We should understand there is a difference between the rebellion of the anarchists and the black revolution or liberation of the black colony.

This is a class society; it always has been. This reactionary class society places its limitations on individuals, not just in terms of their occupation, but also regarding self expression, being mobile, and being free to really be creative and do anything they want to do.

The class-society prevents this. This is true not only for the mass of the lower or subjugated class. It is also true within the ruling class, the master class. That class also limits the freedom of the individual souls of the people which comprise it.

In the upper class, the individuals always try to free themselves from these limitations — the artificial limitations placed upon him through external sources: namely, some hierarchy that goes by the name of State or Governmental Administration.

In America, we have not only a class society, we also have a caste system, and black people are fitted into the lowest caste. They have no mobility for going up the class ladder. They have no privilege to enter into the ruling structure at all.

Within the ruling class they’re objecting (resisting?), because the people have found that they’re completely subjected to the will of the administration and to the manipulators. This brings about a very strange phenomenon in American. That is, many of the rebelling white students and the anarchists are the offspring of this master class. Surely most of them have a middle class background and some even upper class. They see the limitations imposed upon them and no they’re striving, as all men strive, to get freedom of the soul, Freedom of expression, and freedom of movement, without the artificial limitations from antique values.

Blacks and colored people in America, confined within the caste system, are discriminated against as a whole group of people. It’s not a question of individual freedom, as it is for the children of the upper classes. We haven’t reached the point of trying to free ourselves individually because we’re dominated and oppresses as a group of people.

Part of the people of this country — which is a great part — part of the youth themselves. But they’re not doing this as a group of people. Because as a group they’re already free to an extent. Their problem is not a group problem really, because they can easily integrate into the structure. Potentially they’re mobile enough to do this: They’re the educated ones, the “future of the country,” and so forth. They can easily gain a certain amount of power over the society by integrating into the rulership circle.

But they see that even within the rulership circle there are still antique values that have no respect for individualism. They find themselves subjugated. No matter what class they’re in they find themselves subjugated because of the nature of this class society. So their fight is to free the individual’s soul.

This brings about another problem. They’re being ruled by an alien source that has nothing to do with freedom of individual expression. They want to escape this, to overturn this, but they see no need to form a structure or a real, disciplined vanguard movement. Their reasoning is that by setting up a disciplined organization they feel they’d be replacing the old structure with other limitations. They fear they’d be setting themselves up as directing the people, therefore limiting the individual again.

But what they don’t understand, or it seems that they don’t understand, is as long as the military-industrial complex exists, then the structure of oppression of the individual continue. An individual would be threatened even if he were to achieve his freedom he’s seeking. He’ll be threatened because there will be an organized lower group there ready to strip him of his individual freedom at any moment.

In Cuba they had a revolution, they had a vanguard group that was a disciplined group, and they realized that the state won’t disappear until imperialism is completely wiped out, structurally and also philosophically, or the bourgeois thoughts won’t be changed. Once imperialism is wiped out they can have their communist state and the state or territorial boundaries will disappear.

In this country the anarchists seem to feel that if they just express themselves individually and tend to ignore the limitations imposed on them, without leadership and without discipline they can oppose the very disciplined, organized, reactionary state. This is not true. They will be oppressed as long as imperialism exists. You cannot oppose a system such as this is to oppose it with organization that’s even more extremely disciplined and dedicated than the structure you’re opposing.

I can understand the anarchists wanting to go directly from state to non-state, but historically it’s incorrect. As far as I’m concerned, thinking of the recent French Revolution, the reason the French uprising failed is simply because the anarchists in the country, who by definition had no organization, had no people that were reliable enough as far as the mass of the people were concerned, to replace DeGaulle and his government. Now, the people were skeptical about the Communist Party and the other progressive parties, because they didn’t side with the people of medium living. They lagged behind the people, so they lost the respect of the people, and the people looked for guidance from the students and anarchists.

But the anarchists were unable to offer a structural program to replace the DeGaulle government. So the people were forced to turn back to DeGaulle. It wasn’t the people’s fault; it was Cohn-Bendit’s fault and all the other anarchists who felt they could just go from state to non-state.

In this country — getting back home to North America now — we can side with the student radicals. We would try to encourage them and persuade them to organize and weld a sharp cutting tool.

In order to do this they would have to be disciplined and they would have at least some philosophical replacement of the system. This is not to say that this itself will free the individual. The individual will not be free until the state does not exists at all, and I think — I don’t want to be redundant — this cannot be replaced by the anarchists right away.

As far as the blacks are concerned, we are not hung up on attempting to actualize or express our individual souls because we’re oppressed not as individuals but as a whole group of people. Our evolution, or our liberation, is based first on freeing our group. Freeing our group to a certain degree. After we gain our liberation, our people will not be free. I can imagine in the future that the blacks will rebel against the organized leadership that the blacks themselves have structured. They will see there will be limitations, limiting their individual selves, and limiting their freedom of expression. But this is only after they become free as a group.

This is what makes our group different from the white anarchist — besides he views his group as already free. Now he’s striving for freedom of his individual self. This is the big difference. We’re not fighting for freedom of our individual selves, we’re fighting for a group freedom. In the future there will probably be a rebellion where blacks will say, “Well, our leadership is limited our freedom, because of the rigid discipline. Now that we’ve gained our freedom, we will strive for our individualistic freedom that has nothing to do with organized group or state.” And the group will be disorganized, and it should be.

But at this point we stress discipline, we stress organization, we do not stress psychedelic drugs, and all the other things that have to do with just the individual expansion of the mind. We’re trying to gain true liberation of a group of people, and this makes our struggle somewhat different from the whites.

Now, how is it the same. It’s the same in the fact that both of us are striving for freedom. They will not be free — the white anarchists will not be free — until we are free so that makes our fight their fight really. The imperialists and the bourgeois bureaucratic capitalistic system would not give them individual freedom while they keep a whole group of people based upon race color oppressed as a group. How can they expect to get individual freedom when the imperialists oppress whole nations of people? Until we gain liberation as a group they won’t gain any liberation as an individual person. So this makes our fight the same, and we must keep this in perspective, and always see the similarities and the differences in it.

There’s a tremendous amount of difference in it, and there’s a due amount of similarities between the two cases. Both are striving for freedom, and both are striving for liberation of their people, only one is advanced to a degree higher than the other. The anarchists are advanced a step higher, but only in theory. As far as actuality of conditions, they shouldn’t be advanced higher because they should see the necessity of wiping out the imperialistic structure by organized groups just as we must be organized.

Delivered at the Conference on “Imam Khomeini and Democracy” – 31 May 2025, Parklands Plaza, Nairobi

Distinguished guests, comrades, brothers and sisters,

I bring you warm and militant greetings from the Communist Party Marxist Kenya. It is both a great honour and a political responsibility to speak at this important conference themed around “Religious Democracy in the Viewpoint of Imam Khomeini and Ayatullah Khamenei.”

We thank our hosts, and we welcome the esteemed guests from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Your presence in Kenya is a symbol of solidarity, and your struggle remains a beacon of resistance for many across the Global South.

Convergence in the Struggle Against Imperialism

Today, I do not come to speak about the ideological differences between Marxism and religion. Instead, I stand before you to speak of something more urgent and far more powerful: our shared resistance against imperialism, our defence of national dignity, and our collective struggle for self-determination.

In Imam Khomeini, we see a figure who led a nation to throw off the yoke of Western-backed dictatorship and challenge the global order imposed by the United States and its allies. In that act of revolutionary courage, Marxists the world over could recognise a familiar rhythm, a people rising against tyranny, demanding sovereignty, and refusing to bow before imperial capital.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was not only a national event; it was a continental tremor, felt from Latin America to Africa, from Palestine to Southeast Asia. It reminded us that no matter the ideological foundation, any movement that breaks the chains of imperial domination is a movement that contributes to the global liberation of oppressed peoples.

Religious Democracy as a Form of Cultural Sovereignty

The concept of “religious democracy” as articulated by Imam Khomeini and developed further by Ayatollah Khamenei must be understood not in abstract theological terms, but in its material historical context. It is a political response to Western cultural hegemony, a refusal to accept the idea that democracy must be defined only by liberal capitalist terms and dictated by Washington or Brussels.

In Africa, too, we have long wrestled with the contradiction between imported institutions and our own social and historical realities. Iran’s insistence on constructing a political system that reflects its own cultural and spiritual history is not a contradiction of democracy, but a revolutionary assertion of self-determination.

For us who have fought tirelessly for people’s democracy rooted in the masses, we can appreciate this effort as part of a broader resistance to neoliberal universalism, which seeks to erase all alternative visions of political order and social justice.

Iran at the Frontlines of Resistance

Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran stands firm as a frontline state against the unrelenting aggression of U.S. imperialism, economic sanctions, psychological warfare, military threats, and attempts at political destabilisation. Iran’s steadfast support for the cause of Palestine, its solidarity with oppressed peoples, and its refusal to be a client state make it a symbol of resistance that we in Africa must recognise and engage.

Whether it is the question of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq, Iran has stood for the principle that no people should be occupied, colonised, or humiliated. That is a principle which finds complete resonance with our own struggle here in Africa, where foreign militaries occupy our soil, multinational corporations loot our resources, and comprador elites betray our sovereignty for petty gain.

The African Dimension: A Shared Path of Liberation

Kenya, like much of Africa, remains trapped in the clutches of neocolonial domination, foreign debt, extractivism, militarisation, and cultural alienation. The imperialist hand that seeks to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran is the same hand that holds our continent in a suffocating grip.

That is why it is not enough to express solidarity, we must build it. We must learn from one another’s experiences, and construct an internationalist alliance of oppressed nations and peoples. Just as Iran has faced embargoes, sabotage, and isolation, so too have African nations faced destabilisation when they have dared to chart independent paths.

In this context, we call for a convergence of anti-imperialist forces: Marxist, Islamic, nationalist, and progressive, who may differ in form but share a common enemy and a common hope.

Towards a United Front Against Imperialism

Comrades and friends, an African proverb tells us: “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” Let us be those webs, across nations, across traditions, across worldviews. For the lion before us is great: the lion of imperialism, capitalism, and neocolonialism. But we are many. And we are rising.

Let this conference be not just a commemoration of a historical figure, but the beginning of deeper dialogue and principled collaboration between our movements and peoples. The Communist Party Marxist Kenya stands ready for such engagement, and we salute all those who continue to defy empire in the name of justice and liberation.

Long live anti-imperialist solidarity!

Long live the spirit of international resistance!

Victory to the oppressed peoples of the world!

When studying Marx and Marxist authors in isolation, there seems to be so many ideological struggles that one may take independently without critique from others. So, if socialism/communism is not completely inevitable, how do I form appropriate arguments for the use of Marxism to advance the cause of the proletariat against that of the ruling bourgeosie without falling to arguments about inevitability, "the greater good", the capitalists being "evil", et cetera? Are there any more advanced comrades here with experience showing the ideologically backwards, or even intermediate, the way of proper Marxist analysis?

Darwin, although a materialist at heart (maybe) wasn't very dialectical. Darwin's major faults are his binary steps of evolution, you take the right step you continue to exist, you take the wrong step you vanish, hence evolution is the result of taking all the right steps. So the panda took a wrong step somewhere, but maybe easter bugs did too, helping out humans grow things by eliminating other bugs. Now they are becoming extinct because of pesticides and insecticides. Maybe bees will too.

Do we know that humans made right choices or not? They created capitalism and this seems to be accelerating us towards extinction. What about pre-capitalist choices, like that of 10k years ago to select seeds, cultivate them, modify them, create monocultures and sentence other plants and life in general to extinction to do so. To what extent do we perceive human choices as natural phenomenon and to what extent is the dialectic with the material world and those choices acceptable or rejectable?

Can capitalism be the result of a sequence of other bad choices humanity (or certain parts of humanity that became dominant post 15th century) made? It is hard to believe that capitalism is the only poor choice humanity ever made.

Humans did exploit other humans and oppressed other humans before capitalism or even its very fundamental conditions existed (private property for one). Inequality and social stratification did exist in pre-capitalist societies, large and small, but not universally as anthropology and archaeology came to discover. Injustice as a result of inequality we can say it was more prevalent everywhere before capitalism.

But we must accept the possibility that humans can organize and revert all the bad choices made, decrease or eliminate inequality and injustice, eliminate the need for war and violence, instead of waiting for some deity to materialize and force that condition. Or at least, have this i"deal" of such a true communist society to struggle for and design the path to. (something about this statement I feel really uneasy with).

:)

For random stuff, possibly even fictional, and the people come up with a short dialectical materialist analysis, as a common exercise for everyone?

I would propose a prompt, in r/WritingPrompts style, but I don't really know what could be interesting topics on the matter. I would just love to see your analytic skills, and possibly pick it up on how you are doing it. :)

Maybe I got a prompt: What's the value of this idea? Did I miss the point of dialectical materialist analysis?

I am relatively new here, so please excuse my newbiness, I mean no harm or disrespect. Nor have I researched enough on how the original community was expelled by the CEO of reddit.com inc.

If I can identify with something concretely and not negotiably, is a firm believer of dialectical materialism, so I am not posting questions as an outsider to dialectical materialists. I am only posting questions to dialectical materialists, so idealists don't waste our time responding.

I do not wish to play devil's advocate, I usually hate the attitude, but I can't help to have questions that fit the profile. As a first step I'd like to state that the theory of Marx & Engels and the evolution of Marxism is not one and the same, for reasons that relate to the questions. So here we go.

In the time Marx lived and struggled and in specific when he wrote Capital, the world was smaller, in population, and also scientific knowledge of the world itself. Since then sciences such as anthropology and archaeology evolved rapidly being really young at the time. This and other scientific knowledge was not yet available, so Marx can't be held accountable for things not yet known. He could also not be accountable for things that happened after his theory was established and based on his material reality.

Even during his life time his ideas and theory affected an amazing portion of working people around the earth, the way they organized and struggled, and the early effects of this influence as partially witnessed during his time. Labor struggle did continue to be influenced and carried on past his time. This struggle had effects on how capital dealt with labor, and also how the state/s tried to remain in power to best serve capital while not collapsing under labor pressure.

Not a static picture A and picture B kind of comparison, but a dynamic process that had its qualitative and quantitative differences in various parts of the world, I think we can safely say that the social democracy was a dialectic product of struggle and capital domination. Not only did the state evolve but also capital evolved in identifying the enemy and source of trouble, as well as the uncomfortable shape of the evolved state. So anti-communism was born through this dialectic process and resulted in the things we very well know now.

Although Marx may have developed the theory to be as scientific as possible, and it is the role of scientific theory to interpret material reality but also form predictions, we can't expect Marx to have metaphysical abilities to see the future and the details of the dialectic he helped form, as this itself would have been a violation of his own philosophy. Marxists on the other hand did apply theory, sometimes in an idealistic way, to interpret dynamic political/economic processes of the decades that followed.

It is clear through class analysis that the logical proposal for the working class to overpower and defeat the ruling class would be to organize, better, more massively, and more effectively. The other class now being affected by this growing organization (syndicalism) isn't it expected to defend itself by organizing better itself?

Can it be possible that the state didn't provide adequate defense and be sufficient organization for the class due to its evolution in the late 19th and early parts of the 20th century in some parts of the world, primarily where capital was mainly based and centered? Would they seek better organization of the nation/state or would they seek further unity among its class globally and try to organize as to be able to control the nation/states?

Marxists seem to have resisted such consideration but I believe that if Marx himself was around he would entertain the possibility of such development.

If so, what is this federation of capital, how does it relate to its influence on different states, and what are the new roles of states within this new framework of capital defense against labor? It appears to be very effective both in accumulation of capital, labor defeat, and on its original goal of anti-communism. But can we revert and conclude it exists because of its effects?

If such possibility exists, how does it effect labor organization and goals overthrowing this federated capital rule?

I wanted to see what others thought when reading the introduction. I immediately thought of all the "science" done in the US that said smoking wasn't bad for you or that climate change wasn't caused by human activity. I'm sure there are many other examples, but Lenin is specifically talking about social sciences. Does anyone know of any examples of this? I like to try to connect theory to historical or current events because it helps me understand better, but I'm drawing a blank right now. I've included the intro that I'm talking about below.

"Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx evoke the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of “pernicious sect”. And no other attitude is to be expected, for there can be no “impartial” social science in a society based on class struggle. In one way or another, all official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers’ wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital."

Posting in response to interest shown in this thread. I will fill out structure here later today, but let us use this post as a provisional place to plan a study group.

Questions to consider:

• Location in theory. Where to start? A particular author or work?
• Method of discussion. How frequently should discussion threads be posted? By work or chapter?
• Other choices. Should we attempt to make discussions and reading choices relevant to current events? Should discussions have leaders? etc...