For Marxists, the state is the institution that tries to resolve, with violence, the contradictions that are inherent within class society. So when class society no longer exists, then violence is no longer necessary, hence the state is no longer necessary, hence "withering away".
This isn't an all or nothing situation, just a theory. The laws of uneven and combined development indicate that this withering would happen in different ways at different rates. this process wouldn't even begin until the whole world has become some form of socialism, and the social relations governing society would be much progressed. Its hard to imagine how this would work compared to our current situation
I disagree, but I appreciate you walking back the anticommunism. Paul LeBlanc covers about every argument for Lenin's "opportunism" in great detail, I would recommend Lenin and the Revolutionary Party for a good description of Leninism before 1921. If you mean Leninism like "Foundations of Leninism" then yeah I'll join you in calling Stalin an opportunist. But not even Paul Averich, anarchist critic of the Bolsheviks and historian, was willing to lay the authoritarianism of the USSR at the feet of Lenin. But I don't want to legislate the tragedies of 20th century socialism. I'll study it, but there's plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
I recently read a couple books by Cyril Smith who is pretty negative toward Lenin, and while I don't really buy his premise, I think his emphasis on what was missing (an analysis on "sensuous human activity," like in Theses on Feuerbach) from the Plekhanov-Leninist tendency of Marxism holds water.
We can use wetransfer if you wanna DM me an email address. Its kind of a big file cuz its a visual pdf.
We actually are just getting started if you wanna share notes, our conversations are on discord cuz we are in diff timezones
If you want to discuss the history of the Russian revolution, I saved but didn't post several paragraphs, but deleted them for the sake of brevity. Flattening the whole 100 years of Russian "socialist" history to highlight it's worst abuses is just as intellectually lazy as flattening it to only highlight the best parts of it. I'm not going to apologise for Kronstadt or anything that came after, but the civil war period was horrible. And had the Bolsheviks not taken power, Kornilov or Kerensky would have, and instituted far more brutal oppression; if not just tried to restore the Tzar.
The organizing principles of the Bolsheviks and RSDLP should absolutely be studied leading up to Oct 1917, as well as Rosa Luxemburg, and Anton Pannekoek's criticisms of Lenin.
But saying "firing squad" doesnt prove that communism leads to authoritarianism, although it references a time in history that was very brutal and oppressive. However, Its not as good of a criticism as you are capable of. I'm used to having discussions with people who probably aren't critical enough of the Bolsheviks, so its refreshing to hear from you, in a way.
Communism is the struggle for a moneyless, stateless, classless society.
There's no connection between a supposed ideology of communism, and authoritarianism. The "authoritarianism" arose as a result of material circumstances, not ideology. I've looked into the histories a lot and its very complicated. Not like you wouldn't understand it, just that it can't be reduced to a simple truism, cant be made succinct.
Let's just say that the capitalists who hoard all the wealth and do nothing to earn millions and billions, who own the media and for whose benefit the state represents, aren't too keen on movements that sometimes overthrow them. So it's in their interests to paint socialism and communism in as bad a light as possible.
Anything that you learned about Marx that wasnt in a book, or wasn't written by someone with a deep admiration of Marx, probably needs to be unlearned.
Another common refrain I'd hear about Marx was that his theories never considered "human nature" when his philosophical legacy, dialectical materialism, is literally a scientific study of human action and development. What's scary is he wrote books like Value, Price, and Profit where he proves that inflation isn't caused by rising wages, yet when prices go up all we hear about is increase in demand due to rising wages, blah blah. He proved this stuff to be bs all those years ago, but the ruling class doesn't have a better excuse for conspiring against the workers. It turns out that the logic of capital always goes against workers, who could have predicted?
That's what makes him so dangerous, his theories and methods aren't that complicated for any worker, because we live a lot of this stuff and think about it, but we doubt it too. Studying Marx removes the doubt. He's not easy to read but he's not like unnecessarily obtuse, just have to do some studying before diving into Capital, but if read with a group for support, that's probably the best book I've ever read.
In any case! If you want to read more, start with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. Engels is easier to read but the two authors are almost inseparable theoretically.
A comrade and I are reading through his ethnographic notebooks! In the final 10 years of his life he took like 10000 pages of handwritten notes, its something like 2 cubic yards of notes, much of it related to anthropology and human developmental science.
At what point does an EM jamming signal just become electricity running through the wires? That's what would happen in a so called Harrington event, right?
I don't know about you, but Trump speaks to my specific interests. Sure he's a guy who claims to speak for every faction's specific interests in order to ride the wave of contradictions created by having every right wing faction fight for scraps as we can't help doing since its 99.9999% of our ideology. And he rides this wave of conflict and contradiction to greater power, and leaves all but a tight group of cronies who have managed to desperately hold onto their power for another day, but they too will be replaced as Trump uses these dopes as proxies to take the blame when the consequences of their regressive policies become too politically hot for Trump personally, so it's clear that he's just using even his most ardent supporters, scoundrels every one (except for me) as sacrificial lambs at the altar of his catastrophically humongous ego.
But that's just what happens to those other stupid people whereas I'm very smart and lucky. So for me at least, Trump will make me wealthy and powerful for certain
It isn't even a take. I'm not like teaching a seminar on it ffs
Have you ever watched a YouTube video that was a response to someone else's YouTube video? That's all I was thinking about, this entire economy of foul discourse. Is this a super serious shower thoughts comm?
Well everybody has good and bad days. A disproportionate emotional response, especially one that gets apologized for later, is pretty easy to sympathize with. In many ways I like working with people who don't pretend to be perfect. But when people like really dig their heels in, and start burning mental and emotional energy due to somebody else criticizing their work or positions, its like a reality warping tunnel created by people who are mad at each other.
Wait why are you getting so upset? In what way have I engaged in toxic discourse, or I am a troll? I had a "shower thought" and thought it was funny and decided to share it. How have I been toxic, by like vaguely defending a view that I hadn't thought about but for more than the time it took to post this and respond to you.
I'm not being toxic or performatively indignant. I'm not sure what you think my intent is, but I assure you it isn't as negative as you are making it out to be.
You come across like someone who wants to pick a fight, do you care to explain that behavior?
How do you define a proper criticism? I've seen proper criticism taken as an insult. But perhaps you're right its more likely to warrant a response with a strong criticizm in order to get a response, than to just flat out attack.
So when people are celebrating their haters, they are insulted? No they are flattered that somebody else spent the energy being angry. If I can stir shit up and make you mad, as long as you won't hurt me I'll love the attention
For Marxists, the state is the institution that tries to resolve, with violence, the contradictions that are inherent within class society. So when class society no longer exists, then violence is no longer necessary, hence the state is no longer necessary, hence "withering away".
This isn't an all or nothing situation, just a theory. The laws of uneven and combined development indicate that this withering would happen in different ways at different rates. this process wouldn't even begin until the whole world has become some form of socialism, and the social relations governing society would be much progressed. Its hard to imagine how this would work compared to our current situation