Who here /leninist/?

Me

Lenin is a much more flexible figure than people realize.

Do you want the workers to control the means of production or the state to control the means of production?

Do Leninists recognize what was done wrong or do they just think that Stalin/Trotsky fucked everything up?

I don't know. But why did the SU fail if not because socialism was applied wrong in some way?

They weren't actually social democrats.

At the time "social democratic" was just another word for socialist. It wasn't until later it was associated with welfare state capitalists.

Abandoning democracy and never giving the workers the means of production wasn't a ver good idea.

I believe all Leftists should have a solid understanding of Lenin for precisely this reason. In order for us to do better next time, we should understand why Lenin did what he did and learn from both his mistakes and successes.

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Basically don't give the state the means of production and don't give up on democracy.

(You)

Yes. Bordiga was a Leninist whose biggest contribution to the left was his critiques on the Bolsheviks and the SU. He didn't hold any punches when it came to Lenin.

Can you please give me a small summary of what Leninist analyze the SU and what they think was done wrong? I'm very curious? I'm not really that leftist because I'm afriad that we'll repeat the same failure…

Not even remotely the same thing. At the time the term wasn't solidified or attached to the ideology that we know of as social democracy.

Have a (You)

Debatable

Basically they stopped democracy implemented the NEP and started gassing workers who wanted to self management. Then Lenin died and Stalin came in.

Well they suppressed the soviets. Lenin even said "if workers self manage through workers councils then what is the use of the party?"

too much military spending in the late 70s and entanglement in Afghanistan

Plus Gorby was a coward

There was a deeper problem in lack of worker control over the means of production.

me2

Which is it? Without Joe, the USSR woulda been stuck in a NEP-like state of concessions to capitalism pretty much permanently. The USSR was basically a sort of parallel economy split between a capitalist country side and a planned economy in the city centers. To get rid of the NEP you needed to collectivize the farms to get them integrated into the planned economy, and them kulaks certainly weren't going to collectivize themselves. Without Joe forcing them to play ball, the Soviets woulda needed to go the other route to join up the two economies and create markets for industrial goods also, thereby basically capitulating to capital already.

Workers to control the means of production, I'm still a proper communist in that I believe one day the state will become unnecessary, but I believe that if a communist economy isn't planned then that inevitably leads back to capitalism as the market and the profit-motive becomes the only recourse when it comes to managing the economy.

The NEP is bad because its capitalism. Stalin is bad because state capitalism is bad.

So just like with Joe, right?

sinistra.net/lib/pro/whyrusnsoc.html

At least Lenin was honest about the economy being capitalistic. And with "at least" I mean he knew what he was doing purposefully industrializing and modernizing Russia through NEP. Because post-October revolution, before NEP, there was perhaps the closest humanity has ever been to a socialist economy.

What about Catalonia?

libcom.org/files/WorkersAgainstWork-Seidman_0.pdf

TL;DR: Catalonia was Stalinism without calling it Stalinism.

Heavily funded by Stalin. Stalin went state capitalist to fund red jihad.

If its not the DPRK its not socialism.

Why did they go state capitalist?

Khrushchev and the right-communists moved the Soviet Union back towards capitalism after Stalin's death:
revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf
This book used Soviet sources almost exclusively so it's not like the author is just mining a bunch of Western propaganda to prove his point.

This is still a point of contention among Leninists as even though capitalism was restored in the USSR it was still rather egalitarian, much more so than most Western societies. But in my opinion capitalism was slowly restored there by making the state-enterprises independent of
de facto state control and making profit the regulator of the economy and increasingly moving towards a market "socialism"

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Spooky.

Spooky my dude.

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The "Anarchist" revolutionaries in Russia were fucking retarded too. The revolution should have been endless, a true State of Anarchy. Culture, society, law, they're all spooks, as the human did not evolve for such things, it was developed for a land with no hierarchies, no kings, no works of art, a land untouched by the devil of industry.

Please, don't kid yourself That the USSR became even more anticommunist following Stalin's death is undeniable, but this shouldn't be overstated. The people running the state were still Stalin's cronies, albeit somewhat lost without their master to keep them on a leash. They instituted some notable changes to the system here and there but Moscow, the Central Committee, and Politburo still retained central economic-political control well into the 80's until the arrival of Gorbachev. The Communist system of planning remained. Labor and means of production were still commonly owned and allocated by the industrial ministries, not individual enterprises.

This article deals with most of the major arguments covered in your .pdf.

marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-6/lom-cap-rest.htm

Get out you state capitalist.

No (:

why you niggas still living in the 19th century?

We were closer to achieving socialism then

Well it's time to get over the successes of the past and realize the ultimate failure of 20th century marxism and anarchism

No, it doesn't.

The book uses exclusively Western sources to provide context and then - only then - does it mention a few carefully edited Soviet sources.

It is exactly like this.

If you want to argue this, there literally exists a thread for Bland: >>>/marx/5040

How can workers control anything if they are not organized?

How can organization of people who control the basis of society - Means of Production - be called anything but state?

Any attempts to divest control from the state in a Socialist state are inherently reactionary - as reforms Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev had proved on three separate occasions.

Like it or not after a revolution you need a party to take complete control.

To silence counter revolutionary opposition and infiltrators
To remove democracy because democracy is going to slow down communism severely
To educate the masses who will definitely not fully or deeply understand communism
To lead the organization process

Maybe that should be done by a government with expiration date that cant be postponed, thus the only choice is to try to effectively and fast create communist organization within the place and then go full communist

There is no way a revolution happens and suddenly everything falls into place, Lenin had the right idea, that is why it is important to see the issues that appeared during his time and why it took him so long

Lelninist will be lynched in the next revolution

Having read the thread, I have to say I'm not exactly impressed. I don't even know what you mean when you say it uses exclusively Western sources to provide context.

Call it carefully edited but I wouldn't say its a few, the parts on political economy of the Soviet Union, which is the majority of the book, use Soviet sources almost exclusively and not exactly a few of them.There are enough quotations from important people like Kosygin to think that even if Bland was for the most part trying to make things seem worse then they were by selectively quoting nobodies that the general tendency of their line was backwards and in a capitalistic direction.

As for the analysis about why Bland called the USSR "fascist" it was Stalin and the Stalin era Bolsheviks who who popularized the concept of social fascism after the betrayal of the social democrats. He thought that the Trotskyist underground was in alliance with the fascist powers and that Trotsky had betrayed the socialist movement to fascism. Yugoslavia was considered a case of restoration of capitalism by cominform and even fascism, so its not like the Maoists and Hoxhaists just invented this stuff out of thin air by reading HUAC rhetoric or Nazi propaganda.

Whether "fascism" or "social-fascism" really applied to revisionist states I think is up for debate, probably traditional leninists failed to properly evaluate both the appeal of liberalism and how damaging it was.

As you write:
>>>/marx/5039

So, you don't even believe that the the Brezhnevites weren't revisionist or that there line was progressive. So, what direction was the Soviet Union heading if that was the case? The common explanation for revisionism in ML is that it reflects the ideology of either those forces that stand to benefit from the existence of capitalism or that of capitalist agents in the working class movement. So what did it mean for USSR to become revisionist then?

It would be an odd thing for revisionism to come to power and not try with all its might to undermine socialism. You see the start of capitalist restoration as 1989? What set that in motion?

You said in another thread that you believe decentralization of planning was one of the steps that created the leap backwards to capitalism. Is it not true that "decentralized" planning is essentially letting market "socialism" and the profit-motive in through the back door?

Honestly, what your espousing is the Trotskyist theory of the degenerated workers state whether you know it or not. Something that's neither true socialism (even in its "lower-phase"), nor state-capitalism.

I explained this in the thread:

It is possible to selectively quote Marx to make it look like he was pro-Capitalist.

He is not talking about general tendency. He calls USSR Capitalist and Fascist.

Stop trying to play dumb. Bland himself doesn't use the term "Social Fascism".

Social Fascism was abandoned in early 30s. Not in 1980s.

No, it isn't. We have a definition of Fascism.

Unless you go full tinfoil and start claiming that Comintern got subverted by Capitalists before its foundation, the definition of the term is not up to debate. And USSR was not Fascist, unless you redefine what Fascism means.

We are not talking about future destinations. We are talking about system of coordinates. Bland - and you - clearly don't have one, if you are incapable of distinguishing Capitalist state from Socialist.

Khrushchev and Brezhnev were opportunists. Regular politicians. Not part of some grand Capitalist conspiracy.

Did you read KKE statement? Go read it.

It's Trotskyists (Grant, not Cliff) who espoused Marxism. Hoxhaists, apparently, didn't.

Worker state is Socialist state. Industrial economy allows for either dictatorship of Bourgeoisie or of Proletariat: worker state and capitalist state. That's it.

Trotsky recognizes USSR as Socialist.

Anarcho-Leninist here

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Nice one

You could have just expanded on war communism just like the Left Opposition proposed

Dope consistency my dude.

Leninism is counterrevolutionary state capitalism and also highly autistic.

Keep going

The USSR was merely under a constant state of crisis, dumb anarkiddie.

The USSR was a failed state that failed to provide worker ownership over the MoP, something the Free territories actually acomplished, stay mad cucko

Fwiw I don't even consider Makhno an anarchist other than in name only. I just find it amusing that anarchists uphold him as some alternative to Lenin when he was just as pragmatic and the Free Territory wasn't in any way, shape, or form anarchist.

100000% WEW

You've effectively conceded the incoherence of so-called anarchism here.

What universe are you from? The collectivized areas never made up anything but an overwhelming minority of the Makhnovist state. Whereas in the USSR, noting it's later troubles with the second economy, largely succeeded in it's goal of totally socializing production under an associated society.

Kek, keep digging

Kek

So why did it fail? If it was "real" state-socialism why did it failed to provide?

At the very least commies are honest about it.

Sure they didn't, keep believing that

Why did it fail then?

I'm sorry to interrupt, but what should this even signify?

USSR provided, then it didn't (1989). And the moment it stopped providing, it fell apart.

Perhaps you believe that Socialism of any kind is absolutely invulnerable to anything?

The USSR was behind western economies in several ways, not going to deny they had the upper hand in certain areas, space travel and rapid industrialization being one, but aside from that, it did not rewarded workers efforst nor gave them control over their labour

And anarchism isnt?

It provided everything it possibly could considering it had to compete military with the wealthiest state in history.. A struggle anarchists will never find any comparison with.

gowans.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/do-publicly-owned-planned-economies-work/

Hmm..

No shit nigger, why would anarchists want to create a strong state? Were you dropped as a child?

So literally everything anarchists have ever done too while not calling them that.

Who knows, but it's basically what they've done every. Single. Time.

libcom.org/history/kontrrazvedka-story-makhnovist-intelligence-service-vyacheslav-azarov
libcom.org/library/workers-against-work-michael-seidman

My opinion is that they did.

If you want to start talking about state-ownership instead of worker-ownership, I'd like you to explain what exactly did Soviets do wrong.

In my opinion, workers cannot exercise any kind of control over MoP, unless they are organized. And if workers are organized, they organization cannot be called anything but state.

What does Anarchism has to do with anything?

All of this is wrong. Seriously, what nonsense have you been reading?

Consumer technologies were on par or 2-3 - in a few cases up to 5 - years behind the cutting edge of Western nations. Which is hardly surprising, given conditions: relatively small market and no spare resources for financial risks.

Remind me again why are anarkiddies considered leftists?

Confirmed for braindead, "real" socialism is the abolition of market exchange, yet the USSR did not abolish neither internal nor external markets, they even sold titanium to the US that was latter used to build the SR-71 plane used to spy on them

And you are going to prove this by citing the classic 2 examples, one of them polluted with marxists (spain) and the other one at war against marxisms (ukraine) while avoiding many others

Stay stupid

Excellent, Stalintrip arrived. You're in for it now anarkiddies

Yes, you need your boss, dumb prole!

The fact that this whole conversation is about the ukraine?

As usual socdem siding with fascists

Wew

Interesting

I know, but this is irrelevant. Your point was that the USSR didn't abolish capital, my point was that there is no example of anarchism not doing the exact same thing when you take a closer look and see beyond the "doing X but not calling it X" maymay anarchists inevitably bump into (because they have a pathological fear of organizing into parties properly, meaning they end up doing it anyways as there's no way to avoid party politics).

"Polluted" by the same people that made the entire revolution last longer than two months in the first place. KEK!

For instigating a fucking civil war against the Red Army while simulatensouly defending something that was literally anarcho-capitalism with Donbasian characeristics.

Also kek @ calling libcom (left liberarian website) articles out because you're buttmad at the inescabaple fact that anarchism was and is a gigantic pile of flaming shit. At least the Stalinists, while total opportunists, actually lasted and were honest about occupying a state.

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Wew

And you will prove this by citing two examples which were polluted with marxism

Nice cognitive diissonance

Fuck your red army faggot

And you are going to prove this by citing two examples that were polluted by marxism, kek

You are a retard that belives organization = party

There was no capital accumulation taking place in the country. They were definitely socialist. The workers had indirect control (the state owned all the enterprises). But the state worked for the people, not profit.

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You need to stop taking the "building the party up" meme so seriously comrade. Pragmatic and popular realpolitik is what the left needs.

I would pick minimalist lifestyle in a system with few consumer goods but stable economic and social structures that provide my life with meaning any day.

Careful not to make the lid hit you on your way into the squatting dumpster, comrade.

Truly causes one to philosophize.

There is no capital accumulation taking place in capitalism with a human face, we are definitely socdems, The workers have indirect control (The proprietors owned all the industry) But the proprietor qorked for the people, not profit.

I was not talking about boss. I was talking about organization.

Even if you have 100% uniform distribution of power, it is still organization.

My question was about USSR, not Ukraine. Since you are trying to use Soviet Union as some weird example, I'd like to you to properly prove you point.

So far I see "Soviet Union proves that we need Anarchism!" without any explanations of how exactly does it prove this.

Go back to spookposting with your meme flag, dishonest faggot

Kek!!

Holy shit that webm.

See this

Not according to Marx.

True.

Whether run by the proletariat (or rather, in their name) or by the bourgeois, it's still capitalism.

Not really, the ability to education, decent health service etc were all provided for. It's no more dystopian than the US or France, but no more socialist/communist either.

Comrade, please exit the dumpster if you want your discourse to be hearable.

Organization != Party

You can have a party without organization, see any socialist state ever

Workers can achieve organization in several ways, a centralized authority is just one of them

And you are going to provide proof that this also applies to anarchist states that were polluted with marxism, invaded by them or both, whereas the soviet union had more than 70 years to adress it

Centralizing socialism… seemed to work.
More broader federalization is better.

What do you mean? Are you confusing first-stage Communism with second-stage Communism?

Or are you of an opinion that Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not a state?

What theories do you base your assertion that USSR was Capitalist on?

Waiting for you to deliver yourself famalam

Provided by workers and Paid using workers labour, what did the party did other than pointing fingers?

Why should I adress your question when you have failed to stay on topic? Not that I dont want to, but there is no reason to

The ukraine was invaded by traitorous statists, this is the point of discussion

Funny because that is literally how every ex-soviet country looks now

Post more webms, spurdoman

Comrade, I can almost hear you. If you would just discard the organic hemp-made keffiyeh you are wearing, we could perhaps engage in discourse analysis and form our not-a-state together.

This manages to provide no sense whatsoever.

It is still organization. And we can't call organization that defines the basic aspects of life anything but a state.

Of course, comrade. Anarchy lives!

I dont need to deliver shit, read the thread, the argument is as follows:

It is true the anarchist tradition was lost there, but it merely lasted for 3 years, too little time to developnconsidering the soviet invasion

The USSR had 70 years to adress these problems however, and they did not

You are just proving my points dummy

Want to read the Wikipedia article on anarchist egoism together, comrade? It can be done over at the corner of the squatting pad where we can sip some Lipton tea I shoplifted during the last individualist insurrection.

Haha yeah, examples of really existing anarchism are just spooks because anarchists voluntarily took the support of Marxists. They would have died without them and lasted barely over two months without Red Army ammo, but it's all cool because success and theory is just a spook.

A party is an organized group that pretends to hold authority over members outside itself, a party is therefore a governing body, a state an organization does not

If you cannot make sense of this I dont know how to help you

I don't know.

But if you had no intentions of answering, you should've said so. I specifically apologized for interrupting you and asked my question that was not relevant to your discussion (thread is about Leninism, not Ukraine, btw).

Suddenly deciding - half a dozen posts later - that you don't want to answer the question doesn't make you look good.

No faggot, you claimed that Free Territory and Catalonia were polluted by marxists, so deliver.

It is not my problem leftypol is illiterate when it comes to anarchist movements, it really is not

You guys are pretending to discuss something totally outside your sphere of knowledge, and spoonfeeding you will only result in more cherrypicking and straw grasping

The free territory was invaded by fucking lenin,meven after the black army helped him defeat the whites, makhno did not took arms against the reds before his meeting with lenin, where lenin utterly distrusted him
ditext.com/palij/9.html

As for spain, it is well know the so called anarchists were syndicalists

ITT

How does Lenin invading or Catalonia being anarcho-syndicalist prove they were polluted by marxists?

How does it not? Free ukraine lasted for only 3 years, and they had to wage a war against the soviets, lenin betrayed them

As for spain, they were never interested in abolishing the party system
econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.htm

THIS, you can't say something is communism when people live mediocre lives but you tell them to ignore it because lol space, lol you are socialist, lol you are white.

Exactly why I didn't like Stalin, I could understand there is a need for a push during sometimes like when the Us got nukes but infinite pushing wintout improving living conditions isn't communism

No, you're confusing the revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat with first stage Communism. Communism, no matter the stage, is defined as an abolition of the value form, under the USSR commodity production and money continued, thus they never reached even first stage communism. Even in State and Revolution, there's no talk about maintaining money under "Socialism".

Marx's.

I'd suggest you read Critique of the Gotha Programme, Capital, and Grundrisse. Great works.

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I've squatted the neighbor's WiFi. We can watch the anarchism videos from School of Life on Youtube now FOR FREE. Radical!

more like who /autist/ here amirite?

I am sure your free confederation of squatting communes can stand up to to bourgeois state comrade.

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The Black Army was asked to rejoin the Red Army, because the civil war was still ongoing and they needed all the help they could get. But unlike the damn fine anarchists who joined the bolsheviks, such as Berkman and Goldman, Makhno and his cronies decided to flip the bolsheviks and run their bandit state like the band of crooks that they were. I'm not shitting on anarchism and anarchists for being anarchist, but for the fact that they're historically illiterate autistic faggots.

The problem with Lenin was he refused to let go of bourgeouis notions like 'democracy'.

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Are you claiming first stage is not DotP?

Abolition as a process. Not as a final completed state of bourgeois exchange being already abolished.

Because money was understood as an abstract regulator of economy. Not as a certificate for getting consumer goods.

This is the money USSR had.

Everything else relied on non-cash transactions. Virtual money that were created on ad hoc basis by Central Planning. It was not a controlling factor as in Capitalist economy.

Bullshit. You are talking about very specific interpretation of Marx that interprets Marx dogmatically.

Me. I love the state and capitalism so much that I combined them. It's dialectics brought to its logical conclusion.

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kek, what killed the soviet union were Gorbachev's own decisions as executive

The NEP was a product of the material and historic conditions the Bolsheviks found themselves in. It's not an integral part of Leninist theory. For instance why would we have to rapidly industrialize already developed countries?

I'm not even talking about the NEP. I'm talking about the state owning the means of production instead of the workers, creating a new class elevated above the proletariat which were basically bourgeouisie (nomenclatura)

also muh uncorruptible vanguard, Kruschevist revisionism was bound to happen

Yes, they were only 70% in favor of keeping the union.

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Yes.
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
Notice the word "revolutionary" here? Unlike the agitpop in your average word-combo Vanguard Party, Marx is here talking about an actual revolution. Do you also notice that he gives room for only two modes of production, capitalism and communism? The process of it's abolition is nothing but the revolution itself. When he discusses (as you note) first-stage Communism as "stamped with the birthmarks of the old society" he explicitly later details what he's talking about, the continuation of scarcity: "Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no
longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case."

The Universal Exchange Commodity is what maintains the value form and commodities. The USSR produced commodities, get over it.

Which was advocated for by Owen, and Marx explicitly rejects it.

I suggest you read this: marxists.org/subject/japan/tsushima/labor-certificates.htm

Lol at Stalinist talking about dogmas. What you're doing is remove every single bit of Marx's theory that makes him in any way distinguishable from Lassalle and Owen, every function within the USSR was explicitly argued against by Marx.

We've discussed this several times before, and I notice you've still refused to "practise self-critique" and stop disseminating ML bullshit.

First stage of Communism (aka Socialist state) is explicitly a state. And any state is a dictatorship - either open or hidden. If it isn't Dictatorship of the Proletariat, if workers do not hold the unrestricted power over the state, then it isn't Socialism of any kind.

Congratulations. You are a confirmed Revisionist.

And what does "actual revolution" entail in your opinion? What did USSR lack to be called revolutionary? Revolution means change. Did it no undergo the fastest, the most progressive of all social transformations ever? It did. USSR was revolutionary.

Do you need armed people riding around and shooting other people to call something revolutionary?

Socialist and Capitalist - in modern terms. And you don't understand the meaning of either. See above.

Which is exactly what I am talking about.

Exhcange no longer dominates economy. If factory needs to be built, it is the decision of society that makes it happen, not availability of funds of some Capitalist that has to be exchanged for labour and materials.

Are you retarded?

Why aren't you quoting Marx on the matter?

You still didn't present any arguments against ML.

t- Leninists

More like 78%, but yeah.

M8 a dictatorship of the -proletariat- itself admits the existence of a class as the seller of their own labour to produce commodities.

Uh, all that can be applied to the Meiji Restoration but it doesn't make it communism? Again, we're talking about an actual state of affairs here, not buzzwords. A revolution is a revolution.

There is nothing to see.

M8, Stalin literally built his factories with Koch money and traded with Hitler, USSR was always part of the global market. Again, It produced commodities. Again, get over it.

Ditto.

I have quoted him several times? When are you going to stop mindlessly repeating the interpretations of Stalin?

I literally swiped the ground off your entire outdated ideology.

Answer the question. How was the Russian revolution not an actual revolution?

Proletariat means lack of private ownership over Means of Production that are being used by them. Your definition of Proletariat is true only for Capitalism - because it's the private ownership that dominates economy.

Or did you imagine that Marxists must keep Capitalists around for Dictatorship of the Proletariat to function properly?

Is this the final form of your retardation?

Revolution doesn't necessarily mean Socialist revolution. Meiji Restoration was Bourgeois revolution.

Saying that "revolution is a revolution" makes it buzzword. Words have meaning, even if you don't know it.

And? Make a coherent statement, or do I need to quote Cliff myself?

Again - quote you fucking source of inspiration, moron. Don't pretend that it's your own idea.

Not on the matter of money.

You are retarded and delusional.

Not that guy, but I'm confident I can speak for him and say that the Russian revolution was a revolution, and that it was authentic. What is probIematic is what happened afterwards, more importantly after the period of War Communism and further.

Most Leninists, such as myself, admire Lenin and the Russia of Lenin (at least up until NEP period and on) and have a general disdain for Stalini's Russia because it enacted strictly non-socialist policy under the guise that they were, while quite ironically pioneering the demonization of "revisionism" as incredibly probIematic.

this is good

Except you keep contradicting Marx, while trying to prove that USSR stopped being Marxist.

Also, you are post-Trotskyist (or Shachtmanite). Not Leninist.

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Khrushchev killed the party by suppressing the anti-party group.

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