/$HIT TALK THREAD/

Is Leninism pretty much for pompous larpers?


Come on lads, call a spade a spade and move on to something else, eh?

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marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/lyons-theses.htm
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1965/consider.htm
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The really strange thing is that, in his theoretical works, Lenin is himself fairly top-notch. Both Bordiga and Pannekoek acknowledged him as a peer and substantially agreed with him, with the -profoundly important- exception of Lenin's belief that the workers by themselves can only achieve "union consciousness".

But it's reasonable, from a Marxist perspective, that Lenin's experiment of 1917 failed. To hold otherwise - that it was an exact application in reality of what Lenin held in theory - is to yield to Great Manism.

I rather hold that the October Revolution was an excellent expression of asymbolic entropy, insofar as it completely broke the horizon of potentials that one could imagine in 1914, only three years before - when almost unanimously the leftist parties of Europe opted to support their respective war efforts. Lenin, quite uniquely, refused to acquiesce to the common weal and developed the revolutionary prerogative as a means of enacting not only a revolutionary politic, but also reifying the material consciousness of the proletariat, only created in the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II in 1861, without bowing to moralism or the plague of concessionary enjoinments of "democratic collaboration". Here is where the philosophy of Lenin shines brightest, an a-essential and aleatory expression of the necessity of the communist hypothesis. The loss, or much rather, resigning of the revolutionary fervor is one of the great tragedies of the communist movement, whose "defeat", in the eyes of our enemies and even our own eyes, has re-asserted the necessity of this bullshit 'pragmatism' that always functions within the contours of some hierarchical or intensely bureaucratic symbolism - those very strictures of power which we had sought to abnegate ourselves from in the emancipatory event of a universal revolution. We thus content ourselves with "self-managing capital" and "ordered hierarchy", rendering ourselves archaic and beholden to the very negativities and antagonisms we abhor.

Has the law of value ever been abolished? The anarchists sure as hell didn't do it. Leftcoms and trots obviously never abolished the law of value since they have basically never had a movement of any significance behind them.

I'm not an expert on how everyday life was in actually existing socialist countries, but life in the USSR in the 50's and 60's seems to have been pretty good imo, especially in comparison to other countries outside of the capitalist/imperialist core.

Did any other tendency within socialism achieve the same improvement in living standards as ML movements did? Did any other socialist tendency "reproduce a decent middle class life"? Again: anarchists, trotskyists and leftcoms sure as hell never did.

How does this not apply to all other tendencies as well? Anarchists were never able to produce anything besides "experiments" too, but their best experiment lasted only 3 years instead of 70. Leftcoms and trots don't even have any experiments worth talking about.

If these are the reasons you hate Leninism, you should hate all other socialist tendencies even more.

I agree that ML personality cults suck. It's unfortunate.

The point of left-communism is not to GET a "movement of significance" "behind us". The abolition of value can only be accomplished by the workers, and by the workers deciding to abolish it after an objective analysis of their conditions. We do NOT believe this can be accomplished by adopting the methods of bourgeois parliamentarianism in the formation of a political party.

According to OP, Leninism (if he by "Leninism" means Leninists, Leninist movements, Leninism as an ideology, or something else, doesn't really matter) has never abolished the law of value. Has left communism abolished the law of value at any point in history?

If the answer is no, then this "criticism" applies to left communism just as well.

Left-communism as a movement does not aspire to abolish value itself, because it does not believe that the workers will all ideologically convert to 'left-communism' when they attempt to do so. The working-class will abolish value when it becomes necessary for them to do so, and will do so not as a matter of ideology but as a practical matter of their continued existence. Left-communism only seeks to explain why this is so.

You could just say ``do nothing´´ and it would've been just as good anyways.

No, don't "do nothing". Study theory, help your fellow workers in their daily struggles, and prepare for revolution - not through idealistic propaganda efforts [rhetoric makes our revolution], but by arming up and learning weapons.
Have you ever actually read what any of us have written on activism, or are you only familiar with memetic left-communism?

What is a strategy towards building a party?

It depends on who you're reading; there's no one left-communist conception of the Party. Bordiga, always the closest to Leninism, wanted a single international Communist Party that all existing tendencies would meld into; and he wanted this Party to be placed in charge of the Soviet Union on the basis of internationalism.
At the other end of the leftcom spectrum, communizers do not believe in any kind of Party, but hold that there will only be loose affiliations of workers organizing organically to accomplish specific goals in the advent of the revolution.
I tend more towards the Bordigist position - the idea that there must be a Communist Party "of the United States", "of Great Britain", etc. is an invitation to nationalism in the event of revolution in any of these polities.

I could literally not care any less about your attempts to convince yourself that never doing anything but reading and posting is the most radical shit ever. The point I was trying to make (which you replied to) is extremely simple: if OP's problem with Leninism is that it never abolished the law of value, then he shouldn't be a leftcom (or anarchist, or trotskyist) either, as the exact same criticism is applicable.

Again, the difference is that, unlike MLism, Trotskyism, etc., left-communists do not believe that the workers will "see the light", convert en masse to left-communism, and get behind a ready-made party upholding the principles of left-communism. Our view is that the revolution will be born out of immediate need, and that the actors in the revolution will have only the dimmest idea of what they're actually doing. Which is true of all historical revolutions everywhere.

To say nothing of the fact that whether they actually achieved socialism in those three years is doubtful, I think there are much stronger reasons for doubting it then to doubt whether the USSR was ever socialist but people just want to believe in anarchism cause it’s seen as a pure kind of leftism without the nasty legacies of the gulag and political execution which also existed in 20th century anarchist societies

The anarchists and Leftcoms do like to get together and beat each other off about how much they hate MLs. Sometimes Leftcoms will say a critical word about anarchists but it has NOTHING to do with Marx and Engels vehement condemnation of anarchism and everything to do with the fact that anarchists have actually accomplished a few things and still persist in attempting to change the world. Even Trots attempt to say things that are relevant to the working class experience and encourage radical education but Leftcoms do not consider this an imperative at all. They even shun propaganda work on the grounds that ideologies don’t make revolutions.

It’s all really sad, like one big gag that you’re waiting to come to an end. If left-communism is true Marxism as they often claim then I can only repeat Marx’s famous words: “If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist”

Or, y'know, you could let Bordiga etc. speak for themselves.
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1926/lyons-theses.htm
NOTHING in the Lyons Theses is a call to "do nothing".

Then what fucking purpose is there to leftcommunism? It seems like a special snowflake sect for liberals who are too afraid to get their hands dirty.

Are you getting your hands dirty at the moment? Lots of revolution going on in your neck of the woods? Because we do not believe that organizing into fractionally splintering 'sects' - as if ideas changed the world - is "get[ting] ones hands dirty". Actually useful shit is learning to properly handle weapons, first aid, technical skills, etc., all of which left-coms advocate as being more important than political organizing in non-revolutionary conditions.
The 'point' of left-communism is -theoretical accuracy-. We propose to actually understand the shit we're talking about, so that when the revolution comes we will make a clean break from bourgeois society and be able to actually engage in the process of destroying commodity production and the law of value and class society, rather than simply impose social democracy painted red upon capitalism.
We do not want another 1991.

So what will you do immediately after the revolution?

Fuck it, let Bordiga speak for Bordiga.
marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1965/consider.htm
This essay is about what Bordiga considers useful revolutionar activity in non-revolutionary situations.
TL;DR: No opportunism, no Blanquism.
TL;DR: No point in "converting" the masses to the One True Faith; it's better to gain theoretical insight now, to be there in the event of revolution when we're needed.
TL;DR: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union simply became a Greater Russian nationalist Party. No point then in becoming part of any "Communist Party of [Insert Nation Here]".
Until revolution comes, we must familiarize ourselves to the maximum extent possible with the failings of the old movement, the better to avoid their repetition in the new.

Do you have a single non-imperialist source to back any of that up?

Leninism and "Marxism"-"Leninism" is anti-materialist liberal fantasy where the state can be the good guys because the good guys work in the state. These stupid babies need to have their poopy diapers changed, and right-wingers are generally correct in generally assessing them this way. They poison the left and should be targeted by the anarcho-Marxist gang first before anyone else. They are the primary threat to us, historically speaking.

Yep and almost any group or person who identifies as communist I basically don't trust. And… there's only like 1-2 good socialist orgs

Everything else is rampantly feminist or LARPy

Yeah, targeted by anarcho-marxists who might as well be liberals at this point considering how much they pander to them

lmao good luck. too bad you guys are completely incapable of organizing and achieving literally anything.

You're confusing us with liberals who imitate us because they want to seem edgy. An understandable mistake to make for someone with the comprehension problems of a Leninist.


Opportunism isn't achievement. Jerking off to communists delays the revolution if anything because you make it easier for fascism to win and push away potential allies who see through your obvious and pathetic need for a strong daddy.

And you people are so insecure that you need to filter out pointed criticism to protect your wafer-thin skin.