Marxism-Leninism?
I am the walrus?
I think you're thinking of Lennon-McCartney
Hey! No you're not. This is the walrus.
It's hard to imagine someone's been active on Lemmy for a year and didn't know that...
I had no idea about this, and I’ve been here for just over a year. Also, keep in mind which community this is.
I don’t think I’ve ever questioned it before. There’s so many servers I don’t bother to know the history behind them all.
I literally thought it was for militant, because that’s how they come off over there if you’re not 100% in lockstep with them.
Like they were fighting the man or something.
No, theyre marxist-leninists. Basically, unironic communists.
who are, ironically, not communist
Marx wasnt a communist? Ive heard a lot of "not true communism" takes, but thats a new one.
Probably because you haven't read much on the subject. Marxist theory speculated on how societies and economies could transition into communism. He and others created the philosophy and Concepts involving it. But were not communist strictly speaking. At least not in anything other than the state of the individual.
Engles, and Lenin mistakenly thought that by replacing the authority and power of the wealthy with their own people. That they themselves would not fall to the corruption of power. And eventually over time the authoritarian state would somehow magically wither and die. Leaving them with a classless stateless society. Keep that in mind that is important for understanding whether something is communist or not.
Was Russia classless or stateless? No Russia was a state. And they had plenty of different classes. ML never eliminated that. In fact all the current Russian oligarchs have direct ties back to the political Elite of Soviet russia. And instead of transitioning into a communist Society they've transitioned into fascism.
Now let's look at china. Is China a state? Yes. Not communist then. Are there different classes of people in china? Yes not communist then. Their claim on even socialism is somewhat tenuous at best. But they are definitely not communist. And at this rate will never transition into communism. Xi Jinping has moved into the Emperor's Palace and is all but Emperor in name only at this point. He and his wealthy friends will never relinquish power to transition to communism. They will stay as they are until he dies. And then there will be a power vacuum. There may be some in fighting but someone will replace him and China will continue on until there there is another Revolution to replace the failed Communist Revolution that put them in power. Are they transition into open fascism as well.
I saw this explanation a long time ago on reddit, and Im stealing it.
There are two types of communism. The communism in theory and communism as practiced.
Most people talk about communism as practiced. Think the USSR, China, Argentina, Cuba, any "state capitalism" country. This is how any attempt at communism will end. This is due tobthe fact that there isnt a mechanism to go from the tyranny of the proles to true communism, so you get stuck in tyranny.
Youre talking about communism the theory. Communism the theory can not exist. Its fine to discuss it, but saying that communism the theory is the only true communism is just being obtuse and/or disingenuous.
They talk about it like that because that is how the propaganda both Pro and against talk about it. The fact is Soviet Russia and China started out basically as forms of marxist leninism. They aspired to be communist but weren't. But they loved the word. And used it a lot. It's like Nazis having socialist in the name. It didn't make them socialist.
Practicing communists? Look towards communes. They are the only groups actually practicing communism. Whether they were the hippie communes Bohemian communes etc. Those are what communism in general would look like. Not explicitly but overall. Each commune is its own group that governs itself but could cooperate with similar outside groups. Soviet Russia and China were never communist in any sense.
This is where people mess up when they judge the past in the eyes of the present. Communism in Marx' time had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, Mao or China.
Question: Do you think that stateless and classless society is sustainable and won't evolve into a regular one?
In terms of modern ideological dogmaticism? No. Pragmatically I think it's possible to get very close. History has proven that. "Class" has never been a necessary construct. It's always negative, hurtful, and exclusionary. Statewise, it's always been more against nation state and to smaller extents even city-states. Large overarching structures. Keep in mind I'm coming out this from an actual Dejacque libertarian / anarco communist leftist perspective. Governance isn't the enemy. Just large overpowerful bodies with concentrated power.
Lenin isn't Marxism. Stalin isn't Marxism. Mao isn't Marxism. Tankies aren't Marxism. Marx would have thought nothing good of China and Russia. Marxist Leninists idolize Mao and Stalin. They think police states are the bees' knees
"socialism with Chinese characteristics" (the "Chinese characteristics" are capitalism)
Tbf to your first example, if .ml "stands for" marxist-leninist, I'm not sure lenin is a prime example lol.
I think the meaning is that the Lemmy.ml fascists aren't actually communist.
Oh, that makes much more sense. Thanks!
"What is certain is that if they are Marxists, then I myself am not a Marxist"
– Karl Marx
Of course Marx wasn't a communist. He was a Marxist. Duh.
How do you not know? He literally wrote a book about not to be a communist called The MaNOfest of the ComunNOst Party.
A lot of it isn't actually communists, but a facade for spreading authoritarian propaganda.
This is true. As long as a country declares itself to be economically left, they will defend every single authoritarian action and human rights abuse. Doesn't matter if the reality is that the state capitalist country produces hundreds of billionaires. Any claim of leftist economics and they will defend anything it does. It's clear they love defending authoritarianism more than they like leftist economics.
they love defending authoritarianism more than they like leftist economics.
They're not paid to like leftist economics.
Mali didn't claim their country TLD for a long time, some dude named Johannes Zuurbier decided to just hand out domains to anyone who wanted them, for gratis unless your traffic was super high (and even then asked to only cover the traffic costs). He did this in his spare time for the community. This all further appealed to Marxist-Lenists.
Now it's managed by the government of Mali, they still give them out for gratis/very cheap.
That's some lore
Can’t remember the specifics but the Mali government was allowing free (or super cheap) use for awhile so that was the reason.
.ml domains are free.
Interestingly some instances got shut down by the Mali govt, no idea why this one gets to stay
The .ml ccTLD was on a contract to a company called Freenom in the Netherlands until last year, then it went back to the Mali government. Freenom gave away domains for free until then. After the switch, the owners who didn't outright buy it lost their domains.
Fwiw, I don't think the connection to communism was ever confirmed by the admins. Likely a happy accident for them
There was a Reddit thread where they announced the server and explicitly said that was why. Can’t find it right now.
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