view the rest of the comments
Communism
Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.
Rules for /c/communism
Rules that visitors must follow to participate. May be used as reasons to report or ban.
- No non-marxists
This subreddit is here to facilitate discussion between marxists.
There are other communities aimed at helping along new communists. This community isn't here to convert naysayers to marxism.
If you are a member of the police, armed forces, or any other part of the repressive state apparatus of capitalist nations, you will be banned.
- No oppressive language
Do not attempt to justify your use of oppressive language.
Doing this will almost assuredly result in a ban. Accept the criticism in a principled manner, edit your post or comment accordingly, and move on, learning from your mistake.
We believe that speech, like everything else, has a class character, and that some speech can be oppressive. This is why speech that is patriarchal, white supremacist, cissupremacist, homophobic, ableist, or otherwise oppressive is banned.
TERF is not a slur.
- No low quality or off-topic posts
Posts that are low-effort or otherwise irrelevant will be removed.
This is not a place to engage in meta-drama or discuss random reactionaries on lemmy or anywhere else.
This includes memes and circlejerking.
This includes most images, such as random books or memorabilia you found.
We ask that amerikan posters refrain from posting about US bourgeois politics. The rest of the world really doesn’t care that much.
- No basic questions about marxism
Posts asking entry-level questions will be removed.
Questions like “What is Maoism?” or “Why do Stalinists believe what they do?” will be removed, as they are not the focus on this forum.
- No sectarianism
Marxists of all tendencies are welcome here.
Refrain from sectarianism, defined here as unprincipled criticism. Posts trash-talking a certain tendency or marxist figure will be removed. Circlejerking, throwing insults around, and other pettiness is unacceptable.
If criticisms must be made, make them in a principled manner, applying Marxist analysis.
The goal of this subreddit is the accretion of theory and knowledge and the promotion of quality discussion and criticism.
Check out ProleWiki for a communist wikipedia.
What a cheap cop out. Look to history, look to sociology for explanation of this logic. That power corrupts is a material fact, reconfirmed every damn day. Power is a network of relations that creates and sustains the conditions for its own reproduction, which will start to deviate from the interests one represented in the beginning...
I have yet too see this, except for in individuals, which isn't really sustainable for a political system. As marxists, denying your line of argument is truly shooting oneself in the foot, as there exists nothing more uninteresting than a socialist vision that cannot be clearly separated from a boring dystopia. Perhaps a better definition of a tankie would be someone who is not interested in marxist theory development, but rather the exercise of conservative, dogmatist circle-jerking.
I can't speak for Kraus but I have something to add myself.
It's only a cop-out if it's interpreted in light of certain assumptions.
One of those assumptions is that by 'idealism', Krause meant that power does not corrupt. But that is a bizarre interpretation and assumption.
Idealism is to be contrasted with materialism, yes. But I don't think Kraus was saying that power does not corrupt in the material world.
The phrase was said in the context of a discussion about states. The argument was that revolutionaries can't trust or use states because the people who run them will be corrupted by their power. That's idealism because it prefers an idea of the state based on a concept of bourgeois states over what the state would actually be under a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The fact that power corrupts is not a reason for arguing against the need for a state in securing a revolution. It is idealism to think so. With organisation and discipline, it doesn't matter that power corrupts because the new ruling class will have to account for that in its constitution. A Marxist state that leaves room for people to use power in a corrupt way is doomed to failure.
Which countries does your "socialism" have?