iByteABit

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iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 5d ago

But Communists must not only be scientific; they must also learn to work with the masses. In this they face a special difficulty; the man who has thought for years in Marxian categories may find it as hard to explain them to simple people as an electrical engineer would find it to explain the theory of turbines to men in a candle-lighted world. This is more serious for the Communist than for the engineer; for the latter can build his turbines without help from the candle-lighted individuals, but the Communist cannot make a revolution without the people.

I love this quote, comparing capitalism with a candle lighted world is a very good metaphor and the quote shows exactly how hard it is to organize a working class that has never known anything but the dreadfulness of a system where everything is decided by the few who own the means of production.

It is the working class which must dictate and not the Party; in 1925 when Zinoviev argued for dictatorship by the Party, Stalin fought against this “narrow point of view,” saying that the confidence between the masses of the people and the Party must not be destroyed by any peculiar Party rights, “because in the first place, the Party might be mistaken, and even if it were not, the masses might take some time to see that it was right.”

If you dig even a little into Soviet history it is so easy to see that Stalin was a very reasonable party leader that respected his people and the love for him is absolutely earned. All of the propaganda against him just shatters instantly with very little effort.

Hillquit called the Russian revolution an “historical accident,” since it occurred in a backward peasant land. Norman Thomas on the contrary holds it occurred just because the Russians were so backward that they would endure a dictatorship such as no other people would stand.

Racist

haven't changed at all since then

I think this is the best source I have read so far to explain what a vanguard is and why it's needed, it explains it all in a way that is less formulaic and much more understandable with our everyday experiences. The requirements to be a part of that vanguard seem very daunting when described this way and I honestly don't think I could be like that, at least without the world going to shit first. I also think that parties nowadays are missing some of the disciplined scrapping of members from all levels in a democratic way, having some stuck up people high up in the party shaping a general line that many don't want to follow is a problem that sometimes comes from up top and should be fixed before it affects the rest of the party.

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iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 5d ago

I kinda get the anticommunism propaganda point, there already were anticommunist talking points back then, though I do feel like society as a whole has become much more brainwashed by the huge volume of anticommunist propaganda that exists today compared to then, it's not far fetched to say that today there's a whole industry of automated anticommunist and fascist propaganda with smart algorithms picking out the most vulnerable parts of the working class that are going to suck it up.

The single party thing is not true, even from this text you can see that there are already fractions, the biggest one being the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, but there are also mentions of people leaving the party because of disagreement and breaking off into their own groups. And also there's the factions before the Marxists started gaining ground that are subtly referenced here too, like the adventurists that believed in assassination strategies and another party believing that the revolution can only happen by the peasants, the Marxists had to argue with both until it became clear that their ideology is the most materially and scientifically grounded.

Starting fresh also comes with negatives, they had no idea what was coming for them and only had some very limited examples to draw from like the French Commune. We on the other hand have a whole century of revolutions, successes and failures to analyze and perfect when revolutionary conditions arise again. It's not all bad for us, and the decades of propaganda are weak against the wrecking ball of material conditions radicalizing the working class once again. You can already start seeing this with young people, the truth always wins eventually, as long as we survive long enough for it to happen.

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iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 6d ago

My country should pay reparations to the descendants of people we have wronged in the past.

Bold of you to assume I'm American

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iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 6d ago

It's like after 2020 or so, the fascists just took the tough guy persona they had during 2016 when they were calling everyone snowflakes and just threw it out the window and decided that it's a better strategy to embrace the snowflake and be whittle baby victims instead

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iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 6d ago

I'm not from Spain so I can't know for sure, but I feel their government is close to what social democracy can achieve with the best possible intentions. Unless you mobilize the working class and tear down the foundations of capitalism, any government no matter its intentions can't do shit if it means that capitalists get to lose, you must let the wildfires rip so the capitalists don't turn you into another Allende overnight

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iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

China there like

iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

Critical support

iByteABit [comrade/them] @hexbear.net 1w ago

I'm glad to have found this place even if I was 3 years late, it has done its part shaping my worldview and it really helped me a lot when the Palestine genocide had started and all I could hear outside here at the time was straight out of Mossad's orders and I truly felt insane sometimes