Spicy question maybe, but I'm interested in your takes.
Personally, I think there's some major issues with at least the terminology of the 2 phase model of lower/higher stage communism or socialism/communism as the terms are used in classical theory. Specifically the 'lower stage' or 'socialism' term is problematic.
In the age of revision and after the success of counterrevolution it has become clear that there is in fact a transitional phase leading up to the classical transitional phase. Societies did not jump from developed capitalism to socialism immediately and even the states that arguably did were forced to roll back some of the core tenets of 'socialism' as it is described in Marx, Engels and Lenin. Namely no private ownership of the means of production and no exploitation of man by man.
To ultras this just means countries following this path aren't socialist. So then China isn't, Cuba isn't, no country still is really and those of us claiming they are then have to be revisionists. And to be fair, if you're dogmatic you can make that point going from the source material. China itself recognizes this inconsistency, thus not seeing itself at the stage of socialism. Yet it's a socialist state. But then what do we actually mean by 'socialism' when we use the term like this? Just a dictatorship of the proletariat? Any country in the process of building socialism?
That question comes up all the time and confuses the fuck out of people, because the term is either not applied consistently or as it's defined is lacking. I think discourse in the communist movement and about AES would profit immensely if we had a more consistent definition or usage of the term or a better defined concept of what that transition to socialism is and how we should call it.
I think there's a lot of difficulty in MLism discussing social relations that are relevant to revolution and reaction but aren't directly explicitly related to the means of production. Intersectionality does a good job of exposing those relations, but MLism struggles to incorporate these relations into a coherent framework that can easily be picked up.
Thus, we have confusion among MLs about how to express the division between the white labor aristocracy and the proles and lumpen of color. We have confusion about how to name oppressor and oppressed and discuss how oppression reproduces society. We struggle to incorporate the insights of Fanon and Freire without opening the door to revisionism. We do our best to do this, but MLism in my experience lacks the language and potential the concepts to handle these other relations gracefully.
If anyone has a good way of navigating what I am describing, I would be super grateful for some pointers.
As someone that just took class that utilized intersectionality as a framework, I heavily disagree. Intersectionality is confusing and lacking real foundational principles (i.e. it lacks a materialist perspective) that can interpret the world in real, actionable ways. It is basically like playing whack-a-mole, where each "intersection" requires its own individual investigation and understanding rather than belonging to an overarching understanding of the world. I interpret your critique as saying MLs generally lack a good understanding of class beyond Marx and Lenin (or maybe more generally, 19th and 20th century Europe) and how to incorporate decolonial ideas into class concepts, which I completely agree with. I am also part of the problem! But I don't think this is something that other MLs haven't analyzed. I think its a tendency of white labor aristocrats that are overrepresented in Western ML spaces (again, I am part of the problem). If anyone has good resources that bring class analysis into our modern world, I would also appreciate that!
I now realize I may be misinterpreting what you were saying about intersectionality, as I do think it is successful in at least bringing these topics into the forefront as worthy of serious analysis. I am just really frustrated with it right now since it caused me headaches lol
I think that's the point I'm making. Intersectionality and decolonialism have demonstrated that they are required for sustainable revolution, but MLism can't easily incorporate it.
I think various treatments of intersectionality fall to your critique, but I think perhaps your positions of privilege make intersectionality more difficult to feel the power of. There's a ton of power in understanding that storytelling is valid form of historical evidence. There's a ton of power in understanding that your privileges play a similar role to class interests in propagating and resisting ideologies and in determining aggregate behavior. It's critical to see this when you read Fanon and you realize that there exist both proletariat and slaves in the same global world system and that the proletariat depends on the exploitation of slaves in maintaining their ability to reproduce their lives, and that these concepts interpermeate and the lines are terribly blurry. When you look into colonial America and you see indentured servants that are white and sharecroppers that are black, it's insufficient to treat these two group identically due to ideology and superstructure. What do we call that using MLism? As far as I know, we can't call them separate classes because they have the same relations to the means of production, but they have different relations to each other and to the state and to the bourgeoisie.
Cuba has done a pretty good point about making strides for not only it's Black population, but also Women and LGBT+ people as well. I think plenty of communist countries have implemented this more and more into their societies.
This seems mainly a Western ML issue if anything.
I think behaviorally and policy-wise it's easy. I'm saying ML theory struggles to handle it.
I would say ML as a theory isn’t flexible to it, but rather that dogmatic settlers don’t understand that we have to study our own material conditions rather than copy-pasting China on.
I am studying it and I'm struggling to find the linguistic and conceptual framings that work, hence why I posted this as my answer to the question about what I find lacking in MLism.
I believe ‘decolonized Buffalo’ has a collection of quotes from the ‘five heads of ML’ that can very easily be interpreted in a Decolonial way.
How would I find this? I listen to the Decolonized Buffalo podcast. Is it an episode? An essay?
Not exactly sure. This is what the podcast description says:
spoiler
Episode 135: Would Lenin or Stalin have supported the idea of Decolonization? (of the North American Continent)
Guests: Derek (PlantsFanon), Victor (Red Falcon)
To find the word document that we were reading from, you can go to the podcast share drive, then to go the “Documents” folder. The answer is “YES”, they would support the current idea of ‘Decolonization’. Quoted Sources included:
A) “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination” by Lenin
B) “Self-Determination of Nations” by Lenin
C) “The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination” by Lenin
D) “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up” by Lenin
E) “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (Theses)” by Lenin
F) “State and Revolution” by Lenin
G) “What is to be Done?” by Lenin
H) “Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism” by Lenin
I) “‘Left-Wing’ Communism, An Infantile Disorder” by Lenin
J) “Marxism and the National Question” by Stalin
K) “The Foundations of Leninism” by Stalin
L) “Historical Materialism” by Stalin
Rick is a citizen of the Comanche Nation, and has a master’s in Indigenous People’s law, from the University of Oklahoma. Idk where this podcast share drive is.
One example, the newly passed Families code in Cuba!
Again, I'm not saying Marxism-Leninism is incompatible with this. I'm saying MLism doesn't seem to provide us with the tools required to analyze and formulate dialectical concepts that demonstrate the reality of the situation that Decolonial and intersectional research and analysis have uncovered.
Perhaps I misunderstood your point...I was a bit high. Nonetheless, I'd say that it's not supposed to come with universal frameworks. The experience of these countries is theory in real time.
Might not necessarily answer your request, but a bit of a different way of thinking about it.