in diamat?

Given that I grew up in USSR, this is the most hilarious thing I’ve been told in a while.

Well, that explains a lot actually. One could argue that growing up in after 60’s USSR, a person would be influenced by revisionist ideologies similar to those commonly associated with the infamous western “leftist”, one could also argue that the fact that a person who grew up there can’t differentiate between agnostic structuralism and dialectical materialism to be an example of a contradiction that played an important part in it’s downfall. But here I will do neither for that would only make things more complex, and the if current simpler discussion is already this muddled, nothing would be clear in a more complex one.

You continue to put words in my mouth while ignoring what I’m actually saying. (…) Except I did not claim the other way around anywhere. What I said is that internal contradictions are influenced by external factors.

What you actually said:

many of the contradictions within USSR were a result of the fact that USSR was under siege by the capitalist world.

I am sorry that you dislike the taste of the words in your mouth, but you cannot blame me for they being there, if anything you are trying after the fact to change what you put there in the first place. But it doesn’t matter if you try now to claim that “many of the contradictions within USSR were a result of the fact that USSR was under siege by the capitalist world.” means the same as " the very real internal deficiencies within communist systems were exacerbated by unrelenting external attacks", the inverted philosophical logic in changing “the external affecting the contradictions” to “the external resulting in the contradictions” makes the difference between yours and Parentis philosophical standpoint pretty clear.

If anything I am the one who could be complaining about words being put in others mouths, for the only thing you could claim that I have been ignoring so far is your continuous attempt to pin on me an argument that the external doesn’t influence the internal contradictions, something I’ve never said in any comment, since it would’ve been unmaterialistic of me. The only thing that I am ignoring are your attempts of putting words in my mouth, which I shall continue to do so.

As a matter of fact this discussion started with me saying that your (structuralistic) separation between the contradictions and their solutions, leaving the latter to an out of the system third order, due to the misuse of (Fichtean) dialectics was a mistake, which I’m still claiming, except that now I can name more clearly and correctly the source of your mistakes, for as a dialectical materialist I try to study and correct my mistakes about what I’m saying rather than just trying to create the truth.

For a dialectical materialist abstractions are only part of the process of the understanding in our minds, not the conclusion of the process in reality, so if anyone can be blamed for creating a separation that doesn’t exist it is only the agnostic of us.

Maybe you should spend a bit of time to actually understand what dialectical materialism is instead of writing pseudo intellectual comments.

Considering that throughout this discussion I have already mentioned multiple times sources of Marxists writers on my points and your mistakes, while all you’ve brought so far is a misquoted Parenti quote (which I corrected) and your self-given ownership of the truth, I don’t think I need to say who is being pseudo something and should spend more time reading rather than writing.

As an example, many of the contradictions within USSR were a result of the fact that USSR was under siege by the capitalist world. The phenomenon Parenti refers to as siege communism.

At first I was shocked of reading this, on a ML instance of all places, to take Parenti’s siege socialism and attempt to make it as the result of some kind of struturalistc analysis feels unbelievable, but considering that our discussion has been around the fact that you’d rather use an agnostic analysis over a materialistic one, and that you don’t follow Hegelian dialectics and therefore the term “contradiction” means whatever you want, it’s then possible to see how one could claim such absurdities.

Let’s then actually quote the man himself:

One reason siege socialism could not make the transition to consumer socialism is that the state of siege was never lifted. As noted in the previous chapter, the very real internal deficiencies within communist systems were exacerbated by unrelenting external attacks and threats from the Western powers. (Blackshirts and Reds, p.74)

Parenti literally wrote that the external influences exacerbated the internal contradictions already present within the system, because he was using dialectical materialism and therefore saw first the existence of internal contradictions and then those being affected by the external influences, not the other way around as you claimed.

I need to say, having never had a discussion with a western “leftist” before, even though I somewhat knew what to expect, it is still impressive seeing it first hand how one can believe to make no mistakes and their arguments don’t require any proof since they personally own the truth, thinking that repeated enough times anything they say will become real.

Leaving that aside, this recent discussion has left me with a question which I look forward to the answer. If you can dismiss dialectical materialism so easily in favor of a struturalistic analysis, and don’t care about Hegelian dialectics, why were you writing about diamat in the first place?

Sorry to bother you again with this conversation after 3 months have passed, but this sentence has come back to me a couple of times during this period due to how poorly it was dealt with by me, and just how it crucial it was to our discussion, so I will now attempt to correct that.

Structuralism differs form Marxism in that it tries to take Marxist advancements on sociology and understanding of the structures of society while refuting the knowability of the internal contradictions within said society, therefore negating the existence of the internal contradiction that lead to capitalism’s demise. They claim that the problems of capitalist society are consequences of poor implementation of the system, and consequently believe that with just a change in policies and general politics the problems can be fixed, therefore it is the philosophy which gives birth to reformists.

The way that structuralism achieves that separation from Marxist conclusions is by following the agnostic logic of compromising materialism with idealism, in its specific case, it is Marxist sociology with fichtean subjective idealism, it turns Fichte “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” into reality-ideas-structures.

Out of the top of wikipedia’s page on structuralism: "Structuralism is “The belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations.”. (Things are unknowable but their interrelations are knowable, classic agnostic muddle.)

Out of the top of wikipedia’s page on Post-structuralism: “Structuralism proposes that human culture can be understood by means of a structure that is modeled on language. As a result, there is concrete reality on the one hand, abstract ideas about reality on the other hand, and a “third order” that mediates between the two.” (reality-ideas-structures.)

Looking back in our discussion, you said “I’m not sure there’s much value separating external and internal conditions though as both ultimately feed into the system.”, but to study a thing with Dialectical Materialism it is a necessary step to separate from its current context in order to discover its internal contradictions, which is why in his texts Marx himself does so many abstractions, to allow him to understand the internal movements of things.

The condition that materialism demands of every theory, that it must be put to the test of reality, does not mean that one shouldn’t use abstractions when creating said theory, in fact it is quite the opposite if we look at Marxism.

Looking even further into our discussion, we can see that it went through this contradiction where I was attempting to simplify things in order to make more apparent the differences between philosophies, mentioning eggs, water, etc., while you kept complicating matters by bringing more complex and bigger things, such as society, environment, etc., making the discussion less clear and hiding misunderstandings behind big words.

While it did annoy me at the time, which lead to my last comment, I can now understand that it wasn’t personal, it is of philosophical necessity that agnosticism muddles things, for when the matter being dealt with is clear and simple, the separation that it tries to create between knowable and unknowable loses all reasoning, which is why we can’t just discuss over an egg hatching into a chicken, we must to consider how the “chicken will proceed to eat food, produce waste, and so on. It’s part of the environment, and it has a direct effect on the environment.” and therefore we can only comprehend it as a structure and not its specific parts, as Lenin would say, pure muddle.

Having explained all this, it would be incoherent of me to leave the same books recommendations as I did last time, considering we can now see that the divergence comes before we get to dialectics, it is between materialism and agnosticism, I will then recommend a single book on the matter, Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism”. Even though it was written before Structuralism was a thing, it goes on such great detail on the differences between the logic of materialism and agnosticism in general (and idealism as well) that it provides the best method of understanding what separates those fields of philosophy.

May this help you to comprehend the differences between philosophies and the necessity that materialism has of objective knowledge and it’s complete compromise with the truth, Good Luck comrade.

Good answer, comrade 🫡

It is always important to remember to think current situations in a materialistic way, and not fall for the idealistic lie that propaganda alone is able to “brainwash” or “control” people.

To correctly answer the question you’ve proposed we must first consider what is being meant by “dialectics”:

“Dialectics” as a philosophy, social concept, world outlook, etc., is our subjective interpretation of the laws in which reality works, therefore as it is the case with every “thing-for-us” it is a reflection created the human mind and consequently is depended on conscious beings capable of such complex thinking and necessarily has a definite beginning and a definite end.

“Dialectics” as the “thing-in-itself”, as the laws of motion of the universe, is infinite as time itself, for if time is absolute, which it is, it will affect every existing thing in the universe and it does so through “dialectics”.

So the “thing-for-us” called “dialectics” is not eternal and is merely our attempt at understanding the laws of the universe, and as such it is always going to be incomplete state and in a ever changing process of improvement towards the “thing-in-itself” which governs the motion of universe.

All that I wrote here is from my understanding of Engels’ “Anti-During”, where in one of its first chapters he explains the Hegelian concept of different infinites and time, which is pretty much what your question is centered around, so I’d recommend the read.

Thanks, that’s what I was looking for, crazy that I’ve never heard of it or of the author.

Thanks for the recommendations. I actually started searching for a critique after seeing how many of those philosophers call themselves Marxists or post, all the while covering with the most idealistic BS the advances that Marx brought to Philosophy and Sociology.

Even tough I’m neither a zoomer or have ADHD I can relate with not being able to read Marx’s “Capital”, years ago I also jumped straight into it after only having read the manifesto and as consequence could not make past the 2º chapter.

But that is the “Capital”'s contradiction. It’s such a complete and elaborated description of capitalist economy that you theoretically wouldn’t need any other complementary text to understand capitalism, but as a consequence of that the book is extremely dense, complex and long, so much that if you never read a Marxist book prior you will be encountering new terms and logics in almost every paragraph, making it a very hard and slow read while also likely leading to misunderstandings.

The solution to that is to do exactly what your doing now, which is reading other simpler and shorter Marxists books and increasing your understanding of Marxism in general, before tackling the behemoth that is Marx’s “Capital”. So just remember that you can’t do capital yet, but after finishing your list, if you give it another try maybe you will find out that you actually can do it.

That is a good New Year’s Resolution to have, as it’s always better to know more theory. Personally I always recommend to anyone that is planing to do a deep dive in Marxist theory to start with the philosophy on which the theory itself is based, that means reading books on Dialectical Materialism as the first step.

You already have a couple of them in your list, so my recommendation is to prioritize them over their application in the more advanced books. On that note the only book I would add to your list is M. Cornforth’s “Materialism and the Dialectical Method” which is arguably the book to describe Diamat in the most understandable way for modern readers.

Other than that, I would say after finishing that list it’d be time to tackle the two most important works of Marx and Engels in Engels’ “Anti-Dühring” and Marx’s “Capital”.

Good reading, Comrade.

Well, in the link they mention 5 out 40 in a class, that equals to 12.5% and 2 million out of 22 million in total, that is just over 9%.

Personally, I don’t see the point of going in circles in this discussion, so I’ll just add my two last notes:

First, I want to again make very clear that my entire point since the first comment has been around the misuse of Fichte’s “thesis–antithesis–synthesis” in the place of Hegel’s study of “the inner life and self-movement”, and the consequences of this. I do want to add the if you know a Marxist author that uses the Fichtean method in a book, please send a link to me, for I would definitely need to read it.

Speaking of books, lastly I want to recommend the books that I read that deal with the dialectical method as I’ve been describing: F. Engels - “Socialism Utopian and Scientific”; F. Engels - “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy”; J. Stalin - “Dialectical and Historical Materialism”; M. Cornforth - “Materialism and the Dialectical Method”; Mao - “Five Essays on Philosophy”; V. Adoratsky - “The Theoretical Foundation of Marxism-Leninism”; V.I. Lenin - “Karl Marx”; G. Plekhanov - “Materialismus Militans”; G. Plekhanov “In Defense of Materialism”.

Hopefully you will find within yourself to read, and maybe reread, those books so that the methodological mistake you’ve been making so far may be a thing of the past, good luck on this process comrade.