this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Communism
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Above, you seemed to suggest that you agree with the need for material analysis over idealism. You seem to be saying the same here, by saying what MLs already agree with: that state power in the USSR and China was/is complicated.
But then you say:
You responded to GrainEater about that, but I'll add here that revolutionary states run by Marxist Leninists are the only ones to have made any headway at all. The track record is at least 5-nil against all other revolutionary ideologies and that's only counting self-proclaimed ML AES states that still exist. These are Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, DPRK. A materialist analysis of these states may lead you to change your mind.
This isn't counting the massive, overwhelmingly positive contribution to humanity made by the USSR in it's short existence. Defeating Nazi Germany. Ending Feudalism in Russia and elsewhere. Supporting third world liberation movements and helping to 'end' colonialism. Raising the living standards of it's inhabitants. Providing an impetus for western social democracies to implement a welfare state (how fast these have deteriorated since the Berlin Wall fell!).
The problem with Spood's comment is that it doesn't really make sense. Do they mean the workers need to control the state that controls the means of production? If so, there's little or no disagreement.
Or that the workers need to control the means of production directly? If so, what does that mean? Does this mean worker co-ops? Or something else? If co-ops or something else, it's not Marxism. Plus, what happens to the logic of capital without a central authority, i.e. a state, to organise these units of workers? How do workers abolish the relations of capital (markets, competition, etc) if all they own is their own workplace? If they own more than the place they work, what structure are they using that isn't a state by another name?
If it is the latter (direct control), then it could instead mean simply that communism will only be achieved when the workers control the means of production. This is (1) a trite tautology with which no ML will disagree, and (2) either (a) only one side of the story or (b) anti-dialectical, and (3) not mutually exclusive with the workers controlling the means if production through the state.
As Marx and Engels say in The German Ideology, communism is the process of overturning capitalism.
From a dialectical perspective, which treats the world as interrelated contradictory processes rather than static things, a communist revelation must be a contradictory process. One can't claim to be an historical materialist and then refuse to treat revolution – the focus of all revolutionaries – in an anti-dialectical way. To reduce communism and revolution as a status that can pop into existence is to deny that these are, again, interrelated, contradictory processes.
Communism is not just the end goal or the 'end' end goal. Communism is the next stage of human social development, which will happen over a period of time. After that, humans will have to resolve other contradictions and society will develop further. Or not. Maybe humans are doomed to strive for communism forever. (Not my view.)
Either way, communism is both the name for the struggle and the goal that revolutionaries are struggling for. If this is what Spood means when they say that communists should never stop striving, every ML would likely agree.
If that's not what they mean, they seem to be making an empty left-communist slogan that means we either go straight to 23rd century communism in one fell swoop or don't bother trying.
Slogan-making like that is anti-intellectual for relying on models that don't account for the fact that reactionaries are armed to the teeth, violent, and merciless. Thus also dishonest by claiming knowledge that excludes salient facts. And reactionary for suggesting a path that will inevitably lead to failure and for criticising the revolutionaries who are actually doing revolution rather than waiting for a fairy godmother to wave the magic revolution wand.
In sum, it's idealist and anti-Marxist to reject the concept of and need for the dictatorship of the proletariat.