Historical Materialism vs leftcoms and trots

Doesn't historical materialism prove that Marxist-Leninist USSR-style production and societal organization is the next stage of society? Why the fuck do leftcoms and Trots think that the real revolution will be so vastly different from existing attempts? Literally every single communist revolution has had roughly the same result. You can complain all day about it not being "real socialism" or whatever, but Marxism isn't based on idealism, it's based on historical and contemporary examples. As Marxists, we have to base our idea of revolution on the ones that succeeded and are still ongoing.

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Religious marxism

Leftcoms would likely concede that the USSR could be seen as proletarian dictatorship, and that something similar would be what resembles the transformation of society (at least in political configuration, with a workers' party and all).

The point is that the DotP is not in and of itself socialism at all; it's capitalism under siege by the proletariat, and for it to actually qualify as DotP it must actually be in control of the militant proletariat, unlike in the USSR where rather rapidly, the established workers' power following the successful October revolution was undone and power stood almost exclusively and at least decisively in a cadre of intelligentsia. Economic life may have been democratic (kolkhozes were basically gigantic cooperatives), but political life wasn't. I think leftcoms don't see this as a conscious decision; the turn was largely the production of the defeat of communism in Europe to social democracy and then fascism, which essentially more and more bended the knee of the Russian Comintern to concede to things like considering industrializaiton to build a centralized standing army, signing the Brest-Livotsk treaty which made Russia conform to the rules of a bourgeois nation State, and so on.

They don't demonize Lenin's late decisions or Stalinism as something consciously or even purposefully counter-revolutionary, but as the product of these conditions mostly. That's not to say their perspective is just economic determinist because I've seen them talk about how things could have maybe ended up differently or more favorable to enable success, both from the Russian side but also the German, Dutch and Italian side of the CPs (or other potential allies in the class struggle not necessarily affiliated the Comintern officialy) and how their strategic decisions were at least contributing to their own defeat, and consequently the defeat of the revolution in Russia. So the theoretical content of Stalinism (or what Stalin called "Marxism-Leninism") is reflected by this situation; we now speak of a supposed socialist society with socialist money, socialist commodity production, a socialist State, and so on; things utterly alien to Marxist concepts, as a reflexive explanation for what had to happen there.

The ultimate point however is that they believe that, regardless of the causes, the isolated position of the USSR and the character it took on made it irredeemably just another nation on the fast-track path to regular capitalist production, but also that this was the only thing to do outside of just capitulating by keeping up the Soviet-party dual power structure (which would have been unable to deal with the eventual imperialization by international capital).

Your conclusion doesnt follow from this truth.

Capitalism > Dictatorship of the proletariat > Lower stage communism/socialism > full communism

Just because you went from capitalism to DOTP doesnt mean it was socialism.

Not if they turn to utter shit and litterally either turn into capitalism with red banners, kingdoms or fall apart back to capitalism.

Every one has been a failure.
Marx:
Get it? The communist revolution is a radical break with all that preceded it, even past revolutions.

If by that you mean "they all regressed back into capitalism" then sure.

"Historical Materialism" was a bastardization of Marx's conception of history. I'll cite a passage from Zizek's "Less Than Nothing" about this that I read recently and really liked:

the underlying premise [of historical materialism] is that this “diagonal” process of division is really vertical, i.e., that we are dealing with different aspects of the same division. To put it in Stalinist jargon: an immobile Whole is not really a Whole, but just a conglomerate of elements; development which does not involve qualitative jumps is not really a development, but just an immobile stepping at the same place; a qualitative change which does not involve a struggle of the opposites is not really a change, but just a quantitative monotonous movement. Or, to put it in more ominous terms: those who advocate qualitative change without a struggle of the opposites really oppose change and advocate the continuation of the same; those who advocate change without qualitative jumps really oppose change and advocate immobility … The political aspect of this logic is clearly discernible: “those who advocate the transformation of capitalism into socialism without class struggle really reject socialism and want capitalism to continue,” and so on.

Damn that's a good passage.

Another good text I know treating these bastardizations of Marx by the "Marxists" is Marx at the Millenium, esp. this chapter: marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/millenni/smith2.htm.

"On the other hand, we reject the idealist view which seeks to preserve the purity of socialist ideals at the cost of disconnecting them from historical reality. We recognise, that is, that the Soviet-type societies were in a significant sense socialist. Of course, they did not represent the materialisation of the ideals of Marx and Engels, or even of Lenin, but then what concrete historical society was ever the incarnation of an Idea?"

"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."

This doesn't even stand on its own merits as most Stalinist "revolutions" were just conquest by the USSR. The genuine revolutions, even the ones that claimed to be Marxist-Leninist and aligned with the Soviet Union, took on very different forms from the USSR. I'd like to hear how Maoist China or Cuba were exactly the same as the Soviet Union, and that's not even getting into non-ML revolutions.

Revolutions are ultimately formed by their material, social and historical context.

Thinking that they'll all end up that way and calling this "historical materialism" means you probably haven't read Marx.

in the first place, this is only to do here with socialist revolutions and their outcome, so I hate to be that guy but this is obviously a strawman.


to address this first we must take a look at what you say following it


Wow, no fucking shit? First of all, epic pseudointellectual buzzword flinging by throwing in material and social, as though those contexts are somehow separate from the overall historical context. This is a pet peeve I have with people all throughout the Marxist left, trying to use "material conditions" or "material context" as buzzwords to reinforce "YES I AM A MATERIALIST JUST LIKE MARX!!!!" Any psycophant with half a brain cell knows if you analyse a society you have to include the historical context and material conditions as possible causes of the historical events and progressions from said society, that's self evident in any sort of historical study whatsoever, and doesn't make you anymore a "materialist" for it.

Nonetheless, now understanding how fucking obvious this epic wisdom bite is, we can see that OPs statement holds true if you consider that the conclusion of all successfully established socialist revolutions ending up with roughly the same result would be a conclusion that ALSO has to consider the historical contexts of the revolutions considered. This means that obviously when reaching this conclusion it is with the historical variations based on country in mind. For instance, the productive and societal organisation of the USSR, Mao's China, and the DPRK are comparatively similar results of their respective revolutions when still accounting for their variance. Mao, for example, never had to institute something like the NEP as China didn't suffer the same imbalance in industrial and agricultural sectors as Russia, but in general the overarching structure of both nations' socialisms can be said to be roughly the same.


Historical materialism and its Marxist root of dialectical materialism is concerned with analysing history and its progression though historical EPOCHS. Feeling the need to mention that Mao and Stalin weren't literally the same means you clearly haven't done an ounce neither of history research nor consideration of dialectics.

You seem angry.

Wew.

The Russia and China were fairly similar societies, both being largely feudal societies with underdeveloped industry. There's a reason why Mao began relying so heavily on the peasantry and changed his theory accordingly.

And the point of this thread, as I read it is that we can expect all revolutions to have results closely matching that of the USSR, and I pointed out that the real revolutions that weren't just Soviet conquest were significantly different from that of the USSR and you had no response to this other than pissing yourself and calling me names.

Not that I expect much in the way of intellectual rigor from a fucking Nazbol.

Now, it's true that 20th century socialist revolutions tended to be inspired by, and usually aligned with the USSR, but this was merely because it was the first and strongest of the socialist states. I have serious doubts, now that it's collapsed and discredited, that future revolutions are going to take that form because of some cosmic force that you've decided to call "historical materialism" because you don't understand Marx.

How true is the statement that communist revolutions after the Russian revolution took the form of Marxism-Leninism due to the influence of and need of support from the USSR?

A cursory historical study reveals this as demonstrably false. The Chinese agricultural demographic was nearly the entire population at the time of revolution, whereas the revolution in Russia was instead focused in the industrial zones which, thanks to the Tsardom, had become heavily developed with a decently sized proletariat. The point here is that the historical context of the result of the USSR was in this case influenced by crises such as the Scissors Crisis that developed as a result of the NEP which had no such possibility of occurring in China, as it rested on the existence of a decently developed industrial sector in the first place, which China sorely lacked.


I didn't call you names, and I did address the differences between other socialist revolutions' results and the result of the USSR by saying that obviously historical context is important and obviously as such a conclusion such as OPs can be made while indeed accounting for varying historical context.


I may tag myself with the flag of association with a reactionary imperial Russian fetishist (Dugin) and an edgy punk rocker who never grew up or did enough actual political study to know how to craft a concise political theory (Limonov) but even I can prove intellectual rigour, whereas you, by stating asinine truisms like "historical context matters guys!" and being barely able to understand dialectical historical processes let alone a less than 500 word response on a fucking image board, cannot.


Coming from the poster who felt the need to mention that historical context matters when considering historical events, this doesn't really mean much.

verily so. nearly every post-WW2 socialist revolution was supported by if not directly influenced and guided by the Soviet Union. Its undoubtable that such a massive super power would indeed be the guiding force of following revolutions due to its incredible potential for geopolitical influence.

You're not even arguing your case anymore, you're outright agreeing with me and just being pedantic out of spite.

I literally just reiterated for the second time that OPs claim, which you disagree with, can be true and made while still accounting for historical context. I also have pointed out your wrongheadedness in not only your simple minded mentioning of "much contexts" as somehow being an acceptable counter point to OP, but in your more nuanced claims about the comparison of the historical situations of Russia and China, as well as your idiocy in doing all this while claiming that your opponents "just don't know Marx", without indicating, as I argued, any clear understanding of dialectical materialism on your own part. Am I using too many words? Should I slow down for you, maybe post some memes? Let me know what would help you process all this.

So could it be argued that a modern communist revolution would not necessarily be ML in content due to the absolute non-presence of the USSR as an influencing and supporting body?

You haven't made any case for OP's point. You've agreed with what I was trying to point out while sperging out over the minutiae. I said that all these revolutions were different. You agreed but insinuated that it didn't matter while not even bothering to explain why.

I understand what you're saying, but consider also the reason for ML existing in the first place. Why was it ML that established a socialist super power with the ability to influence successive revolutions and not say Makhno's Free Territory or Luxembourg in Germany? How did ML come to being in the first place, and why was the Soviet socialism the socialist mode of production that won out in the end? Also its important to note that while the USSR did have massive influence on the revolutions themselves this didn't necessarily mean influence on the actual regimes or their ideology, at least not active intent. Take for instance the fact that the Soviet Union not only aided like minded revolutions in South America but even the anarchists of Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War, which was arguably at one other most ideologically pure points of the USSR for Marxist Leninism in Stalin's early career.

Also keep in mind that many revolutionaries the USSR supported in the cold war would have been influenced heavily in their own ideas by the USSR itself, using it as a model of successful socialist revolution with which to take action in their own countries. This could be true for future revolutions as well, using the USSR as a model for building up modern socialist revolution.

hahahhahahaha

I'm not going to keep repeating the key disagreement. I've said it in detail three times now, you can mull over those until you come to a conclusion or more likely merely confirm your own bias in thinking all tankies and "Nazbols" are retards who don't know Marx.

…as an adaptation and extension of Marxism to the material conditions of Russia in the early 20th century, no?
Was that ever really the intention of the Free Territory?
Dude socdems lmao
Historical necessity considering that the situation of Russia at the time of the revolution required rapid industrialisation that, it was decided, could only have been provided by things such as the NEP and then later the five year plans?
I was under the impression that the anarchists ended up getting gangfucked by the PCE and PSUC and slandered as fascist collaborators along with the POUM with the backing of the Comintern

tl;dr I don't 100% see how ML's origin in early 20th century Russia fits with the conditions of most nations in the 21st century and why it wouldn't be better for a future movement to make an original analysis based on the conditions of the nation in question

You never put forth how the result are similar. You just said they were and left it at that. I said that, not accounting for the states that were effectively conquered by the Soviet Union, they all had fairly different systems and different results, development, etc. you agree, but insinuate that this doesn't matter without explaining why.

I don't think they do. As far as I know most leftcoms accept that the workers' council is the natural organizational form of revolutionary potential, and almost every revolution seems to confirm this. This probably explains why they hate the USSR so much, since the Bolsheviks dismantled the councils in their counter-revolution.

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