• Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    They always will, they serve the same donors and bourgeois powers. Marx and Lenin are vindicated by the passage of time. They were not clairvoyant, they just accurately analyzed the systems around them and saw what necessarily follows from their directions.

    Everyone, get organized, read theory, learn self-defense and self-sufficiency. A good primer is Blackshirts and Reds. Defend yourselves and protect each other.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        4 hours ago

        That’s my favorite intro to Marxism, yes.

        Here’s a little “intro to Marxism-Leninism” list I threw together, modified a bit. It’s critically missing Queer Theory, Feminist Theory, and National Liberation theory, so any additions on that matter would be excellent. I am working through intersectional theory right now, which is why it is missing from this present list, the goal is to be as straight to the point as possible.

        A good intro for someone with no familiarity is Engels’ Principles of Communism and if you are anti-AES but willing to read I recommend Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds.

        From there, it becomes more important to understand that Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components:

        1. Dialectical and Historical Materialism

        2. Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx’s Law of Value

        3. Advocacy for Revolutionary Socialism

        And as such, I recommend, in order:

        1. Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy

        By far my favorite primer on Dialectical and Historical Materialism. By understanding DiaMat first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism.

        1. Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

        Further reading on DiaMat, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, essentially explaining how Capitalism itself preps the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates.

        1. Marx’s Wage Labor and Capital as well as Wages, Price and Profit

        Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value.

        1. Lenin’s Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism

        Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions.

        1. Lenin’s The State and Revolution

        Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, and not replaced. Also a good call to action to cap off the intro.

        After reading all of this, whoever has completed these works should have a good grasp of the basics of Marxism-Leninism and be equipped to do their own Marxist-Leninist analysis, though tons of excellent and fairly critical works were dropped for the sake of limiting the scope to an intro reading list. I can make more “advanced” recommendations if they are necessary as well.

          • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            Fascism arises from Capitalist decay. Fascism is the self-defense mechanism of the bourgeoisie deployed against rising revolutionary undercurrents from the working class as the contradictions within Capitalist society sharpen.

            You really should read Blackshirts and Reds, at least the first few chapters.

            • SalaciousBCrumb@lemy.lol
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              4 hours ago

              And you really should read CoB if you think everybody does not have a natural right to life, and that we need oppressive top down systems to control us.

              Direct action, mutual aid, build up from the grassroots to empower people not politicians.

              • Gucci_Minh [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                4 hours ago

                Sounds great, can you grassroots me some air defense systems so my grassroots mutual aid non-state can stop getting bombed by the USAF? Thanks.

                • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  2 hours ago

                  We can’t reeducate or shoot the reactionaries because that would make us evil authoritarian tankies

                  Oh no, the reactionaries we didn’t reeducate or shoot instituted an armed takeover and now they’re torturing and killing us along with countless innocent people! It was worth it to preserve our moral purity, though

                  • Gucci_Minh [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    2 hours ago

                    Real revolutionary socialist states: “evil authoritarian red fash, why can’t you be instantly perfect utopias?!!!?”

                    Failed revolutions: pure, good, unburdened by reality and the fact that every capitalist state wants you dead, totally would have established a worker’s utopia in a week if it succeeded, despite being besieged on all sides.

              • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                4 hours ago

                The Bread Book is good, if more people read it I think the world would be a better place. However, I firmly disagree with your analysis on the merits of Marxism. I find it insulting that you claim I don’t believe everyone has a right to life, and it’s disingenuous to say that a publicly owned, centrally planned, democratically run government is the same as a Capitalist State.

                I can recommend Marxist theory, if you’d like an intro list.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                4 hours ago

                That sounds great, but you can’t get there from here, at least not directly, because the capitalists will always kill it in its crib. That’s one of the reasons that such a configuration has never lasted more than a few months. If you had read Blackshirts and Reds, you might understand this.

                But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the work­ers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsi­fiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It com­pares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.

                The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priori­ties set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

                The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its funda­ments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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        4 hours ago

        I think it’s important to read Blackshirts and Reds to see why “red fash” is a gross misunderstanding of Marxist movements. You don’t have to agree with Marxism, but you must understand that Marxist movements have served the working class, and fascist movements the Capitalist class.

        Myself, I am a Marxist-Leninist. There are good Anarchists that do good practice and good work, don’t get me wrong, but in this moment sectatian nonsense like “red-fash” splits and divides what should be a more solidified movement.