Can be personal or external but what is something (you believe/see reflected so strongly in reality) AND (!(OR) the world of ideas)
AND but not OR
Please stick to that which you are confident about and holds to at least the spirit of the question
Can be personal or external but what is something (you believe/see reflected so strongly in reality) AND (!(OR) the world of ideas)
AND but not OR
Please stick to that which you are confident about and holds to at least the spirit of the question
That’s a common term for it, especially in China, where they call it “Whole-Process People’s Democracy.”
ah, that explains the other comment that mentions the ideal solution is instead of having a choice between two candidates is to not have a choice between candidates but instead only a single candidate that you vote for or not … this reminds me of Maoist democratic centralism, and I guess that’s exactly what is getting expressed?
I know I never responded to your prior comment to me (I really appreciated that you spent the time challenging me in such a productive and helpful manner, thank you so much), but I suspect this is going to the same place - in the end, I need somewhere to start to better understand Marxist-Leninism as you see it …
Maybe it would be helpful for me to list the influences on me and what I have read:
Being raised as a centrist liberal in the U.S. set me up to have certain biases and misinformation, I was basically taught communism was just like fascism - both being equated with mass murder. Very horseshoe theory.
I guess as an adult I went through a radicalization process that started by reading history & politics, and I learned liberalism is basically capitalism and I realized all the values that I felt were “liberal” were in conflict with capital … I landed with sympathy for libertarian forms of socialism - Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bookchin, etc. but this was more as an articulation of the ideal state of society, which I also learned overlaps with Marx’s concept of communism - the anarchists and communists are aligned on what the ideal state of things are (or at least theoretically, sometimes I talk to self-described Marxists who believe communism will be an authoritarian utopia where there is a unified state, so in practice I find it hard to know what a “communist” believes without some questioning).
Reading China Miéville helped me understand that at least at the time of the Russian Revolution, Lenin & the Bolsheviks represented a populist, working-class position to the left of the more status quo defending stageist mensheviks … Obviously I find Lenin’s attack of left communism disturbing, but I also suspend judgement to some extent since discussions on how pragmatic and what is genuinely pragmatic in politics to be something difficult for me to ascertain even now (you see this every election cycle with people begging you to vote for the lesser evil, and the Democrats insisting on being pragmatic by capitulating to positions further and further right; it’s interesting at least that political pragmatism always seems to be justifying suspension of principles and values in favor of authoritarian or right-wing measures, but I also see sometimes it really works that way. To come full circle, democratic centralism was Lenin’s way to generate unity so as to maintain power and not have division weaken the state against enemies.
The arguments I see generally go that capitalist / imperialist nations are trying to undermine communism (obviously true), so the socialist states must take extreme authoritarian measures to ensure the survival of the state and the revolution (plausible), and communism won’t come around until the imperialist states have been defeated and conditions permit the withering of the state. This feels a bit too much like a soteriological framework, communism becomes like waiting on Christ’s return - I would prefer my politics to be invested in direct outcomes more than having faith for a future utopia that will likely never come. I don’t have well formed ideas on solutions to these contradictions, but it seems obvious centralizing power and authority comes with huge risks of corruption and abuse of that power, and works against the goals and the populist, democratic spirit of Marxism and communism. As Terry Eagleton put it “State socialism for Marx would have been a contradiction in terms. Socialism was democratic or it was nothing … Marx disagreed with parliamentary democracy because it wasn’t democratic enough. It did not extend in a popular grassroots decentralized way into society as a whole and it certainly didn’t extend into the economy. He was not a utopian thinker … and he spent much time criticizing that whole vein of political thought.”
All this to say, I hope by exposing my influences you could direct me to a reasonable place to continue my education, if you feel inclined.
Regarding socialist democracy, there are different kinds in different places, from approval voting (similar to what you describe here) to direct competition, but the jist of it is that competition in politics sows division, while cooperation tends to be far more successful. This doesn’t inherently have anything to do with democratic centralism, nor does it have to do with Maoism, inherently.
Overall, most of what you’ve read is good! I support the majority of that list, but outside of Peter Singer, I take most issue with Orwell and Chomsky. Orwell hated the working class, even some of his comrades in Catalonia joked that he belonged on the other side. He was a British fed, and kept lists of suspected Jews, homosexuals, and communists, that he used to narc on people. Chomsky on the other hand is an insufferable sycophant for the US Empire, and fundamentally hasn’t made an actual attempt to understand Marxism. Chomsky has some decent contributions like Manufacturing Consent and his work with Ilan Pappé on Palestine, but is a massive anticommunist.
I recommend, if you have the time, reading On Orwell, A Critical Read of Animal Farm, Isaac Asimov on 1984, and On Chomsky if you want to better understand what I’m talking about, here. These are more for providing a counter to them and their work than they are for understanding Marxism-Leninism and actually existing socialism (AES), though, so feel free to skip these.
More importantly, and what you’ve very helpfully identified (I mean this with no ill-will or superiority, this is a complicated subject and you’ve read more than most), is the core of your misunderstanding of Marxism (not Marxism-Leninism yet, that’s something to discuss later), and how it answers the same questions anarchism tries to in different ways:
Anarchism is primarily about communalization of production. Marxism is primary about collectivization of production.
When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.
Democratic Centralism, ie diversity in thought, unity in action, is really the expression of democracy in unified, proletarian form. It goes against individualism and towards collectivism, the biggest strength of the working class is its ability to organize.
Moving onto Lenin, I think you misunderstand the issues Marxists have with “ultraleftism.” It isn’t the leftism we take issue with, it’s the idealism, moving into utopianism and trying to achieve higher stages of socialism when the productive forces aren’t suited to it. It would be like attempting capitalism before the steam engine, or feudalism before farming was a thing. Can you imagine being a landlord over a hunter-gatherer society? How can that work? It’s the same with ultraleftists, who in Lenin’s time rejected working with the unions, rejected the revolutionary role of the peasantry (only seeing the proletariat as genuinely revolutionary), etc.
All of that is leading to this: I highly recommend giving my intro Marxist-Leninist reading guide a look, especially section 0a. 0a describes why we need a collectivized economy, why Marxism-Leninism in particular is crucial, and finishes with my favorite works on dispelling Red Scare mythology and contextualizing AES, particularly the USSR (especially with dispelling horsehoe theory as the nonsense it is). The whole guide is meant to be as highly focused on providing utility to the reader as possible, but that initial section is intended to help anyone come to at least come to an understanding of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism on Marxist terms.
Hope that answers your question!
Genuine question re Democratic Centralism, what is the alternative? In any kind of org (surely even non-political), you vote on something and then… don’t follow the result of the vote?
Do you mean what is the alternative to democratic centralism as a method of democracy, or do you mean how, under democratic centralism, does decision making work when the vote doesn’t back the single candidate / option?
EDIT: you might be interested in some of the decision making systems used in anarchist and left libertarian contexts, e.g. occupy movement hand signals and Loomio which came out of the Occupy movement. The Zapatistas movement also has some decision making process that is worth looking into - the way delegates from the movement would return to rural areas to discuss in town halls. Bookchin’s idea of libertarian munincipalism and using limited-sized town halls as a method for communal decision making through discussion and establishing consensus also seems related.
There is an idea that with voluntary, cooperative decision-making, discussion and consensus precedes a vote, so that by the time the vote happens it is merely a formal confirmation of the consensus that was previously formed through discussion. If it gets to a vote and fails, it’s an indication that the cooperative consensus-forming process that should precede the vote did not happen, or something crucial has changed in the time between when consensus was informally established and when the vote was held.
Democratic Centralism doesn’t put forth a single option and hopes everyone agrees on it, it requires that the results of voting are followed through even if you individually disagree with the majority. I think reading this article may help you better understand it, but here’s an excerpt:
What is the alternative, as Cowbee answered.
sorry, this doesn’t clarify anything - I don’t know what you mean.
It’s ok, I was asking Cowbee.
But thanks for the links and stuff.
Sometimes yes, or you have to follow it but can slander the decision outside of the party, ie publicly undermine it. Some democratic organs have resolutions on party stance, but don’t make them binding, etc. The strict adherance to party discipline and unity in action is what separates democratic centralism from standard binding forms of democracy, and is more informed by historic experience of what has worked in the past most effectively.