At what point do you think Marxists believe the DotP is to be ended? Moreover, what do you think a DotP is? People weren’t allowed to dissolve government into small communes because they were invaded by more than 14 Capitalist countries, and in addition the Soviets were Marxists and not Anarchists, they wanted full public ownership and central planning as the goal.

How should it be implemented in your eyes? You speak in vague, non-Marxist idealism like “soft totalitarianism,” when you should already know better having read Politzer.

Hey, kudos for finishing Elementary Principles of Philosophy! credit due where credit is due, it’s a phenomenal book and hopefully you understand Dialectical and Historical Materialism more.

Anyway, the core of the matter is that the historical evidence I have seen based on a combination of reading historical books, reading primary sources, and more have led me to have what I believe to be a different understanding of events in both qualitative and quantitative degrees. As an example, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-aggression pact. This was a strategic pact made because the USSR tried to align with the west against the Nazis prior to it in order to save Czechoslovakia, but the West denied and sacrificed it, hoping the Soviets and Nazis would kill each other off. It wasn’t an alliance, but a means to force the allies to later join the war.

You admit to having no understanding outside Wikipedia articles, which means you have some serious digging to do.

Again, I have specifically argued against idolization. Did you outright ignore the part where Marx and Engels argued for the usage of a state when building up towards Communism? You admit to having little knowledge of Marxism and Socialist history, yet refuse to learn more.

See, equating Communism with Nazism is fascist apologia and perpetuates Double Genocide Theory. This is something you desparately need to correct, if nothing else, because it is a common form of Holocaust minimization. Since you’re already under the mistaken impression that Communists and Nazis could ever be in the same category, you definitely need to read Dr. Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Fall of Communism. Your refusal to read has taken on direct forms of fascist apologia, unintentional as it may be, and if not for me (as I assume you have no respect for me) then you must do it for yourself.

You freely admit to being unfamiliar with Socialist history, and yet are unwilling to even finish a short article? It’s 8 minutes long, if you refuse to read things you don’t agree with without doing the due research to overcome them you doom yourself to blindness.

Seriously, read the full article or you’ll never be able to genuinely understand anything you don’t already agree with. Better yet you could read the history book, but if you can’t be trusted to read an 8 minute article I fear you’re simply fine with never even daring to let your preconveived notions be challenged by historical and archival evidence.

No worries! Feel free to ask any questions or dig in for yourself elsewhere.

You are confusing several aspects of Marxism, particularly with respect to the State. The State, for Marx, is an element of class oppression. In a classless society, the “State” doesn’t exist, when property is fully collectivized there cease to be classes. What remains is a “state” in the modern linguistic sense, but for Marxists is just “government” or “the administration of things,” as Engels puts it. From Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase “a free people’s state” with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so-called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.

Marxism is not Anarchistic, it advocates for a world Socialist republic of full Central Planning and Worker Ownership, complete with hierarchy for planning and whatnot. The “state” isn’t a separate thing from the workers, but the workers themselves. The concept of a State is important for the lower stage, when Private Property still exists. From Principles of Communism:

Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?

Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.

As per Stalin, I don’t “defend” him, and don’t appreciate your assertions that I do. I again want you to read “Tankies” by Roderic Day. Moreover, your confused understanding of Marx can be alleviated by reading my reading list.

I encourage you to, again, read history books, rather than taking any one person’s word for anything. The thread I linked has references posted as well, so you can check the original sources yourself if you question their validity. In order to be a Marxist, it is critical that we learn to separate fact from fiction, and part of that is recognizing that we all have implicit biases. We should not fear searching for more truth. Stalin certainly wasn’t a saint, and I am not making him out to be one. I believe you are over-correcting and making critical errors in judgement because of it.

I highly recommend the short, 8 minute article “Tankies” by Roderic Day, hosted over on Red Sails. For more in-depth reading, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo is a good historical critique of Stalin that focuses on taking a critical stance towards Stalin and contextualizes him.

No problem!

Well, for starters, I have an introductory Marxist reading list linked on my profile if you want to take a look, or you can get there from here. No need to do so, just if you want to learn more for your own personal knowledge.

As for your question, an emphatic and wholehearted YES! You nailed it, Marxists believe at lower levels of development markets are faster at developing, but that eventually public ownership and planning becomes more efficient. The PRC does this, it increases state ownership incrementally and graduallly, without risking Capital Flight. It’s a “boiling the frog” approach, and it’s necessary because it keeps the PRC integrated with the world economy and rapidly developing alongside it, as it sees the USSR’s isolation as a key aspect of its downfall.

Marxism is “state socialism,” so I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Marxism wants full government ownership of production and central planning. Additionally, as we already discussed, Stalin didn’t “go rogue,” he was elected and retirement was rejected. He was kept because he cracked down on opposition and opportunists within the party, and the central committee deemed this necessary. I provided the transcripts of his resignation speeches in my other comment that elaborate more on this. There was also a thread on Stalin over on Lemmy.ml with nuanced answers on him I recommend checking out.

Stalin was no saint, make no mistake, but he wasn’t a “rogue agent” either. He was deeply flawed, no doubt, but he was selected for by the party itself.

As for the left values test not aligning with the political compass, I recommend you reinvestigate that. Clearly it is highly flawed.

No, in no way is that comparable. The CIA didn’t believe he was all powerful, and in his attempts to resign, he even tried to suggest eliminating his two positions overall. I suggest that Stalin could not simply do whatever he wanted because I understand, like the CIA did, that he was more of a “captain of the team.” He certainly had extensive power and his opinions were held with high weight, but he did not have absolute command nor all-encompasing command. He had the power of his positions, and no more. I suggest reading books on Soviet History post-early 90s, after the Archives opened up.

I posted it elsewhere in the comments here, but I truly believe Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” should be mandatory reading. People tend to accept the narratives that align with their percieved interests, ergo no matter what lengths I go to myth dispelling and citing facts, articles, numbers and more, I get accused of “getting drunk on the kool-aid.” Nobody is immune to propaganda, helping understand why people believe what they do is important in combatting that.

It’s not at all a trick question, it’s poking a giant hole in the notion that the Political Compass has any credibility. The answer is that it isn’t “left” or “right,” but a move towards Marxian economics. It can be considered leftist, yes, but in labeling it left or right in a specific context you ignore that there is a leftist reason to adopt market mechanics, something designated as right wing.

As for your sidenote, I don’t see why Marxism is “soft totalitarianism,” nor do I know what that means or why you argue “against transitional phases that rely on government action.” This is word salad to me and I’d like to know what you’re referring to here.

Moreover, why do you believe the LeftValues test to be worse? We’ve established that I support full public ownership and central planning, and the LeftValues test displays that better than the Political Compass. In fact, the Political Compass puts the PRC at the absolute top despite also being Marxist.

Fair 🥲

This is a very surface-level analysis of Socialist history, though, your reliance on describing mechanisms in terms of “shifting towards or away from authoritarianism” is precisely the crux of the issue. If you want to say Mao retained influence despite being recalled, describe how and why! Don’t just vaguely gesture at “authoritarianism” as though it’s a miasma that grows and shrinks, describe how there were many people still loyal to him and his ideas despite the party shifting away from him. By folding it under an umbrella of “authoritarianism” you shroud your points. For Stalin, for example, his resignation was rejected, the fact that it was rejected does not mean it was more authoritarian by itself. Rather, it proves a reverse, that Stalin could not simply do whatever he wanted.

My point is that you attempt to describe nuanced, multifaceted concepts in vague and nondescript terms, and this runs counter to any actual points you are trying to make. I could just as easily call your claim that “I CANNOT” dispute your claims to be itself “authoritarian,” but I won’t because that’s silly too.

Marxism is not the same as worker cooperatives, or workplace democracy. In fact, with respect to worker cooperatives, Marx and Engels were more against than for with respect to the concept of making them the base of the economy. For Marx, Public Ownership and Central Planning were the way to go. Moreover, what denotes a system as Capitalist vs Socialist is not purity but dominance, ie which is the principle? Is it public ownership and central planning, or private property and free markets? No system is devoid of the other, but to pretend that one isn’t transforming into the other is anti-dialectical.

For the PRC, a hair over 50% of the economy is in the Public Sector, and nearly a tenth in the cooperative. This alone means it is certainly heavily public, but not alone does that mean it is Socialist. Within the public sector are key industries like steel, which the remaining private sector relies on. You cannot divorce the Private Sector from the Public, because it depends on it, and this is what additionally adds credibility to its Socialism as the driving factor.

You ask “what the point” of Socialism is if you aren’t “picking your boss” and whatnot, but the real answer is efficiency and supremacy over Capital. Markets have a natural tendency to centralize, but at the peak of this they stop actually progressing, because the amount of information required to direct production becomes massive. Central Planning alleviates this, and by folding all property into the Public Sector related industries can be better coordinated, all in service of maximizing human happiness and raising the floor as high as possible.

That doesn’t mean democracy isn’t also incredibly important, but it does help show that democracy isn’t the goal, either. Democracy is simply another tool for satisfying the population, and its one employed in the PRC as well.

Hope that helps!

You’re not making the case for the political compass by showing the issues with how it treats government power and centralization. My point is that the grid itself fails to convey anything meaningful because it is far too simplistic to give any idea, so no, I will not agree that it has any place. As an example, here are my results of the Political Compass test:

And now here are my results on Left Values (which describes me as an “Eco-Marxist,” despite my being a Marxist-Leninist):

Very different results, but why? Because all of these tests are meaningless. I consider myself 0% Utopian and 100% scientific, for example, and I think Union vs Party is a false dichotomy. There are numerous issues with all of these because none of them present a true dichotomy.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a country that collectivized too early, and as such growth slows way down. The Means of Production are not ready for it. Is introducing market reforms as Marx and Engels would have it, with the intention of future recollectivization, right or left wing? Does it matter?

You have not demonstrated any usefulness, and in fact its flaws have caused you to contradict yourself.

If these mechanisms genuinely empower the working class without coercion, they would trend toward a libertarian-left position.

Here, your framing of the lib-auth scale is empowering the working class without coercion. It doesn’t matter if a system is highly centralized with thorough planning and full public ownership, what matters in this context is the extent to which the working class has power.

However, if in practice they require centralized enforcement or suppress dissent, they trend toward authoritarian-left. That’s it!

This contradicts your previous statement, where centralization doesn’t matter, only working class power does, assuming there is no “coercion,” which you leave vague and ill-defined.

Moreover, if we define lib-auth as working class power, that means Marxism-Leninism is less authoritarian than Anarchism. I want to reiterate that point, because communes or syndicates have horizontalism in place, there is no control from one commune over another, giving rise to potential power differences and coercion. This doesn’t make any sense in the traditional notion of lib-auth!

What this means is that lib-auth must mean, instead, size of government, not how democratic it is, in order to be somewhat useful. This means Marxism is fully auth, as it is for a fully centrally planned economy, yet also democratic. This also seems oversimplified. If we define it as working class power, however, the dynamic flips, and Marxism becomes fully libertarian! This also doesn’t make sense.

You can see that, rather than being useful in any capacity, trying to force ideologies and structures onto a grid does more for misinformation than information and needs to be thoroughly forgotten. Ignoring your oversimplification (and frequently wrong, such as the fact that Stalin tried to resign no fewer than 4 times and was democratically rejected, and Mao actually successfully was recalled after the struggles of the Cultural Revolution) analysis of Socialist history, this point remains clear.